The next few days passed peacefully, but quickly. A scant thirty years since the last Grand Renaissance meant that while the Worshipful were rich in people, they were poor in almost everything else. Feeding and clothing Mazelton was no particular problem, though getting the clothes adjusted to fit properly was. As was teaching him how to wear it. Robes, apparently, made poor travel clothes.

“Layers, buddy, layers.” The young lady demonstrating the “Clothing System” had an easy way to her and a host of wooden rings, but was unyielding on winter travel.

“You gotta remember, cold is your number one enemy. You gotta think about things like sweat. That sweat is gonna suck away warmth. Lots of layers will keep you warmer, and let you take layers off as you warm up.”

Mazelton had needed no persuasion on the importance of socks and dry feet. He was somewhat harder to persuade on multiple layers of socks under comically thick boots. The boots themselves were something of a marvel- the calf high abominations were all of a piece, dipped on a last into some sort of algae sludge someone dug out of the ruins on the western fringe of the sea. One of those places that kept getting built on over and over, epoch after epoch, just because it was in a particularly convenient location. Turns out the Algie just needed sand, water and a few handfuls of organic junk to keep running happily.

His outer layer was a similarly matte moss green. Apparently it was only to be worn in wet weather or terrible wind. The young lady, she of the easy way and wooden rings carved with flowers and flowing runes, firmly insisted on this. Firstly because it would trap sweat, and sweat was bad. Second, because the processed algae didn’t hold up well in the sun. The curing process was not discovered, and had not been reinvented.

The belt knife was rather good. A rather well made ceramic, the creamy white blade socketing in nicely to the checked poplar handle. It would hold the edge better than stone, though it was an absolute beast to sharpen.

He was asked if he knew how to use any weapons. He could only bitterly smile and say that, yes, he knew how to use most common weapons, just not well. He could throw a dart well, and use a sling. They gave him a stick sling. All the functionality of a sling and a big stick combined.

Well clothed, warmly shod and with two weeks rations, Mazelton was put on a boat on the ancient rocky piers of South Port, and sent west.

The boat was an intensely practical affair, essentially just an oblong bunch of tightly tied reeds. Local fishermen and traders would take a double fist full of dried reeds, each reed almost twice a man’s height, and tightly tie them together with a different kind of reed. This was repeated until a sufficient quantity of bundles were collected, then the bundles were tied tightly together to form the hull. It was ungainly looking, but had the virtues of being very cheap to build and surprisingly durable. And fast.

“It’s Kelly Grass, you know? Kelly Grass. You must know Kelly Grass, right?”

The young lady with the easy way and the clacking, rattling wooden rings asked. Mazelton had been told her name, but he didn't remember it, and it seemed awkward to ask.

“Don’t think I have ever heard of it, actually.”

“Oh man! It grows everywhere around here, you know? Everywhere! Do you know what a remnant is? Oh, some people call it ancestral tech?”

“Yes, I do know about that.”

“Yeah, Kelly Grass is a remnant plant. We don’t know when it was made, but at least two epochs ago, we think. There is wall art of reed boats that far back, anyway. It’s so great.”

Mazelton nodded along. His usual gift for gab had fled him these last few weeks.

“So it grows really well! The stems are way stronger than normal reeds, bugs don’t eat it, it hardly ever gets disease, and it’s great for the soil and fish. But that’s not the best part.”

She looked at Mazelton with a smile.

“What is the best part?” He dutifully asked.

“Watch this!” She dropped the sail. The boat kept moving. And moving. And moving. Not very fast, but it did keep sliding through the dark blue water.

“There is something about the reeds that pushes water along the surface. We think it’s to help keep water in the soil, you know, prevent runoff and surface evaporation. So if you line all your reeds up in the same direction, they push the boat along in the water. Makes it hard to back up, sure, but that’s a small problem.”

She hoisted the sail again. Their little boat was part of a fleet of a dozen or so little boats, making the four day journey from South Port to Fish Weir. Much faster in bigger boats that could leave the sight of shore, but their little craft couldn’t manage it.

They skipped along the coast line, the fisher folk singing and chattering amongst themselves. At night they pulled into little beaches and inlets, hauling their boats out of the water and tilting them upright to drain dry. Learning to set a camp was more difficult than Mazelton thought it would be. He didn’t seem to remember things well, but by the third night he could more or less set up a tent.

“I get the blanket, obviously, but why do I need three things to sleep on? Is it just comfort? Not that I mind.” Mazelton asked.

“Oh no way! It’s really important!” The young lady’s rings clattered in agitation.

