“Out!” came an impatient voice in the darkness. Half-asleep, Rizzle tried to ignore it.
     “Out!” the voice insisted, followed by a thud and a creaky rumble that came from all around him.
     “What?” Rizzle mumbled, expecting the voice to disappear with his dreams as he awoke. 
     “Arise!” the voice demanded. The darkness rattled around him more violently, and shafts of bright sunlight pierced the blackness from all angles. Rubbing his eyes, Rizzle began to stir.
     “Rouse yourself and withdraw immediately!” ordered the voice.
     “Yeah, yeah, I hoid ya the first time. Turnips and flea shit, gimme a sec.” Rizzle went to sit up, but thumped his furry head on the ceiling just a few inches above him. There was a thud, and then everything began to shift. Suddenly, Rizzle’s little, black eyes were flooded with sunlight, as the rowboat he had been sleeping under was flipped over, exposing him like a bug under a rock. 
     “Rizzle the Weasel, why am I not surprised?” asked a voice somewhere in the blinding daylight. Rizzle stretched a little and squinted until he could make out who was disturbing him.
     “Ah, it’s you. How’re you dis fine morning, John Stewart? How’s it hangin’?” Rizzle’s quip was cut short by his own gaping yawn.
     “Why here?” asked John. “Why here at my mill, under my rowboat? Do you not have a home to go to?”
In point of fact, Rizzle did not home to go to. Each night, he found a different spot to curl up with his tail and catch a few winks. He’d done it ever since his mother died. He figured it was a good way to stay a step ahead of his enemies.
     “I must enjoin you to exit my premises forthwith,” John said, pointing up the river berm toward the street. 
     “Fine! Yuh don’t have to get all snooty. I’m goin’, I’m goin’. You can have your piece a ‘crap boat.”
     “Oh! Well, much obliged for surrendering to me what is already mine.” John gave his already pointing hand a thrust to emphasize the urgency of his demand.
Rizzle dragged himself up to a sitting position and rubbed his eyes. He looked up at John and his towering mill behind him, groaned, placed his hands on his knees, and stood. He sighed, wobbled a little, and shot John Stewart with an annoyed glare. 
     “Have yerself a pleasant day, Johnny,” he said, walking off toward the street.
     “And do not return, you furry vermin!” called John as Rizzle stepped onto the cobblestones. The weasel straightened his scruffy jacket, hoisted up his pants, and crossed the street. Another step up, and he was at the edge of the Harry Strongbottom Amusement Plaza.
     It was still early in the morning, but the city was already awake. Rizzle heard Will the Smith’s hammer clanging against his anvil. The sour smell of the boiling vats at Fugbag’s Tannery wafted its way to Rizzle’s sensitive nose. The sweepers were out readying the square for the day’s tourists and scaring the pigeons from place to place.
Up ahead was Fat Friar Freddy’s Feastaria. Freddy didn’t serve breakfast, so the restaurant was closed. Rizzle went around back to see if there were any scraps in the dumpster. He preferred Fat Freddy’s throwaways. They were greasy, which helped them to retain moisture and flavor.
Under a stained sack of something smelly, he found a whole basket of deep-fried goblin balls and quickly stuffed them in his mouth, keeping an eye out for passers-by. There was some congealed nacho sauce at the bottom of the basket, which he wiped up with his finger and slurped down.
     The fur around his mouth was damp with grease. Rizzle walked around to the front of the restaurant and made his way over to The Fountain of the Fortunate. He leaned over and dunked his head in the water. It was cold and bubbly, but smelled of sulfur, rot, and things best left unidentified. New Stenchford was known for its many “fresh” water fountains, but that was more an aspirational description than an accurate one.
Rizzle looked at the silvery surface of the water, trying to make out his reflection. He ran his fingers through his hair and then scooped up a handful of water to wash out the nasty tang of the three-day-old nacho sauce and replace it with the nasty tang of the fountain’s water.
