The Crooks in the Rook

[Kait]

Swift

The Hollows were unusually quiet this afternoon, and had been for days now. There were fewer urchins and elderly homless soaking up what rays of sun broke through the fleecy clouds while they begged and stole on this fine autumn day; fewer still were the whores who would swagger and sway their way down Rake's End and through the Devil's Crook. There at the end of the Crook urchins and whores alike were beginning to gather, coming around to the back of one building in twos and threes until their numbers were just shy of two dozen.

Most places in The Hollows looked frighteningly similar to the Devil's Rook Inn and Tavern: sloping, half-rotten shingles atop equally dilapidated, sagging frames of woodwork. In the alley behind the Rook they settled, some sitting atop empty liquor crates and whatever other debris the staff had cast aside, while others would lean against the building itself, or this new wall that had cast the entire building in shadow. Whores kept to their own and the grimy children did the same; each group would wait with whispers passed amongst themselves until it was to begin.

"I see I gots all the right people, least ways all that's ta be found in the Ollows. What's say we be gettin' this thing started sos we might be 'bout business?" Nods all around to the last arrival, the one they had all been waiting for. Octavious Swift was not lord and master of these right people, but the mouthy urchin had employed all of them at one point or another, and even involved a handful in some of those more worthwhile schemes. Today was not for scheming though, not for petty theft nor new ideas on how to turn a bit of copper into a pile of gold.

"Everyone knows now, an' nothin' can change wha's been done, but tha don' mean we has ta sit 'n wait ta be slaughtered like 'ogs. We's been happy Mister Constable-Gov kept 'is nose outta our dealin's, an there's no use goin' off whimperin' ta 'im now 'bout how poor we all is, an how he shoulds keep us safe. Right people's gots ta take care of our selves, an our own iffen there's time left in the day after money's been made." Thus began the meeting of these right people, and for once the agenda was not forgotten as the first hour passed.

Until the sun had set these little scamps and bawdy whores would speak in low tones, the grim reality of the Ashfiend had struck too near home for many of them. Strange as it was, the monster had managed to unite the small community of neredowells like nothing else had before. Each would walk away that evening with tactics for aversion, and a renewed sense of determination to make it though another year, another month, another night in The Hollows of Myrkentown.