“I am an honest man,” Matthew King muttered to himself. “What madness it this, that I’m here?”
In truth, it wasn’t madness that brought him to the back alleys of the poorest quarter of the city, better known as Thieves’ Quarter; no, it was desperation that brought him there.
He looked about, drawing his rattiest coat around him and wrinkling his nose against the smell in the gutters. Everyone knew that Mother Shadow lived in Hemlock Alley; no one knew how old she was, but it was said she was at least part fey. Her prices, it was said, were always dear to pay; only the truly desperate went to her.
After interminable minutes winding through the muddy warren of the Thieves’ Quarter, Matthew came quite suddenly to a ramshackle hut made from a motley assortment of woods and hung about with pungent herbs and charms made from thread and feathers and stones.
“Come in,” came a cracked voice, thin as a thread but strangely compelling. “Come in and tell Mother Shadow your troubles.”