“Bottom layer is a waterproof sheet, to keep water from seeping up and soaking you. You can die of cold really fast if you get wet, so you need that layer. Second layer, all that matting? You really, really don’t want to sleep directly on the ground, even with the sheet. Sheet stops water, doesn't stop the ground stealing your warmth. Earth ghosts are cold and looking for warmth. They steal people’s heat to make themselves feel better. You need a barrier. If you don’t have a nice pad like this, you can mound up a huge amount of leaves, or even a really, really huge amount of spruce branches, but… pad is a lot more comfortable.”

“Layers. Cold is the number one enemy.”

“Now you get it buddy!”

For the first time in his life, Mazelton saw someone set something on fire for warmth. It was an uncomfortable thing. Something about it felt primal, and right, roasting fish and cattails over the fire. Another part, a much more recent part, hated the smell of the smoke, and he felt his heart beat uncomfortably hard as he looked at the flames.

He could see the city burning in the camp fire. The rookeries. The Clan Halls and schools and factories and bars and little takeaway places for all the people without kitchens. He remembered Old Ding.

Old Ding ran a hot food takeaway stand. Three rad got you a bowl of stewed peas, four got you a flatbread smeared with either a spicy jam or a big glug of herby oil from the clay jug on the table. Mazelton loved to watch Old Ding’s hands- thick and stumpy and as gnarled as the rest of Old Ding, who had a passing resemblance to standing deadwood. Old Ding would slap down the dough onto a board, flattened it down with two more slaps, then slapped the dough a fourth time, directly down onto the hot stone. He would wait until the dough was just growing patches of tan, bubbly and fragrant, then flip it with his bare hands. Those strong, stumpy, fearless fingers that would dart in and flick the flatbread over before they could be burnt.

The breads were accompanied with an eternal monologue about the state of the city and the follies of youth. Old Ding was wise enough to keep any criticisms of the great and the good between his teeth, but that didn’t stop him from telling Mazelton more than he wanted to hear about them.

Old Ding still kept his heart in a box, hoping to one day present it to the Great Beauty Malima. She had won his heart when he watched her from the crowd, as she won the youth division at the Martial Games. Malima was barely thirteen then, but blooded and ruthless. Her warrior’s crop only accentuated the fragile lines of her skull (said Ding,) and the powerful muscles of her shoulders and back shone under the harsh summer sun. She carved her way through the other children of the great clans with machete and short spear, scattering petals of blood upon the sand. After thirty minutes in the melee she was the last standing, claiming the copper Gentian… and the heart of a rookery boy named Ding.

They had never met, of course. But Ding had big dreams, worked hard, applied himself, and had saved enough for the stand. He had worked even harder to keep the place going, all these years, his scarred hands and withered frame a testament to poor nutrition and hard living.

Mazelton never had the heart to tell him that if he really was going to amount to something, a clan recruiter would have found him. He would have been adopted into the clan, trained, married to someone two steps removed from the main line of the clan, and in three generations, his descendants would be married into that main line, to keep the blood from growing stale. All his dreams, his hard work, his honest resolve, counted for exactly nothing. He was judged and discarded by people he had never seen, without knowing it was happening, and with absolutely no possibility for an appeal.

If he ever did manage to present Malima his heart, she wouldn’t even deign to eat it. His heart would go to the dogs.

The canny ancient would have read the city better than Mazelton. He probably didn’t open his stand that day, going to ground with his meager savings in some quiet place, keeping the door firmly barred and the windows, if there were any, shuttered. Even if he had any idea that death was rolling down the towers, he could never have run from it. The puddle of flesh and wretched liquid drying under thin bones that was Old Ding, a man with neither a clan nor generation name, finally found himself on the same level as the great Beauty Malima. Dead in a locked room.

Mazelton didn’t look into the fire long. He didn’t watch the sun set either. He just lay on his blanket and tried to not exist.

Learning how to relieve oneself in the wilds was an unpleasant experience. “Find a bunch of wide, soft leaves” is not an acceptable sanitary choice, he felt, and the lack of better alternatives was painful. A human should not need a shovel to go to the bathroom. The bastards acted like they had never heard of showers either. They were screwing with him, but it didn’t make him any cleaner. If you want to clean up, make do with a wet rag or the freshwater sea. A bit nippy in the fall, but hey, do what you need to. He stopped bathing. Really, it had just been a habit. Pretty pointless now. Smelly and enervated by chattering fisher folk, Mazelton sailed into the Fish Weir.

The Fish Weir is a sizable metropolis for this part of the world. And it had been for countless epochs. What made it so interesting was that, because of its location on one great freshwater sea and reasonable closeness to another, people kept coming back and rebuilding on it after each Collapse. Not like Old Radler, contained on it’s hills, no, it was generally leveled, stripped down to the ground for usable materials, then a new city would grow on top of the old. All the usual excitement that would go into exploring a dead metropolis would be absent, or so the stories went, when investigating The Fish Wier. A perfectly serviceable city in an excellent location, the last truly big city for, oh, a thousand miles or more. And so dull that the local Lay Children of the Wild Sky set up wide nets to catch the birds that passed out flying over the city. Or so the story went. And there did always seem to be people releasing birds into the air around the city outskirts.

