In Virgil's opinion, Entour was really not a pretty city.  Almost entirely destroyed by bombings during the Great War for it's importance in Montaigne's naval construction, it had been since rebuilt, seemingly as an experiment in finding the ugliest urbanism projects possible . It was grey, bleak, and quite empty.  The shipyards had precious few ships to build nowadays, and the once enormous working population had deserted the city.  The winter months were the worst time: the town was constantly cast under grey skies, and rain had the sort of indecisiveness about falling or not that really, really got on your nerves.

And Virgil's nerves were got on quite enough as it was, thank you very much.

It wasn't really that he had to work sixteen extenuating hours a day as a docker to earn a miserable living and pay the rent to a shabby room in one of the ugly, inhuman towers that constituted most of the waterfront.  That he could live, well, survive with.  It'd better not last very long, but he could.  It wasn't that most of the other dockers considered him a weakling whose share of work you always had to do for him.  After all, he was only seventeen while most of them were getting closer to thirty than twenty freshly out of the rapidly closing factories and shipyards.  It wasn't that the town itself was depressing; a small, poor town from a poor region.  Vilte, while taking its name from its one time masters, the Etalon de Viltoille family, was an old region proud of its history (going much farther back than the rise of the Etalon family in the courts of the strangers who reigned in Charouse) and its people, and anyone working around the sea had this sort of nobility that cloaks anyone who is certain he deserves his place in the world, and willing to defend it from anyone.  No, what was really getting on his nerves was times like this, when the already strenuous docks, ringing with metallic noises, dimly lit in the rapidly fading light of a bleak winter sunset, became even more chaotic and it was about certain that a calamity of some sort was about to befall everyone involved.

Virgil quickly made his way to the docks office of the Compagnie d'Armement de la Mer d'Ecume, leaving behind the heavy crate he was bearing but keeping his dockers hook, just in case.  Mr. Fontenau, the head of the docking department, dressed in his eternal deep blue sweater and green trousers, his equally eternal pipe over his beard, was talking to a quickly growing mass of angry dockers.

-         Look, I'm sorry, but thats the way it is.  Next month will have twelve ships less coming in compared to this one.  We just don't have the money to pay fifty dockers anymore when only forty are needed.

Virgil started to feel unease spreading through his abdomen.  Every time something bad had happened, he had felt this way.

-         Oh, yeah?  And how are we supposed to feed our families?  Go work at the factories?  Which one?  Even the Chantiers are firing people!  Im a working man, Louis, you know it.  I'm not gonna sit on my arse and wait for the unemployment compensation check!

-         Calm down, Georges -- it's only temporary.  Tertius should be better, what with the return of the haddock fishing campaign boats.  Plus, you're not concerned.  You know the rule, guys: last arrived, first to go.

By now, Virgil's belly was screaming something akin to «Get the hell outta here, this is gonna stink!», to which his brain answered: «Shut up, I wanna hear about this.», to which his belly tried to answer «Oh no you dont!», but couldn't because Fontenau spoke before that.

-         So, here are the ones we won't need for Secundus: Figueroa, Gonçalvez, Van Huytens, Rivière, Hoarau Jacques, Hoarau Germain, Gassette, Locarelli, Garinaud, and Basto.  Sorry guys.  Come back around the end of the month, we might have something for you in twenty days time.  You'll get your pay in half an hour.

«See ?» said Virgil's belly.  «Im the smart one here.».

The closest Entour has to an active town center is the Rue des Généraux, also generally called Thirst Street, for pretty obvious reasons.  It's as good a place to reminisce over bad memories as any other.  In fact, it's rather more suitable to it than most places, because of the dark and bleak street and the proximity of people having fun without you.  It's hard to have a really good depressing moment when the sky is blue and birds sing.  Thankfully, none of these disturbing elements were there tonight, and Virgil could go over the last years in a reasonably miserable fashion.

