"He's lying," Pearl said the second we were out of earshot. "Or he knows exactly what he's not saying, which is somehow worse."
"Probably both," Malachi said. "Come on. The Hollow, before it gets any darker."
The chart seller's directions were about as reliable as his charts probably were. Left at the fish market, he'd said, then straight until you smell smoke. We took two wrong turns, got yelled at by a woman hauling crab traps who seemed to think we were blocking a very specific and important path only she could see, and ended up cornered by a boy no older than ten who offered to guide us there for three coppers and then tried to lead us in the opposite direction entirely.
"That's not the way," I told him, after the third time he pointed us down an alley that dead-ended at a wall.
"It's a shortcut," he said, with the wounded dignity of a con artist caught mid-con.
"It's a wall."
"Shortcuts have walls sometimes."
