Dangerous Offspring by Steph Swainston

over to the shield factory’s covered courtyard. Boys from the workhouse were laying out unpainted shields for their glue to dry. I could just see onto the factory floor where craftsmen were making them by hand.
    I stopped and looked around. I knew I was still heading towards Old Town because the university’s tower, with turrets at each of its four corners, projected above the shambling roofs. I was deep in Galt now but I felt weirdly disorientated. I had expected to recognise my old haunt, but it bore no resemblance to the Galt I knew. There was no ground plan left of the streets, no trace whatsoever of the old docks. It’s been two hundred years, Jant, I told myself; what do you expect? It was unfamiliar…no, so nearly familiar, that it was giving me the creeps.
    A cart laden with rubbish went past; the whiskery driver bellowing, ‘Raag and Bo-one! Raag and Bo-one!’
    What was that about? Where were all the wharves? All this used to be open ground–it seemed impossible–how could so many houses have been fitted into it?
    I was sure I should have passed the Bird in the Hand Awian strip joint, but there were just more houses. Either I was completely in the wrong place or the very roads had changed. Well, I thought, the chemist’s shop where I used to work would have been over there. I’ll walk down and see if I’m right.
    When I lived here, the city way of thinking trapped me, narrowing my horizons just as the factories block out the sky. I didn’t even want to leave. I put all my energy into misguided actions and negative reactions until I couldn’t pull myself from the mire. Back then, the roads out of Galt led in two directions. To the left, the streets thinned out and one road wound over Pityme Bridge into the beginning of grassy hills in the distance. I could have taken that road and escaped, but I never did; not until I was forced out. That road may as well have not existed. Every night I went right, down the other alley to the strip joint with a sign promising ‘Great Tits!’ in the window. I convinced myself that I’d had enough of travelling, should stay in the shop and read books, and visit whores. It never even crossed my mind that the Castle would want my talent, until my life in Hacilith was in ruins.
     

    I had liked working in Dotterel’s chemist shop, it was dim and quiet; the gang’s fear of employment made it a safe refuge. With the shutters down, every customer who entered saw me, a boy slouching on the counter who had already looked them over, a freak perhaps, tall and skinny even for adolescence, but a perfect confidant.
    My time looking for Cyan was nearly up. It’s hopeless, I thought–I’ll go and see Rayne instead, if she hasn’t already left for Slake, and then I’ll head back. At least I’ll be able to tell the others when Rayne should be arriving.
    I reached an open plaza and stopped. This should be Cinder Street. Maybe…that row of shops was along the same line. I looked around. If this was Cinder Street, then the Kentledge pub would have been at the far end…And my chemist’s shop would have been…there. And the Campion Vaudeville! That should be on the next street over! I ran quickly towards it, remembering the peeling playbills fluttering on its boards, the shards of glass that topped the walls around it, the masks and scrolls around the windows in its leaking mansard roof.
    The street ended at an empty plaza with a row of smart boutiques and some sort of trendy wine bar. The Campion Vaudeville had totally gone.
    They’ve redeveloped my street! How dare they? Yes, it had been run down but I had liked it! There was no trace of the second-hand shops full of individual texture I had loved so much. That corner was where I busked with Babbitt–and now it had all been swept away.
    The new shops had no character; time hadn’t given them any unique pattern of wear. They blocked my view of the canal towpath, pressed up tall and narrow against each other as if someone had