Childhood hadn't been hell, really.  He had tons of fun.  He remembered staying for a long time at some people's house.  It smelled of aromatic herbs and had lots of other children in it.  He also remembered helping out with running the house, and planting and harvesting vegetables and fruits in the tiny garden, and also huddling with the other kids in winter, since the house wasn't that well heated.  Then one day, when he had came back to the house after playing in the streets, nobody was there anymore.  He must have been eight or nine at that time.  He had waited for days and days in the big house, and no one ever came back.  It was empty, too, nothing to eat or wear.  So he had moved on to living with friends of his age not all of them, some were considerably older, he remembered in and around the market of Casanova Street in Carleon.  Life had really gotten into the habit of being a bitch then.  Of course, he was starving and cold, and of course, he couldnt trust, really trust, any of the other street urchins, and there was always the possibility of one of the bigger ones getting back to the squat, stinking drunk and eager to hit something.  That had happened often.  After a time, Virgil had found a way out of being chased through the abandoned attics.  When one of them came and looked for trouble, he simply hinted to them that another one of the big guys was having a problem with him.  Drunk people will use any old excuse to get even with people, and they didn't really hated the little ones, who merely annoyed them.  The big guys, however, positively got under each others skins.

Then he had become one of the big guys himself.  At around thirteen he was already carrying a knife in his pocket at all times, and acted as he owned the world, drank and smoked and generally got into any self-destructive habit that could enable him to pretend he was a grown-up.  At fifteen his hair was purple and shaved on the sides.  He used to spend his nights in caves housing aggressive rock concerts, and got into each of the fights that regularly rocked the underground between punks and skinheads.  He stank of beer all the time, and sometimes of vomit too.  He felt very lonely, when he wasn't drunk or stoned enough to forget that.  He remembered now.  Once, he had accepted a job for a stickup in a bank.  By the time the gang had regrouped, he was shaking and white with fear.  The leader had laughed.  After that, he generally stuck to hotwiring cars and smash-and-grab theft, with the occasional driver job for the occasional professionals.  But he didn't have enough hours of clear mind in a day to learn anything, even in those, so it was apparent that he would end up a hobo, if he ended up anything at all other than a corpse floating on the surface of the river.  Then Maud Terrence and the Structuralist Party had been elected to power, and the cops had started rounding up everyone on the streets who did not look like a perfectly respectable Avalonian gentleman or lady.  It appeared that Virgil wasn't Avalonian at all, in fact, so off he went, back to Vodacce.

There wasn't any Snow to be found on the cargo boat.  No Snow at all for a ten-day travel. Virgil had gone cold turkey before he even realized it.  The travel itself passed in the haze and blur of withdrawal, and when Virgil set foot on the Eastern Vodacce coast, his mind was clearer than it had ever been.  He cut his purple hair and started to look for a job. But the kind of jobs you can find when you're sixteen and you know no one in Bessarion arent the ones that will make you forget you spend your days facing the prison of Il Muro.  So when Don Calazzio, for whom he'd been collecting protection taxes for some time now, was found dead, his future didn't seem that good to Virgil.  He remembered that long, long night.  The eight people to visit and convince to pay, first, and that hadn't been easy, but Virgil was persuasive.  Then coming back to Don Calazzios office, and all the guys looking as if they had seen a ghost.  Fabrizio, his own personal boss, a lieutenant of Don Calazzio's, talking to him and trying to imprint some sense into him while he was freaking out, telling him that Don Rassi would care for all of them now he took over Don Calazzio's empire.  The going out for a smoke.  The walking into the deserted street nights, weighing the touch of all that money in his pocket against what he had seen Fabrizio do to traitors.  Then the run for the port and hopping onto the first boat that was leaving.  It was going to Entour.

Virgil stopped reminiscing as a big, burly guy was thrown out of a bar at his feet.

«And stay out!  We don't want those of your kind here, nor anywhere in this town!  Do you hear me?»

The door closed, and the big guy sat up straight.  Virgil could see the two scars, one on each side of his temples, and the gold earrings and the tattoos on his arms.  Those could be any sailors but this guy had an air of danger and strength, as well as nobility, when he stood up, that struck Virgil.  He couldn't help but standing in front of the man much taller than he was himself, he noticed and ask: «Your kind?  What was he talking about?»

The big man started to smile a very big and very scary smile.  He leaned towards Virgil and said, in a whisper: «Pirates.»