Chapter 58: The Port of Last Laugh

They made landfall on the third day, in a harbor protected by a breakwater of sunken ships. The town beyond was called Last Laugh, and it announced itself with bells and colored banners and the smell of roasted sugar. The Laughter Fields began here, where the soil was said to grow merrier the farther inland you walked.

Shen Mu thanked Salt-Eye with a bow and a handful of coppers. The captain pocketed them without counting and jerked his thumb toward the town.

"If you're looking for silence, you came to the wrong place. Everyone here talks. Most of them laugh. Few of them mean it."

Shen Mu wrote, "I am looking for truth."

Salt-Eye snorted. "Then you definitely came to the wrong place."

The town was built in tiers up a hillside, each tier devoted to a different kind of pleasure. On the lowest level, vendors sold food and drink and small Echo trinkets: recorded jokes, preserved songs, the sound of a baby's first giggle. Higher up, the shops grew more specialized. Some sold borrowed courage. Some sold the memory of a first kiss. Some sold laughter itself, distilled from the throats of professional joy-makers and stored in crystal flasks.

Shen Mu passed a shop where a man sat in a velvet chair while a merchant poured a blue liquid into his ears. The man's face spasmed, then split into a smile that looked painted on. His wife stood nearby, holding a purse and watching with an expression between hope and despair. When the effect faded, the man stood, paid, and left without speaking to her. The wife followed, her shoulders slumped.

Shen Mu walked through the streets with his hood up. The crowds were thick and loud, and no one looked at him twice. A mute man was less remarkable here than a sober one. Everywhere, people wore the badges of their purchased emotions: green ribbons for calm, red sashes for passion, yellow pins for joy. The truly poor could not afford even a borrowed feeling, and they moved through the carnival like ghosts haunting a feast.

He stopped at a stall where a woman sold bread twisted into the shape of smiling faces. She had kind eyes and a mouth that did not match them.

"You don't laugh," she said.

Shen Mu shook his head.

"Most people who come here want to buy laughter. You look like you want to bury it." She handed him a small loaf. "On the house. You need feeding."

Shen Mu paid her anyway. He had learned that kindness was not improved by taking it for free.

"You're not from here," the woman said.

Shen Mu shook his head.

"Most strangers leave poorer than they came. The joy merchants take what they have and sell them back a cheaper version." She looked at her own hands, flour-covered and capable. "I used to laugh at my husband's jokes. Now I don't remember how. I sold the memory to pay his debts."

Shen Mu wrote, "I am sorry."

"Don't be. I got a good price." She turned back to her dough, but her shoulders shook once, quickly, before she controlled them.

As he ate, he noticed a poster on the wall of a nearby building. It showed a woman's face, bruised but defiant, with words beneath offering a reward for information about her accomplices. The face was Li Xin's.

Shen Mu stepped closer. The poster said she had been moved to the port of Lesser Joy and would be transported overland to the Echo Bazaar within the week. The reward for her rescue was described as "paid in sorrow."

He memorized the route. Then he tore the poster down.

A passing constable saw him. "Hey! That's official property."

Shen Mu wrote quickly, "It offended me."

The constable blinked. "It offends everyone. That's the point. Put it back or pay the fine."

Shen Mu paid the fine with his last copper. The constable pocketed it and walked away, satisfied. Shen Mu kept the poster.

He found an inn near the harbor, a place where the rooms were small and the walls were thick enough to muffle the carnival noise. The innkeeper was a heavy woman with a laugh that sounded like breaking glass.

"One night?" she asked.

Shen Mu nodded and wrote, "And information. The woman on the poster. Where is she held in Lesser Joy?"

The innkeeper's laugh stopped. "You don't want to know that, stranger. The Chorus owns Lesser Joy. They own the guards, the judges, and most of the beds."

"I still want to know."

She studied him. "You love her."

Shen Mu did not answer. He was not sure what word applied.

"The holding house is at the edge of town, past the Joy Merchants' Hall. Red door, no windows. If you go there, you won't come back." She took his money. "Room at the end of the hall. Try to die quietly. Other guests are sleeping."

In his room, Shen Mu spread the poster on the bed and looked at Li Xin's face. She had been beaten since he last saw her. One eye was swollen. But her mouth was set in the same stubborn line she wore when she disagreed with him. He traced the line with his fingertip, not touching the paper, as if he could reach through the poster and tell her to hold on.

The room was small and smelled of old wine. Through the wall, he heard a couple arguing in low voices, then laughing in the mechanical way of people who had rented joy for the evening. The laughter stopped abruptly, replaced by silence that was worse.

He wrote on the back of the poster: "I am coming."

Then he lay down and tried to sleep. The sounds of Last Laugh drifted through the window: music, shouting, artificial laughter, real weeping. He thought about the woman at the bread stall, whose eyes were kind but whose mouth did not match. He thought about the people who bought laughter because they had forgotten how to make it.

Shen Mu did not wait for morning. He wrapped himself in his cloak and walked to Lesser Joy under the cover of the carnival's noise.

Lesser Joy was the poorer quarter, where the joy merchants sold their dregs and the borrowed emotions were thin and short-lived. The streets were narrower here, the lanterns fewer, the smell of desperation stronger. The red door stood at the end of an alley, exactly as the innkeeper had described. Two guards leaned against the wall beside it, playing dice. They looked bored, which was more dangerous than alertness.

Shen Mu watched from a shadowed doorway. The house had no windows on the lower floor. A small grate near the roof let out stale air. The door was iron-bound and probably warded. He counted the guards, the distance to the nearest cross street, the places where a man might hide. He did not approach.

He had learned patience from the sea. A wave did not attack the cliff. It returned, again and again, until the cliff changed.

He walked back to the inn through streets that grew quieter as the carnival wound down. Vomit and discarded ribbons littered the cobbles. A woman sat on a step, holding her head in her hands, the yellow pin of joy still on her lapel. Shen Mu gave her the bread the stall woman had sold him. She took it without looking up.

In his room, he wrote down everything he had seen: the guards, the door, the grate, the street layout. Then he added a note to himself: First Echo of opening will not be enough. I need silence, distance, and a way to carry her if she cannot walk.

He closed his eyes. The carnival went on without him, a city of people trying to feel something they had sold. Somewhere in that city, a woman who could not laugh was selling bread shaped like smiles. Somewhere beyond it, Li Xin was waiting in a red-doored house with no windows. And somewhere inside him, the word Self glowed faintly, refusing to be bought or sold.

In the morning, he would begin again. Not as a fugitive. Not as a student. As a man who had made a promise.