Outside the Trove, On the Border between Castle Hill and Berret Park
Niccolette would have preferred the dark. The moonlight scattered over piles of garbage, here and there; caught the face of a beggar or two, rattling empty bowls on the cobblestone streets. The Bastian stood beneath a half-crumbled balcony at the border where Castle Hill ran alongside Berret Park, on the edge of the Trove, a bar that straddled the two. She slumped back against the warped wooden wall, its half-hearted coat of paint peeling in the humid air.
The clouds overhead were moving, swift, a testament to the breeze that trickled through the streets, but the clean smell of salt water had long since mixed with garbage and waste, with the faint scent of fish rotted since the morning’s catch. Niccolette burned it from her nose with a deep drag on a cigarette, deep enough that she found herself coughing. She twisted her face towards the wood, shuddering, and coughed a little harder, the heaving sending a sharp twist of pain through her ear.
Niccolette grimaced, dropped the mostly-full cigarette, and ground it out against the cobblestone street with the tip of her boot. It was too many years for her to find the habit again, she thought. Better not to try too hard. She wiped at watering eyes with her fingers, and ignored the faint buzzing hum that had been, for some time now, all she could hear in one ear. The galdor turned her attention back to the streets, watching men and women pass from her darkness of her little corner.
Niccolette had never liked the Rose. But, she thought, anything at all was better than the loud silence of the home she had shared with her husband; tonight, even urine and stale beer smelled better than that emptiness. She had lost track of the days somewhere; she could not have said if she had been in the Rose one day, two, even three or four. She knew she had slept; sometimes, she had dreamed. Once, she had found something in the dark, but it had not lasted. Sometimes she had tossed and turned, unable to find the stillness that sleep needed, and equally unable to rise. Sometimes she had gotten up; she had dragged herself through the motions of living, bathing and eating.
And, of course, drinking.
The Bastian reached down to the ground at her feet, swaying unsteadily, and picked up the bottle she had left there, a small white bandage tucked against the palm of her hand. Black comfort; fitting, Niccolette thought. She did not much care for it – too sweet – but it had looked a world better than anything else on offer at the shithole of a bar behind her, and at least it had a reputation for not turning to vinegar. Niccolette had not bothered to get a glass, and she did not bother to get one now; the Bastian placed the drink of the bottle carefully at her lips, tilted her head back, and swallowed the largest mouthful she could manage. She lowered it, swallowed, and coughed, grimacing at the taste.
Niccolette shivered, and leaned back into the hidden shadows beneath the decrepit balcony. It smelled, she thought, of mold and rot; she would not be surprised if it collapsed onto her head, but she could not quite bring herself to move. The Bastian wore a high-collared black dress, tailored to her slender body, with soft cuffs and frills – and over it, against the coming cold, a man’s coat, a little too big for her in the shoulders, folded back at the arms, one side of the collar subtly, carefully mended – clean, though. It smelled of soap, Niccolette thought. For a moment she thought she might weep, but it passed and left her a little emptier inside.
The Bastian held there against the wall; there was a burst of loud laughter from inside, and she remembered why she had left. Too much. The silence, alone at home, was too much; the laughter, even drunk as it was, was too much. Out here, on the boundary of the street – alone with all the Rose – Niccolette thought, perhaps, she would be able to find stillness that was not too still.
Niccolette took another drink from the bottle, and pushed her long brunette hair back, up and off her face, out of her kohl-rimmed eyes. If not, she thought bitterly, there was always black comfort.