     Rizzle was a small creature with the bony body of a man but the furry head and tail of a weasel. He’d been that way ever since he crossed paths with Hernia, the witch at the dark end of Abbey Road when he was only thirteen years old. Still, Rizzle considered himself lucky. Hernia had mangled many an innocent bystander into considerably less comfortable forms. When Huffy Muggum ran into Hernia, he ended up with the leathery head of an alligator and the giant, bushy hindquarters of a skunk. His grief-stricken mother, Rubella, tried her best to ignore the smell, but the rest of the family insisted he move out. Ever since then, Huffy lived alone in a shack behind the concessions stand at the All City Jousting Arena.
     Rizzle took a palmful of fountain water and poured it inside the waist of his pants in lieu of a bath and hurried past the fountain. Surveying the square, he scurried into the shadow of New Stenchford’s most famous landmark. It was a 300-foot-tall bronze statue of a dragon holding the city’s signature sausage sandwich. The rising sun glinted off its fearsome head and neck. Streaks of green patina on the individually crafted scales caught the light, giving the dragon a weathered look of realism.
     The sculpture was a boon for Rizzle and the other pickpockets. Many a pouch of beans had been lifted from the belt of some farm bumpkin who was staring up, slack-jawed, at the formidable beast.
     Rizzle’s first appointment of the day was at Wetbeard’s Brewery on Royal. If he took Market Street, Rizzle could sneak behind the Peeking Duck Restaurant to see what their dumpster had to offer. His favorite was their Mushu Orc, but he would settle for some Fairy Fried Rice with Ground Gremlin and Cashews.
     Rizzle made his way south, across Beau Bridge, down along Market Street to the Peeking Duck. No Mushu Orc, but there was a sticky hunk of Sweet and Sour Cyclops he could salvage from a used napkin. He stuffed it in his pocket and walked on. He hung right past the statue of some fat guy in a captain’s hat. There was a plaque at his feet, but of the few people who could read it, neither of them had ever heard of George R.R. Martin. Rizzle continued south on Royal, where he found Wetbeard’s Brewery. The big front doors were locked, but Rizzle knew the secret knock.
     The door creaked open just enough to let Rizzle’s little body squeeze through before it shut again. In the semi-darkness of the closed brewery, Wetbeard stood waiting for him. 
     If a sculptor were given a wheelbarrow full of pumpkins and told to fashion a human form, and if this sculptor were an amateur, an untalented amateur, the resulting figure might bear a close resemblance to Wetbeard. He was a roundish, lumpy man with wiry brown hair and a matching beard.
     Being a purveyor of adult beverages, he had rosy blotches on his nose and cheeks, the result of the thorough quality control he so fastidiously maintained over his product. Frequent tastings were a necessary burden he had taken upon himself to ensure his customers received only the finest, cheapest fare.
     His beard was often, but not always, wet, thus the moniker. Though unsightly, the beard did store an impressive panoply of foamy yellow samples left by his fastidious tastings.
     He bent down to look the five-foot weasel-man in the face. 
     “You got my pintos?” he asked.
     Rizzle smirked. “You got the black stuff?”
     “Two kegs of pitch straight from the monks, and it’s a good batch, too,” answered Wetbeard.
     “Good. I’m sure Garglemoore will be pleased. Maybe it’ll stop him smackin’ me dis time. Here’s d’ beans, you can count ‘em. I’ll be back tonight before closin’ time. You gotta lend me a cart and somethin’ to cover up dem kegs.”
Wetbeard motioned for Rizzle to leave out the back door. “It’ll all be ready by tonight, Rizz.”
     “There’s a moon out tonight, right?” Rizzle asked anxiously.
     “Yep, pretty sure we’re at the halfway mark tonight,” said Wetbeard, looking up at the ceiling and trying to picture last night’s moon. Rizzle tried to picture it too. Hernia only came into town once a month on the moonless nights, but ever since Rizzle’s fateful encounter with her, he hated walking the streets after dark. He preferred to stay safely tucked away where he wouldn’t be disturbed until sunrise.
