The market was crowded. Loud voices, loud carts, loud haggling over bruised fruit. The sky was overcast and gray, and so were most of the men in the crowd. There were bursts of color – mostly women’s dresses, sometimes tents and banners, but it was a different creature than Pennsylvania’s lush forests. The brightest aspect of nature there was the sea, calm but sharp with craggy teeth under her waves.

Out of sight yet hardly out of mind, still the sea’s salty brine hung heavy on the breeze.

Across from Edmund, a pale man in an immaculate suit with too-long hair bickered with a tall, dark and bespectacled merchant in a top hat over wine. The pale man seemed to be making a bit of a scene, voice cutting over even some of the fishmongers (who seemed to cast that direction derisive looks); the merchant’s voice was visible more than audible at Edmund’s distance, brief open-mouthed attempts to get a word in which seemed to end substituted by gesticulated shrugs as he was talked over instead.

A tall yet rather young looking constable was strolling through the street, a mean look in his eyes. He slowed at the stall, hand stroking his baton with an overly eager look. The pale man carried on, oblivious to the predatory look they were beset by. The merchant was too caught up in pretending to look like he was listening, though his gaze had glazed over behind his spectacles.

A small man with a grown out black beard passed in front of Edmund, an open notebook in his right hand and capped fountain pen in his left. There was a chain dangling from his pocket, glittering with promise …