After all, they're classics for a reason, and almost certain to please. But you suspect Matty and Nichol between them have read every play written in the city for a hundred years.
It's a fine day for writing, the spring weather beginning to turn warm, and a breeze coming in through the room's single window. The shutters are thrown wide to welcome a slant of sun.
There's no fire in the room, only the heat that comes up from the ovens of the wineshop beneath you, so in the winter, you keep the shutters closed and cram rags in the cracks around them, trying to keep an icy wind from rendering the room so frigid that the ink freezes. At the height of summer, your room is sweltering even with the shutters open, and propping open the door in an attempt to catch some kind of breeze doesn't help much—it opens on an interior hallway running to a narrow stair to the street below.
This was once a lodging house of one of the great merchant guilds, back when the city was smaller and wagons carried food and trade goods to the main market that sprawled just outside these doors. But the city has grown. To reach the small market that still extends the length of your street, merchants now have to bring their goods in handcarts up streets too steep and narrow for any wagon.
This old building has been cut up for apartments occupied by people seeking their fortunes but not, as yet, finding them. Your own room is decorated in a style that manages to suggest the splendor of a barbarian tent or an antique palace while actually being furnished in mended cast-offs. The deskis supported on one corner by a stack of books, the shabby brocade wall hangings were acquired in the rag market, and the threadbare patchwork rug, its colors still bright, keeps the floor from freezing your feet in winter.
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