     Even on nights when the moon was out, it still wasn’t safe. There was one night when Rizzle got cornered by one of Hernia’s more infamous creations: a Sharkaroo, a vicious beast with the body of a kangaroo and the tooth-filled head of a shark. The creatures hid in alleyways and back streets, waiting to hop out and attack those who had let their guard down. Queen Strongbottom had an extermination initiative in place, ten men armed with daggers and nets on constant patrol, but it seemed as though there was always another one quietly hiding in a dark corner somewhere waiting to pounce, or more accurately, hop. 
     Rizzle slunk out of Wetbeard’s back door and took a good look around. He liked doing business with Wetbeard, who was reliable and treated Rizzle with respect… or if not respect, Wetbeard didn’t actively insult him. Maybe it helped that Rizzle knew some things about Wetbeard that Wetbeard didn’t want other people to know.
     Rizzle walked around the north side of the building and snuck back onto Royal Street. He made his way over Lloyd Bridge and then turned left around the back of the Royal Welcome Inn. The inn was across the street from a guard house, and Rizzle would just as soon not be seen by any of Queen Strongbottom’s men. By going around the side of the inn, he could avoid entering the main square in front of the palace and make his way to his next stop in New Stenchford Park.
     Walking through the dappled light under the old oaks of the park, Rizzle could see the bright colors of Helena Handbasket’s Carousel and Sex Shoppe up ahead. Rizzle took a minute to gather himself. Helena was a bit too much for him, especially this early in the morning.
     Helena Handbasket was an outcast. She was shunned by her parents and community and had made her way to New Stenchford as a young girl. She was a dwarf cyclops, born with a rare deformity: she had two eyes. Her mother had been heartbroken. Not knowing which eye to look into made her miserable. Helena was sent to an orphanage, but escaped once she was old enough and came to New Stenchford to seek out her future.
     Helena found work in the underground as a smuggling mule and worked her way up through the ranks until she had enough money to open the Carousel and Sex Shoppe. She lived in a little chamber in the middle of the ride. In her spare time, Helena made frightening-looking sex toys out of things she found in the street.
When kids came to ride the carousel, she would invite the parents to peruse her wares around the back. The toys looked more like torture devices than amorous accoutrements. If you bought one, you had to sign a waiver absolving Helena of all responsibility in the “unlikely” loss of a limb.
     Having been teased her whole life, Helena was acutely aware of her appearance. She had fashioned for herself a pair of small stilts, allowing her to look people in the face. She even went so far as to apply a papier-mache coating to the wood, but over time, it had become worn and ragged. From the knee down, it appeared as though she and her clothing had somehow contracted leprosy and were in the advanced stages of decomposition.
     She had taken to wearing bright floral print sundresses to distract from her legs. Her head was shaved, except for a long, greasy, blond ponytail at the top, to distract from the sundresses. Helena greeted each customer with a big smile, but her teeth were a mass of rotten and crooked nubs. As a result, she had a pronounced lisp.
Rizzle made his way over to her. When Helena caught sight of him, she waved. 
     “Hey, whath’s up, Weathel man?” She said, slapping him on the shoulder.
     Rizzle sighed. “I’ve got the bacon.”
     “Two rashers like we dithcuthed?”
     Rizzle reached behind him where he had the two small, paper-wrapped packages of bacon tucked into his waistband. They were a little moist, but he handed them over to her.
     She brought them to her nose and took a deep sniff. Coughing, she squinted at Rizzle with a scowl. 
     “Thmells more like your hairy ath than bacon.” She unwrapped the corner of the package to reveal the fatty tips of meat inside. They looked tasty. She frowned and then handed Rizzle four pinto beans. 
Rizzle crossed his arms. “And?”
     “What? Oh! And a free ride on the carouthel. Go ahead, pick yer ride ya weirdo.” 
