A few hours after dawn the next morning, probably just after half rise-watch, we were all awoken by a pounding on our door, followed by Rose Argent bursting into our room. In that moment, I had flashbacks of the Lapis-Crowns bursting into Uncle Horantz's and I screamed, leaping out of bed and tumbling my way toward a series of painful bruises fortunately, Rose caught me mid-tumble and deftly placed me on the deck, looking very pleased with herself. My brain slowly registered that Rose was simply excited and we weren't facing a ship-wide emergency. I wobbled unsteadily and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

"Sorry…" I said a bit grumpily. Again, I was only seven years old and couldn't appreciate how unusual it was for a full Shadow to excitedly and personally cater to a trio of destitute children.

"Come on, sleepy-bones," she chirped, bright and chipper despite the early hour. She was probably buzzing with a quart of the Hawk's coffee - he strongly encouraged its consumption among his crew. "You're going to miss it!"

"Misswha?" Mailyn mumbled, extracting herself from Aldo's limbs.

Aldo, somehow, however improbably, was still asleep. Rose relieved him of repose by grabbing his tangled papoose of blanket and giving it a hard yank, sending the poor boy rolling and tumbling to the deck with a yelp and a thump. How Aldo survived on the hard streets of Portogarra while being the soundest sleeper I've ever encountered, I can only speculate.

"We've just sailed in to Floria Harbor!"

"Floria Harbor!" I cheered. Mailyn hopped up and down and Aldo just rubbed the bump on his head.

We all clambered above decks to see…

Not much, actually. The habitual morning mist had yet to fully dissipate and we could barely even see the coast perhaps half a mile distant. What we could see was a thin and gauzy ribbon of marshy shore, swamp grasses and mangroves sliding by, the bleating sound of unseen sea birds in the sky above. The rest of the world was a placid, slate-gray retreating into the indistinct glow of sun-touched mist. From time to time, the coastal marsh was interrupted by a hill of solid earth upon which sat lighthouses or, more occasionally, houses.

The houses were mostly neo-Turan - elegant, white-columned buildings with red clay roofs. These were the seaside villas and coastal retreats of Floria's wealthy. As the marsh began to retreat, we passed a little resort town with white-paved roads meandering up among the hills between bathhouses, theatres, and bordellos, the sort of place where tradespeople, petty merchants, and the like could pretend to be well-heeled for a week or two per year.

"Eat up!" Iron-heel said. She passed a warm bowl of breakfast porridge into my hands.

"Thank you, Miss Iron-heel!" I said. I raised the spoon to my mouth, only to have it smacked right out of my hand and sent clattering across the deck. I looked up, confused and a bit hurt, only to see that Iron-heel was just as confused as me.

Rose Argent just shook her head and chuckled. "Don't go spoiling your appetite! We're almost home!" She pointed back toward the coast where, if anything, the mangrove swamp had only reasserted itself. And then it hit us…

"What's…" I reeled back as if from a physical blow. The smell was intense and not pleasant in the least.

Aldo and Mailyn took it a bit better than I did - Aldo was a former 'street rat' used to sifting through middens and Mailyn had grown up on a farm. They were more inured to it than I was. They were better prepared for their first whiff of Floria Harbor.

The stench came and went at first, as if we were traversing scintillating ribbons of the city's stench borne on the air. In truth, the smell was borne by the water - great eddies of murky brown striated the wine-dark waters of the Pelagic, plumes of our great city's effluvium spilling out into the relatively shallow waters of the lagoon to fester and gel before eventually being carried out and subsumed by the cold currents emanating from the Black Well forty leagues off Perdita's coast.

Rose took in a great breath and sighed, completely inured to - and, I suspect, bizarrely comforted by - the fetid aroma of her home port. "Nothing like the first whiff of home, eh Iron-heel?" she chirped.

Iron-heel shrugged. "I'll leave the stench and keep the perfume."

For a moment, the shore disappeared completely and we were once again surrounded by nothing but flat sea and curling mist. Then a great, cool breeze blew in from the south, exorcising the stench of the city and sending the mist retreating inland. First I saw a forest of masts, the great dark hulls of moored ships appearing like the bodies of beached whales. Everywhere among them was the bustle of industry, the sounds growing from a whisper to a chatter of hammers, winches, and shouts - dozens of ships were loaded and unloaded, men and women carting crates about, massive cranes as tall as a temple tower lifting whole pallets of goods onto and off of ships, and teams of oxen and destriers tromped huge, cargo-laden sledges up from and down to the water, chains grinding against work-worn runnels in the marble ramps. Just inland, the blocky brick buildings of the Captain's Canton warehouses appeared followed by block upon block of massed storefronts, row houses, guild halls, customs houses, and traveler's inns. A vast, teeming city built around the lazy green flow of the Largotto River.

