The Grand Design (Tyrants & Kings 2) by John Marco

Author:John Marco [Marco, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780575099067
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 2010-07-15T06:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Two

The Toymaker

High Street was one of the Black City’s busiest thorough-fares. It was wide and tall and in the best section of the old city, near the apartments of the princely lords and just across the river from the Cathedral of the Martyrs. On summer evenings, when the sun threw long shadows across the city, High Street teemed with vendors and merchants; caterwauling slave traders peddling their captured flesh, travelling hunters with trussed-up game birds, beggars and thieves and harlots and prostitutes, and, amazingly, the occasional toy shop. There was money in this part of Nar, looted from a thousand successful campaigns, and the well-heeled of the city liked to spoil their greedy offspring. Naren women walked along High Street with their broods of arrogant children trailing out behind them, peering into the dressed-up windows of the shops. The bakery was most popular. It stood in the center of High Street near a money-changing shop, and was frequented by the Archbishop of Nar himself, a connoisseur of confections. The barkery’s aroma was one of High Street’s great treats, a welcome respite from the choking gases of the war labs. Children came just to stare in the bakery’s window and coax a few cookies from the proprietor and his wife, and when they left, full of fresh-baked treats, they always noticed the other attraction of the street – the Piper’s toy shop.

Besides the bakery, the toy shop was the real wonder of High Street. It had been in business for nearly forty years, and very few of the city’s lords could recall a time without it. They were grown now, but each could still remember a special toy from the Piper’s factory, some special doll they had dragged around until frayed, or perhaps a mechanical boat that skimmed across the water when wound. Made with typical Naren ingenuity, the toys in the Piper’s shop were something unique, something worth making a long trip to see and purchase. The Piper was renowned in the Empire, a master toymaker who had studied with the craftsmen of Vosk before coming south and setting up his shop. He was legendary and beloved in the Black City, and his toy shop, a meager-looking storefront sandwiched between a candle-maker and a blacksmith, was frequently crowded with children and curious adults seeking guilty pleasures. But it was the toy shop’s window that drew the most accolades.

Made of tall rectangles of glass, the window showed off the best of the Piper’s creations. Here was a circus that could be viewed from the street, free of charge. There were toy soldiers with silver guns and brass cannons, and dolls with luxurious hair and exquisite dresses, their feet capped with meticulously made shoes, so tiny one wondered if human hands had crafted them. There were stuffed animals with real fur; stringed instruments of polished wood; and fabric-covered flying machines that actually glided through the air, suspended from the ceiling by translucent wire. Grand vessels floated in basins of water, and ships in bottles vexed young minds with the impossibility of their construction.

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