I would not like to work in such a place, but that does not mean that other folk would feel the same. Stop making judgments for others, Nightingale.
The donkey relaxed as they entered this district; she let go her tight hold on his lead-rope, and let him have his head again. The shape of this area was determined by the river that ran through it; there was scarcely a bit of bank that did not have a mill wheel on it to make use of the swiftly-flowing current. The buildings here were old_and Nightingale suspected that few of the people traveling beside her had any idea how very old they were. The mill wheels and millraces were recent additions to buildings that had been standing beside this river since before the Cataclysm.
The buildings were not pretty; they were simple, brute boxes with square window-holes where there might, once, have been glass. Now they were covered with whatever might let in light and exclude weather; glass in some places, oiled paper or sheets of parchment in others, but mostly sheets of white opaque stuff the Deliambrens used for packing crates and padding. The base color of these dull boxes was an equally dull grey; where in the past people had tried to apply paint, either to cover the entire building or as crude advertisements, the paint remained only in patches, as if the buildings had some kind of scabrous disease. But the irony was that these places were solid still; they had stood for centuries and likely would stand for centuries more. Nightingale had been inside the Deliambren Fortress-City; she had seen buildings like these being erected. One actually poured the walls, using wood to make the molds to give the walls their form, as if they were huge ceramics. Once the grey stuff set, it was stronger than granite and less likely to age due to weathering.
So the irony, lost to those beside the Gypsy, was that these buildings which seemed relatively new were actually much, much older than the tenements that had been falling down.
The road crossed the river on a bridge that also dated back to the Cataclysm; Nightingale privately doubted that anyone could bridge the Lyon River in these days_except, perhaps, Deliambrens. It was a narrow and fierce stream, with a current so swift and deep that "to swim the Lyon" was a common euphemism for suicide.
For a moment, there was relief from the heat; the waters of the Lyon were as cold as they were swift, and a second river flowed above it_a river of fresh, cool air. Nightingale moved as slowly on the bridge as she could, stretching out her moment of relief.
On the other side, the manufactories gave way again to housing, but fortunately for Nightingale's peace of mind the people here lived in better conditions than those near the slaughterhouses.
There were more of those pre-Cataclysm buildings, in fact, given over to living quarters rather than manufactories. These had more windows, and from the look of things, the ceilings were not as high, granting more levels in the same amount of space. In between these older buildings, newer ones rose, not quite as dilapidated as the tenements on the other side of the river, but by no means in excellent repair. These newer buildings huddled around the old as if for support, as if without those grey bulwarks they could not stand against wind and weather.
Nightingale tried to imagine what this area might have looked like before the wooden tenements were built, but had to give up. She just could not picture it in her mind. Why would people have put so much open space between the buildings, then build the buildings so very tall? Wouldn't it have made more sense to lay everything out flat, the way a small village was built? That way everyone could have his own separate dwelling, and one would not be forced to hear ones neighbors through walls that were never thick enough for privacy....
Ask anyone who has ever spent the night in an inn with newlyweds in the next room.
Well, there was no telling what the ancestors had been thinking; their world was as alien to the Twenty Kingdoms now as that of any of the nonhumans. Nightingale certainly was not going to try to second-guess them.
However, this area would be a good one in which to start her search. However much she disliked the crowding, she could hide herself better in a crowd than in more exclusive surroundings.
At the first sign of a tiny cross street, she pulled the donkey out of the stream of traffic and into the valley between two buildings, looking for a child of about nine or ten, one who was not playing with others, but clearly looking for someone for whom he could run an errand. Such a child would know where every inn and tavern was in his neighborhood, and would probably know which ones needed an entertainer.
And people think that children know nothing....
Nightingale kept her back quite stiff with indignation as she pulled her donkey away from the door of the Muleteer. Her guide_a girl-child with dirty hair that might have been blond if one could hold her under a stream of water long enough to find out_sighed with vexation. It was an unconscious imitation of Nightingale's own sigh, and was close enough to bring a reluctant smile to the Gypsy's lips.
"Honest, mum, if I'd'a thunk he was gonna ast ye pony up more'n music, I'd'a not hev brung ye here," the girl said apologetically.
Nightingale patted the girl on one thin shoulder, and resolved to add the remains of her travel-rations to the child's copper penny. "You couldn't have known," she told the little girl, who only shook her head stubbornly and led Nightingale to a little alcove holding only a door that had been bricked up ages ago. There they paused out of the traffic, while the girl bit her lip and knitted her brows in thought.
"Ye set me a job, mum, an' I hevn't done it," the child replied, and Nightingale added another mental note_to make this girl the first of her recruits. Her thin face hardened with businesslike determination. "I'll find ye a place, I swear! Jest_was it only wee inns an taverns ye wanted?"
Something about the wistful hope in the girl's eyes made Nightingale wonder if she had phrased her own request poorly. "I thought that only small inns or taverns would want a singer like me," she told the girl. "I'm not a Guild musician, and the harp isn't a very loud instrument_"
"So ye don' mind playin' where there's others playin' too?" the girl persisted. "Ye don' mind sharin' th' take an' th' audience an' all?"
Well, that was an interesting question. She shook her head and waited to reply until after a rickety cart passed by. "Not at all. I'm used to 'sharing'; all of us do at Faires, for instance."
A huge smile crossed the child's face, showing a gap where her two front teeth were missing. "I thunk ye didn' like other players, mum, so I bin takin' ye places where they ain't got but one place. Oh, I got a tavern-place that's like a Faire, 'tis, an' they don' take to no Guildsmen neither. Ye foller me, mum, an' see if ye don' like this place!"
The child scampered off in the opposite direction in which they had been going, and Nightingale hauled the donkey along in her wake. The girl all but skipped, she was so pleased to have thought of this "tavern-place," whatever it was, and her enthusiasm was quite infectious. Nightingale found herself hoping that this would be a suitable venue, and not just because her feet hurt, she was wilting with the heat, and her shoulders ached from hauling the increasingly tired and stubborn donkey.