It was past midnight, and the main road leading to the riverside warehouses was pitch-black.
It was dark, and it smelled absolutely foul. It always stenched like a rotting carcass by the storage docks of this shithole. The suffocating stench of fermenting, waterlogged grain mixing with the damp feces of a thousand pack mules and heavy dray horses was the main culprit for the misery.
In a few hours, of course, this entire district would look entirely different. Even a cynical street rat like Marcus knew the endless, exhausting thrum of the morning, the frantic frolicking in and frolicking out of sweaty laborers, shouting tradesmen, and heavy cargo sleds. But for now, the night belonged to the shadows, and everything was perfectly still.
Still as a grave, and smelling a sight worse than the corpses rotting inside one.
The perfect place to meet in secret, he supposed. A secret meeting for a thoroughly dirty mission.
