The selection at the remaining stalls was as thin as Morwen had ever seen, though she had to admit that her experience with fish markets was limited to the occasional visit to the village square in Thorne, where her mother's cook picked over the catch while Morwen tried not to wrinkle her nose.
This was something else entirely. The few merchants who remained were packing up around them, dumping unsold scraps into buckets and folding their stained canvas covers with the weary efficiency of men and women who wanted nothing more than to retreat behind closed doors before the cold and the guards drove them off the quay.
At the last stand with a merchant still holding out hope to sell the remains of his catch, a few small panfish lay in a wooden tray, their scales dull in the fading torchlight. A bucket of yellow perch, none longer than a man's hand, sat beside a second bucket filled with heads, tails, and spines that the day's butchering had left behind.
