Chương 6: Chapter Six: The Flower Seller Who Wasn't

Alice had not expected to wake up at five in the morning, but her body was apparently used to the harsh hours. She lay in bed for approximately one minute taking stock. The wound had stopped pulling in the night. The Vigour bar at the corner of her vision was still lower than she'd like but was no longer actively embarrassing. Somewhere below, Mrs. Hatch was already puttering around in the kitchen. Right. She got up.

The wholesale flower market at Gant Street Yard ran from four in the morning until seven, which meant many early mornings were in her future. She found the yard by following the only other person leaving number fourteen before sunrise. It was a woman from the second floor who did not consider herself obliged to acknowledge neighbours before dawn, which suited Alice perfectly, because she didn't want to talk either. She wanted to watch.

The yard was loud and cold and smelled of green things and mud and the animal warmth of people who'd been working since three in the morning. She stood at the edge of it and tried to look like someone who knew what they were doing. This lasted approximately forty-five seconds, at which point a girl a few years younger than her caught her eye and held it until Alice approached. The girl had a flat basket of oranges and several layers of worn-out blouses.

"You're Alice Darling," she said, making it clear it was not a question.

"I am," Alice agreed.

"Meg. I sell oranges down the Minories, mostly." She looked Alice over as if she could see her wounds through her clothes if she tried hard enough.

"I heard what happened to you. You look better than I expected."

"I am much better," Alice said, which was the kind of thing people wanted the ill and wounded to say, and by this point, it was more or less true. She paused for a moment, thinking, and continued.

"I'll be honest with you, Meg. The attack… I'm still not quite right. Some things I know and some things I don't. I remember some of what happened. I don't remember..." She gestured vaguely toward the yard's interior.

"How any of this works, exactly." Meg looked at her for a moment.

"Right," she said.

"The woman with the red apron, see her? She's the best for dahlias and chrysanthemums this time of year. Don't go to the man on the far side, his stock's been poor since September and he charges like it isn't. Price is on the board but she'll come down a halfpenny if you buy in volume and you don't make a fuss about it." A brief pause.

"You're on Aldgate Row still? Fourth pitch from the baker?"

"Yes, I believe," she answered, though she was only learning of this now.

"Morning trade's best from seven until eleven. Keep your best stock back for the afternoon if you can, the women coming home from the market want something nice and they'll pay for it." She picked up her basket again.

"You'll be all right. I heard you were always good at the pitch." Alice wasn't quite sure that was a good thing for her personally.

"Thank you," she said.

"Genuinely." Meg gave her a short nod and went to find her oranges. Meanwhile, Alice found the woman with the red apron. She spent six pence on violets and lavenders, and a shilling and four pence on chrysanthemums and dahlias, which was probably still slightly more than she should have spent, but less than what she heard another girl pay. She looked up at the screen that had shown up. [Convince] – Passive. She hadn't consciously persuaded anyone of anything in the past ten minutes.

She would need to test more things about the system when she had some time. For now, she walked to Aldgate Row with a basket of perfectly adequate flowers and found the pitch. The fourth ledge from the baker's corner. She set the basket down for a moment and then looked around for how she was going to do this. The baker opened his door. He looked at her. She looked at him. He gave her a nod. She nodded back. She was bad at selling flowers. She knew this within twenty minutes. The real Alice had had regulars.

She could identify them by how they walked toward her specifically rather than the row in general. They came with the expectation of familiarity, and she improvised on the fly: this one had a standing order she didn't know about, this one expected a particular greeting, this one seemed to ask how she was and seemed to be on familiar terms. How are you was a significantly more complex question than it appeared. She was, she decided, fine. She was recovering well.

"You're charging four pence for the dahlias." The woman at the next pitch hadn't looked up from her own arrangement. She was perhaps forty, and had a weary face that once might have been called pretty, but weather and time were cruel mistresses.

"Is that wrong?" Alice said.

"It's a nice bloom, but you won't sell anything if you charge more than three pence." A brief pause.

"Up to you." She changed the price. The woman did not comment further, and returned to her own sales. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

She met Nell at mid-morning, which was apparently when Nell always showed up, introducing herself to Alice as if they met for the first time. Apparently, the story of her memory loss had made the rounds by then. Nell was nineteen and small and had the match-seller's perpetual faint smell of sulphur. She had a rather cautious quality about how she stood, almost as if she could run at any moment's notice. She set up her tray on the corner opposite with ease and familiarity. Then she looked at Alice.

"You're overcharging for the flowers," she said.

"I know," Alice said.

"I changed the dahlias back to threepence, but I cannot remember the others." Nell looked at the dahlias. Then at Alice again.

"You've gone strange," she said.

"Since." It didn't have the tone of an accusation. But it was not a question either, not quite. Alice arranged a bunch of chrysanthemums that didn't need arranging.

"So I've been told."

"Not like that. Not strange-odd. Strange like…" Nell seemed to think for some time on her choice from possible words, none of which she was satisfied with.

"Like you look at things differently." Alice had gotten the feeling that the former tenant of her body was a loner. Reasonable, with all the secrets that she had to keep. But if Nell was a friend, Alice was going to have to distance herself from her soon.