Rizzle hopped up on the carousel and looked over his choices. There was a bright pink goblin pulling a rickshaw that you could sit in, a sparkly purple troll in a white cowboy hat, a demon playing the banjo, and a purple worm in a giant teacup. Around the corner was a big, orange Charizard, with a real flame sputtering out of its tail. It was missing a wing, and someone had mashed something sticky in one of its eyes, but Rizzle had no doubt about which one he wanted to ride.
     “Hurry up, I don’t have all day, ya little vermin,” Helena called from around the bend. 
Rizzle swung his leg over the Charizard’s back and called out, “Ready!”
     Helena groaned and trudged her way over to the big metal crank. Grabbing hold of it, she braced her stilts in little ruts she had made in the ground and began to turn the carousel. It creaked as it sluggishly came to life. The calliope began an ill-tuned ascent through the pitches until, reaching the proper speed, it wheezed out its tune.
Rizzle wiggled himself into a comfortable position and looked over his brightly colored mount. There was a slot on the back of its neck where the rider could slip in a fava. If he put one bean in, it would produce “soothing vibrations.” If he put in two favas, he would get “stimulating vibrations.” The more beans one put in, the more the ride buzzed and rumbled. There had been several injuries in the past, but Helena didn’t let anyone ride without signing a waiver first. She had a thing for waivers.
     Just as Rizzle was reaching in his pocket to fish out a few beans, the ride jerked to a halt.”
     “Thatth all ya get Rizz. Now shove off!” 
     Rizzle gave a little moan of disappointment, slid off the Charizard, and slinked off, not bothering to say goodbye.
Rizzle walked through the park, chewing absentmindedly on his tail. He grew up in a small house on the north end of town, where undesirables like him often began life. His father left before Rizzle was born, leaving his mother to raise him. It all proved too much for her, and she took to the black stuff. There were many names for the beverage, but most people knew it as pitch. You could always tell a pitch drinker by the color of their fingertips. Prolonged use gradually turned them black. Seasoned drinkers might have black all the way up to the second knuckle. Any further up than that was a sign you had a problem. If the blackness got as far as your wrist, you were either dead or wished that you were.
     Pitch was not the sort of thing one ordered on a fun night out. The alcohol it contained, although considerable, was of little consequence compared to its other ingredients—ingredients that were not revealed on the label. It was brewed in a secret cave by a group of monks who called themselves the Order of the Black Dog. Their fermentation process was a closely guarded secret and was rumored that they used undead grapes. 
     Pitch’s effect on the body was unpredictable. Drinkers might be visited by individuals no one else could see. They might lose track of time or fall into a stupor. Others seemed stimulated by its effects and were given to elaborating grandiose plans or obsessing over remote possibilities. There were many who tried it once and swore never to touch it again, but there were a few who fell under its heavy thrall and never made it back. As a result, it was officially banned within city limits, but it was still readily available to those who knew how to ask for it.
By the time Rizzle’s mother died of an overdose, she had become a seasoned drinker, the blackness had reached her third knuckle, but one extra shot “for good measure” turned out to be her last. She was buried without a casket in the group room at the back of the catacombs.
     With no one to turn to after his mother’s death, Rizzle made the streets of New Stenchford his home. He worked in them, slept in them, scavenged in them, and survived in them. The citizens of the city regarded him as something to be avoided, but the streets themselves seemed to welcome him.
     Rizzle turned the corner onto Coronation Street and saw someone walking up ahead. He froze in place and squinted his eyes. He realized the person was walking in the same direction as he was, so Rizzle scurried up a little closer behind him. The man was wearing fancy clothes and a big, floppy, black beret covered in a painted arabesque of bold yellow vines and lemons. A puff of pipe smoke rose from under the hat. Rizzle recognized the aroma. It was Cozy Bloominthol’s Potpourri fantasy mix, two pintos at Herb’s Herbs and Hookahs. It had to be Pomme Homme d’Abondance, the patriarch of the noble Pamplemousse family, but what was he doing here?