"Wow…" I whispered. I'd known that Portogarra was neither the largest nor most prosperous city in the world, but Floria could have swallowed my home city three times over and had room for dessert. Her temples gleamed with white marble and gold, the flags of a dozen faiths and as many nations whipping about as the breeze pushed further inland. And across the river and looming above it all sat the Shadow Hall, emerging from the mist like a hulking demigod, its central tower twice the height of any other building, dwarfing the buildings of its canton, a testament to our tyrant's power…

"I reckon Floria must be the greatest city in the world," Mailyn gasped.

"It is!" Rose affirmed.

I could only nod - I couldn't conceive of a grander city than Floria. To a true world traveler, of course, Floria is only mildly impressive. If Gionia ever managed to conquer the Perditos, Floria would become the third largest city in the high prince's domain. If you've ever had cause to visit the seat of Gionia's casual opulence, the seat of the Winter Rose in Gionika, Floria is a middling metropolis with a reasonably brisk mercantile trade. But, for a girl from Barsoa, for a girl raised in an insular Selenite community, it was like seeing Honored Asuna's celestial palace appear in the sky behind a bank of golden clouds.

Mailyn gave voice to my thoughts: "Is it the biggest city in the world?"

"It's in the top seven," Rose allowed. While that may sound impressive, a person only mention that something is in the 'top seven' of its kind if it sits exactly at number seven. And it is said that there are hidden cities in Arkavy larger than any in the known world.

As we approached the quay, our view of the city was obscured as the forest of ship's masts and cranes rose to eclipse the city beyond them, the mainmasts of great frigates towering like old wood pines. The Black Swan slowed as we approached, her sails having been disinvigorated well before we reached the pier. The crew bustled about, furling the sails and preparing them for landward maintenance. Even so, a frigate like the Black Swan can coast along for quite a bit on inertia, and we slid into our mooring at Floria Harbor at two or three knots, stopping only when Rose and the Hawk, assisted by a pair of land-side mages employed by the harbor, activated opposing sets of runes along the hull and the pier, easing the ship to a full stop within centimeters of the mooring post.

If you are unfamiliar with Floria, it may seem audacious to use powerful runework to moor most of the hundreds of ships in Floria Harbor. Like all good sailors, Perditan crews are trained to perform conventional moorings, but when every sea captain and her sister is a competent mage and artificers abound by the dozens, the time and resources saved by casual displays of magic add up. While Perditan ships in Floria harbor usually attach a single mooring line for safety's sake, it would take a deliberate act of sabotage to dislodge a ship from its tether of magical runework.

Rose sauntered up to the Hawk, who was currently overseeing the registry and unloading of the Auspicio's along with Oumaa Dead-Eyes, who served as his quartermaster. "Permission to take our Scamps to their new digs?" she asked.

The Hawk nodded absently. "I'll leave them in your care, Rose. Be back and ready for our evening debrief."

She saluted far more sharply than I might have expected, given how informal Herrick's crew were with one another, and announced: "Officer and guests debarking the ship!"

The Hawk saluted back. "Dismissed, Shadow."

While Rose could have just shoved us into a city cab and told the coachperson to take us to the Collegium, Rook's introduction papers had placed us in the Hawk's and then Rose's care. They would have been remiss not to see us directly and safely to our final destination.

Rose had other plans, of course. At the last minute, she steered us away from the big portside roundabout where carriages queued up to take passengers across the city and toward a much sketchier courtyard fringed by carts and rundown storefronts just past it. In a sunny voice, she said, "I don't know about you, but I'm famished! Have you ever had street food?"

"You didn't let us eat breakfast," Mailyn observed with a slight frown.

I shook my head uncertainly. In my young mind, 'street food' was leftover food that a beggar might find on the street, so I made a face and readied myself for disappointment. But Rose was undeterred. She sauntered up to a red cart with a mottled sausage painted on the side. "Kfia, plaisi," she said and held up five fingers. She handed the vendor three tollos and helped herself to five kamaboko sausage. The fish sausage was topped with egg, garnished with savory brown sauce, and wrapped in flatbread - a decidedly Florian delicacy.

"It's a fish and egg sausage from these parts. This is a breakfast wrap!" Rose handed each of us one of the wraps before proceeding to demolish one of the pair she'd left for herself. Afterward, she blotted her mouth demurely. As far as I could tell, it was only out of propriety since she hadn't wasted a single blot or crumb of her breakfast. "Home!" she exclaimed. I'm not sure how long the Black Swan had been out for, but privateers generally sail two months on and then two weeks off. With the Black Swan's hold full of the Auspicio's purloined cargo, the Hawk's crew had probably returned a week or two earlier than expected. I imagine this engendered a bit of good will toward the three of us - but, realistically, Rose Argent was just very fond of Floria's street food.

Rose finished her second sausage before any of the three of us had finished our first and, with a sigh and only a bit of impatience, she watched with envious eyes as we finished our breakfasts, tapping a sleek black boot against the courtyard's dirty cobblestones. "Okay… we should probably get you three going before the Hawk has my head, Now…" Rose crouched down and grinned conspiratorially… "have any of you ever been on a carriage ride before?"

"No, miss!" Mailyn said.

"Nope," Aldo added.

And me? I hopped excitedly. "I have! Lots of times!"

And Rose Argent laughed and laughed.