"I had quite a fright," Alice said.

"You did." Nell picked up three matchboxes, assessed them, put two back.

"You didn't sell flowers, you know. Not since this summer." Alice waited. She had learned, in thirty years of being around people who had something to say, that the best way to hear it was to give it room.

"Or at least, not just flowers. You… went somewhere at night," Nell said.

"Started in July, I think, or late June. Off Whitmore Lane. And then other places too. You didn't talk about it," she said, then seemed to correct herself.

"You didn't exactly not talk about it either, you just didn't say where you were going, and you always came back with more money than you'd left with." There was a slight pause, as she played with the matches.

"Then in August, you came back late to the lodging house. Two in the morning, maybe. You didn't say anything, even though it woke us all up. You wedged the chair under the door; Mrs. Hatch thought she was imagining it, but I heard it."

"I… I stopped going after that?" Alice asked, needing to know, but also unsure if the girl was trying to warn her or threaten her.

"Not right away. Two or three more times. Then you stopped." Nell's voice didn't change much but the worry was clear.

"Then you stopped coming to the pitch. Then they found you." Warn her, it was. A woman walked past with a basket and paused at the stall, and Alice sold her a bunch of violets for one penny without fully interrupting her attention from Nell. The woman moved on.

"Do you know what I was doing?" Alice asked, sort of in disbelief that the previous Alice had been so careless.

"No." Nell looked at her sideways, brief and direct.

"But I can guess, can't you?"

"Ah," she said. The girl thought Alice had started prostituting herself. And likely, the previous Alice encouraged that assumption.

"I'm not sure I'd want to know right now." Nell seemed to consider this answer. Then she went back to her matches and started her trade. Skills [Feign Ignorance] and [Bluff] have leveled up! The afternoon went on. She bought a hot pie with beef for two pence from the baker, when she got hungry.

She sold out all the flowers by four-thirty, watched the constable slow his pace outside the baker's at ten past every hour, and quietly mapped the physical and social geography of the Row until she had a better idea of the space and the people in it. Skills [Map Building], [Notice Detail], and [Observe] have leveled up! It had taken her an entire day for her to level up these skills.

Alice wasn't sure whether this was fast or slow as the levels were still quite low, but she did realize that none seemed to notice her screens, which allowed her to carefully monitor throughout the day if any number changed, and predictably the attributes did. She had been developing some ideas about how the math for that worked throughout the day but as it started to get darker, something else took most of her attention. Something like the creatures she had seen before but dog-sized and dog-shaped.

It moved through the press of people on Aldgate Row in the seam between the bakery and the cut-through, at slightly odd angles and where it was darkest. A woman walked directly through the edge of it and pulled her shawl tighter against what she presumably assumed was a cold draught. It was not a draught. [Threat Detection] – Passive. Right. She'd been thinking about this.

"Could I borrow your lamp?" she said to the baker, who was preparing to finish up for the day with his arms crossed against the chill. He looked at her.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Just for a minute." She held out her hand with confidence as usually people were more easily dissuaded from saying no that way. He hesitated, before deciding that she couldn't just run with it without him catching her first, and handed the lamp over with a pinched expression. She took it and walked to the cut-through.

She moved to the near end, where it was narrow, between the bakery and the chandler's wall, with the late-afternoon light coming in from the far end, and positioned herself at the mouth of it with the lamp in her left hand. It took eleven seconds. She counted. You have encountered a [Shade Demon]. The Shade, as the system had called it, came through the gap in the foot traffic and into the cut-through. She stood still. It moved closer. The cold came off it supernaturally. She raised the lamp toward it.

Light from the front. The bakery window from the left. The chandler's gas bracket, already burning against the dimming afternoon, from the right. Three sides. The Shade moved back hesitantly, as if it wished to reach for her, but couldn't. She stood there waiting, likely testing the baker's patience, and slowly moved closer every few seconds, but always out of reach. This demon didn't come apart immediately when faced with light.

It was quite resistant to it for about thirty seconds, but it slowly began to disappear, edges first, still refusing to hide further into the darkness. She held the lamp steady and watched it through. [Shade Demon] dispersed. Combat event logged. Sub-Quest: [Off With Her Head] advanced. She looked at the notification with something between curiosity and surprise. So it counted as combat, though she did not personally fight? That was good to know.

However, the fact that there were stronger demons that could tolerate light, and maybe some so resistant that they could last for more than just a few minutes was terrible news. The Shade's fixation on her, to the point of suicide as well, was quite worrisome. This basically made nights off-limits to her. Alice bit her lip in thought. She needed to learn how to fight.

"Thank you," she said to the baker.

"There was something in the cut-through and I was worried." He looked at the street and back at her suspiciously, as he took his lamp.

"Right," he said, not wishing to investigate strange goings-on any further. He then picked up his things and went inside. Alice packed up the last of her things and started for Pell Street. Somewhere behind her, Nell folded her match tray and said nothing about any of it, which was, Alice was beginning to understand, its own kind of kindness.