Warehouse Quarter

Granaries stand shoulder to shoulder along the Elv waterfront, five and six storeys of soot-dark brick with a hoist beam jutting from every gable. Below them run the bonded stores, low and long, their iron doors sealed with twisted wire and lumps of lead. Crates are stacked in the lanes between. Some are pale pine, some a red tropical hardwood nobody in Horos grows, and a few have split along the seams, spilling packing straw onto the cobbles. Night. One gas lamp burns at each corner, and its light does not reach far. Rows of chalked tally marks run across the brickwork at shoulder height, five by five. Along the bonded quay the river slides black and slow past mooring rings and tarred piles. Straw drifts down the lane on a cold wind off the water. Halfway along, one door has been left ajar, and an empty crate stands open beside it.