A small guide boat passed the canal wharf. A man sitting at the bow, impossible to tell whether he was a boatman or a porter, raised a wine bottle and threw back his head, hollering in a strange southern tune as he sang something that might have been a folk song or a ballad:
"Back when I was young, I was the toughest brat in the village; grown up, I never compromised! My old man owed the lord taxes on his fields, my old mother paid them back weaving cloth, but I never believed in fate—I came to the city to find myself a fine wife!"
His voice echoed across the canal, drawing responses from many people aboard the boats and along both banks:
"A fine wife, eh..."
Behind the man, five or six others—laborers and porters in the same coarse clothes, wearing only single layers despite the autumn weather—had gathered at the stern. Each held a bottle of wine, hollering and egging one another on without a care in the world.
The arrival of the Emerald Celebration had left the Canal District's usually bustling wharves and warehouses considerably quieter.
The men who usually watched the boats, supervised labor, kept accounts, chased up deliveries, managed meals—in other words, all the people qualified to bellow orders, or the civilized and respectable citizens of Emerald City—had abandoned everything early, dressed themselves up, and gone off to join the revelry. Now, apart from a few merchant ships rushing to meet deadlines by checking accounts and loading or unloading cargo, only the lower-class laborers with no work and no spare money remained, gathering in idle groups, gambling, drinking, wandering about, and using every possible means to seek pleasure, numbness, vanity, madness—or anything else that could give their so-called leisure even the slightest bit of