The fish piers ran into the sea, glacial rocks held in place by the old maritime cement of the last epoch, topped and smoothed with the maritime cement of this epoch. Which, since some clever soul had reverse engineered the old Swabian cement recipe, was even better than the old stuff.

The fisher folk from South Bay came with loads of salted and dried fish, little tree sap candies, and to Mazelton’s quiet rage, scented soaps. Nobody had mentioned that in addition to making very practical boats, Kelly Grass fronds had a light, herbal, slightly peppery and refreshing smell to them that made lathering up in the lye soap a positive joy. She of the clattering tree death trophies loudly confided that she always used a lot before she went courting, and not to worry, they packed a bar of it in his pack.

“Oh, has your spouse been chosen?” Mazelton asked, in a desperate attempt to hang on to his ability to socialize.

“Chosen? Oh, no, I’m still looking around, you know! I mean, my whole family is in South Port, and of course the Coven, but there are Covens here in the city, too. And a good city husband isn’t the same as a good fishing town husband. So I have to think it through.”

“Sorry, I think I am missing something. You are looking at prospective husbands?”

“Yep! Well, probably a husband. I would be willing to try a six month marriage with another woman. You know. Just to see how it all worked out. Momma and Aunt Cassiopeia were married for a year. It didn’t work out, obviously, but they were so good as business partners that they switched to a commercial contract instead. I’d love it if I could find someone like that!”

“Sorry, you keep using words I know, and I keep not understanding. Your parents haven’t found you a spouse? You are… shopping around for one? Like a new wooden ring?”

“Oh you noticed those? I make them! Aren’t they great? And yeah, kind of. There needs to be a connection there, or what’s the point, right? And if they don’t have a plan, how can you contract with them? I have a plan, but my plan can work around their plan, maybe. It depends on what their plan is, how long they want to contract for, all that.”

West Guardian always used to say that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

“And… kids?”

“Oh, that’s in the contract too. I mean, condoms exist. Not the most comfortable thing, I am told, but hey, better than a breach and an unplanned kid, right?”

“I have no idea.”

“Huh?”

“In a clan the point is to have kids. Your parents find you a suitable spouse and you have kids. Your kids achievements are your achievements- the better they do, the higher your seniority in the clan. Means that you raised them right, and that counts for a lot.”

“But what if it’s someone you didn’t like, or their plan didn’t match up with yours?”

“You maintain a polite front with them and have lovers on the side, as long as they are all within the clan. That’s what my parents did, at least, and nobody even looked sideways at them.”

“But what about the plan? How can a marriage work without a plan?”

“The plan is that you are a member of a clan, you will work for the clan, live and die in the clan, and when you do die, your body will be buried in the gardens, if you were an honorable and productive kinsman, and the failures got buried in the fields.”

“Nobody ever left the clan?”

“They certainly did. One bowel movement at a time.”

“That’s awful!”

“Not really? I mean, my life was pretty good. Some of my cousins were oppressively happy, married ones included. Uncle Madario had a laugh you could hear down the hall, and usually he had people laughing right along with him. The only meals I missed were the ones I skipped on purpose. The rules were strict, sure, but they had to be, for everyone’s sake.”

The young lady of the easy way but detailed marital requirements had to think that one over.

“Your parents didn’t like each other, but had to stay together because of the clan rules. They had no shared business beyond the clan, and I guess you too. And any siblings you might have. They had lovers on the side, even though it was a lifetime contract.”

Mazelton shrugged.

“They weren’t contracted, if that helps you.”

“How is that even a marriage, then?”

“Because if the Hag Malima, standing with every person you have ever called kin declares that you are now married in the eyes of the Ælfflæd, who will take it extremely personally if you say you aren’t married, then you are married.”

Also only absolute familyless trash, the very lowest of the low, got married without their family’s say so. Who gives a fart about your plan? What about everybody else's plan? You gonna eat? Great. How about your brother? Or your old Ma who can’t work any more? You gonna feed her too, living three towns over? Why don’t you just stab her instead, it would be faster, and hurt less. Alternatively, you could get married in a way that would help everyone and keep the family line going.

It occurred to Mazelton that she of the rattling rings and easy way was intensely selfish. Was it the inherent baseness of the lower classes his mother went on about? The lack of consideration for the greater good?

“Does everybody pick their own spouse in South Port?”

“Uh, pretty much. I mean, marriage by contract is the standard, right?”

Oh, he was rescued by scumbags. Well, that figured.