Rizzle froze again for a moment and then ducked into a doorway. Rizzle had had previous dealings with the Pamplemousse family, and they weren’t as noble as they pretended to be. They got their smuggled meats from the orcs just like Helena, but Rizzle owed them a lot of beans, and Pomme Homme d’Abondance would surely thrash him if he saw him.
     Rizzle scratched behind his ear. What was Pomme doing in a neighborhood like this? It wasn’t the worst part of town, but it was close. The further east and north you went, the more dangerous the streets became. Uppity types like Pomme Homme d’Abondance had no reason to leave their cloistered little neighborhood. People like him didn’t come to you to get their business done; you came to them, or at least Rizzle did.
     Across the street, a woman stood frozen in fear. A crabbit was brandishing its claws and warily pacing the sidewalk in front of her. The little pink-eyed pests were everywhere. Another of Hernia’s creations: fuzzy, white bunny heads with long, floppy ears, but instead of a matching furry body, the ends of their necks connected to hard, shiny crab legs. They weren’t that fast, but their pincers could leave a nasty mark.
     This one was only about ten inches wide, but the woman didn’t dare try to step around it. Rizzle watched the standoff from the doorway while he waited. Finally, after snapping its claws a few times to show it meant business, the crabbit scurried down a sewer drain, its floppy, white ears scraping against the crust of muck around the mouth of the drain, as it hurried out of sight.
     If Pomme was going anywhere in this neighborhood, it was probably to Drong Dungred-Churm’s house. Drong was the head of the orc crime family and was not an individual anyone would talk to unless they had to.
 Unfortunately, that was Rizzle’s destination as well. He would have to hide out and watch the house for a few minutes before he approached it. Rizzle chewed on his tail and peered out at the street, checking to see if the coast was clear.
     The shadows were getting shorter, and Rizzle could feel the warmth of the sun begin its embrace of the day. Had the sun had a say in the matter, it might have opted out of offering its golden beams to this particular part of town, but as it was, it didn’t, so it did.
     The district Rizzle was entering didn’t have an official name, but everyone knew it as the Drain. It wasn’t paved; it was built on hard-packed, reddish-brown clay and dirt that seemed to always be muddy, regardless of the weather. A horse cart driven by an orc rumbled by. It was full of wooden chests that rattled as it passed. The cart left a mixture of billowing dust and splashes of mud as it tumbled over the ruts and puddles of East Coronation Street.
     Orcs were more tolerated than welcomed in New Stenchford. Most inns wouldn’t serve them. The orcs were immigrants, refugees, really. They came from far up north by the coast. There was what seemed like a never-ending war raging up there between the orc hordes and the port town of Dregsdon. 
     Dregsdon was several weeks’ ride across difficult terrain, but every so often, another dusty, bedraggled orc showed up at the front gate of New Stenchford looking for a new home.
Rizzle waited a few more minutes and then stepped back out onto the road, turning onto Redemption Way, heading north toward the prison. They didn’t call it a prison anymore; they called it the “Redemption House Correctional Facility.” Though the name had changed, it looked like the same old shit-hole Rizzle had been in and out of all his life. Rizzle found his way to North Avenue and headed east to where Drong Dungred Churm and the other orcs lived. The official name for the neighborhood was Circle Fountain Terrace, but no one called it that. This was the heart of the Drain.
     North Avenue was empty as usual. It was a big, broad thoroughfare, but hardly anyone used it. It was the most northernly street in the city and ran alongside the tall wooden wall that surrounded the town.
     As Rizzle reached the East end of North Avenue, he could see The Fountain of the Unfortunate looming up ahead. The fountain was the social center of the Drain and was surrounded by concentric semicircular rows of houses. Drong Dungred-Churm’s house was on the south end. A sign had been stabbed into Drong’s front lawn that read “THIS HOUSE NOT YOU HOUSE. LEAVE.” The letters looked as if they had been written by a child, a blind child, a blind child using his left hand.
