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from the industrial heart of the city where I lived now, a sour smell of bodies and animals and rotting vegetables. I preferred the bitter tang of the chimneys, even if it left me hacking till my throat burned, and coated my face and arms with soot. The Drowning stank of poverty, ignorance, and despair.
    I hated it.
    The Lani aren’t indigenous to the region. We were brought here almost three hundred years ago from lands to the east by the whites from the north. My ancestors came as indentured servants, manual laborers and field hands, living separate from both the indigenous Mahweni and the whites. They were never slaves and believed they had settled in Feldesland by choice, keeping to themselves as the northerners conquered, bought, and absorbed more and more of the land from the native blacks. The Lani were neither military nor political, and reasoned that as long as they were left to their own devices, they were better staying out of the disputes and skirmishes during the white settlement of the region. By the time they looked up from their cooking fires to find that they had turned into a squalid and itinerant people living peasant lives, it was too late.
    Most of Morlak’s gang came from here or somewhere similarly ragged and decaying. Some of them, like Tanish, still thought of this place as home, and his mood brightened as we reached the first outlying huts and tents.
    â€œI see Mrs. Emtiga’s ass got out again,” he said, amused. “That thing needs an armed guard and a castle wall.”
    I laughed, then risked a question. “Berrit was a Drowning boy too, right? You must have been almost the same age.”
    A Drowning boy. That’s what they called them, proudly and with no sense of the bitter irony.
    Tanish didn’t look at me. “I didn’t remember him till we spoke a few days ago,” he said. “But, yes. I think we played together when we were little. Then he went to the Westside gang and I stayed here till…”
    Till Tanish’s mother died.
    â€œWhy did he leave Westside?” I went on quickly.
    â€œGot traded,” said Tanish. “Part of a deal involving the Dock Street warehouse and some building supplies.”
    So Morlak bought him. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did.
    â€œHow did he feel about that?” I asked.
    Tanish shrugged. “Didn’t seem to care,” he said. “Said he was going to be something big in the Seventh Street gang.”
    â€œHe’d been a steeplejack for the Westside boys?”
    â€œNah,” said Tanish. “He said he’d been a pickpocket, but I think he was really a bootblack. Might have done a bit of thieving on the side, but that wasn’t how he earned his keep. He’d never been up a chimney, inside or out. He pretended not to be, but I think he was scared of heights.”
    â€œSo why did he think he was going to be big in the gang?”
    â€œOptimist,” said Tanish bleakly. “Always going on about what he was going to do when his ship came in.”
    I nodded thoughtfully, and as Tanish’s face tightened with the memory, I decided to switch direction. “What about you?” I asked, ruffling his hair affectionately. “What will you do when your ship comes in?”
    â€œShips don’t come in for the likes of us,” he said.
    â€œSure they do,” I tried, not believing it.
    â€œThen they’ll be rusted-up pieces of kanti, ” he said.
    I laughed. “Full of rats,” I agreed.
    â€œAnd holes,” he added. “And sharks would swim in through the holes and live in the hold, ready to bite your legs off as soon as you went aboard.” He grinned at the idea, and that, for the moment, was as good as things were going to get.
    Inside the tent city, a gaggle of local women and their kids had already gathered outside the hut. There was a sense of drama brewing in the air, and they paused in their chatter as we