Only those born here call it Bridge. To everyone else it has a thousand less complimentary names: the Maze, Lose-Your-Way, Alleyway, the Fucking Nightmare. Cut by countless rivers, pierced by canyon upon canyon, tatted thick with bridges delicate and sturdy. Cedar loves it, could live here forever (she thinks), finally, a city as big as the world. Gangs lost in the warrens so long they have built their own language, grown their own culture, faces thick with city-paint; the several markets might as well be embassies, trade as complex and beautiful as treaty-making…

They are all as homeless here as she is, as vagabond: to step outside is to be lost, rooms swallowed by the turning of a corner. They carry their few belongings on their bodies, as does she, and everywhere she turns she meets another short-legged, thick-soled woman with a backpack. If they don’t speak the language, so what? Chinook is universal, if inelegant, and her mercurial tongue finds homecoming in every stranger mouth.

She sleeps in alleyways, in rooms above bars, in sweaty bordellos, in smoke-filled hotels. She trades on her wits, and a million lies. The city is blessed by sun, cauled by water, and Cedar, dust-raddled citizen of the road, finds her home and loses it, every night, truly.