     Sitting on the porch, like enormous, lumpy, green statues, were Drup and Kunk. Tangled uncomfortably in an awkward pile behind them was Mr. Wobbles, their rottweiler. The poor thing had crossed paths with Hernia and now had to contend with four long, bony giraffe legs.
Drup and Kunk were arguing about something to do with the difference between human bile and dwarf bile. Rizzle couldn’t quite make it out.
     “Hey, Drup. Hey, Kunk. I need to see the boss,” Rizzle said as he approached the house.
Drup looked up, “Ah! Little shit smell man with tail. You fuck away from here.”
     Rizzle sighed. “Drup, he’s expecting me. He’ll be angry if I don’t get in there.”
     “Fine. In,” Drup said, jerking his massive green thumb over his shoulder toward the door behind him. Rizzle knew what came next, but there was no avoiding it. He walked up the three steps of the porch past the orcs, and just as he thought he might pass without incident, Drup hocked up a wad of phlegm and spat it onto Rizzle’s furry cheek. Rizzle waited until he was through the door to wipe it off. 
     The front room of Drong’s house was a jumbled assortment of ornate furniture, gaudy decorations, and garish paintings of ancestral orcs. If Drong had his way, the room would have had nothing but a bench and a table in it, but his wife Klumdra wouldn’t stand for that. “Important man, important house,” she would say whenever Drong glared at one of Klumdra’s expensive acquisitions. 
     Rizzle scanned the room. There, in the far corner, sat the imposing green visage of the orc himself. Drong’s grizzled, thick body sat heavy and hunched in a big leather chair. He was holding a large cup of tea that looked like a child’s toy in his meaty hand. 
     “Rizzleshit, take package Irving,” he said in a low husky voice. 
     “No!” Rizzle shouted before he could stop himself. “I, I mean, I am sorry, but I can’t do dat.” 
     Drong narrowed his eyes. “Do!” he demanded. 
     Rizzle stepped back toward the door before responding, “Oh no, I ain’t going back to see Irving. I barely made it outta der da last time! I’m sorry, gimme somethin’ else to do, but I can’t go back der.”
     “Bah! Drong give you favor. Do or fuck do, I care nothing. If Shitweasel no do, Drup do.”
     Rizzle tried to change the subject. “Was Pomme Homme d’Abondance just here before me?”
     Drong’s eyes narrowed even more. “Shitweasel shut face.”
     “I’m sorry,” Rizzle said, bowing his head nervously. “I know it’s none of my business.
     “Drong’s business, shit-man” Drong replied. Drong thought for a moment, or did something similar, but not quite equivalent to thinking, and then asked, “Rizzle count?”
     “Yes, I can count,” Rizzle said, raising his head from his chest.
     “High big?”
     “Yes, I can count high.”
     “Little shit-man count.”
     “Do you have to call me that?”
     “Shit-man with tail fuck off to tunnel and count swords and shields.”
     “One of those tunnels leads to the catacombs, and I already said I ain’t going back to see no Irving.”
     “No Irving, different tunnel. Shit-man count. Not Irving. Rizzle girly scared.”
     “Yeah, yeah,” Rizzle grumbled, but in his head, he thought Yeah, well, at least I can count past ten, you big, green asshole.
     “Under stairs,” Drong ordered while he pointed to a door in the opposite wall. 
     Rizzle walked over the pegasus skin rug, past the silver candelabra encrusted with gold lilies, and over to the door. He knew the drill. In the next room, under the stairs, was a hidden trap door that led to a very long underground tunnel. The floors, walls, and ceilings were exposed dirt held up by coarse wooden beams. The only source of light was provided by a torch and flint at the entrance, but the flame barely seemed to put up a fight against the endless darkness of the tunnel. It was a black mouth waiting for him to voluntarily allow himself to be swallowed.