Theogeny -- The Forked Stick

The city is large and populous and practical. Like other cities, it started life as a wide place beside the river, a place where farmers would bring their carts, and the crones and the halt set up their sheds and invented commerce. Like other cities, it grew because it was in the right place on the river, and no other cities were growing too nearby, and at least one army found it more convenient to quarter in it than to raze it.

Unlike other cities, this city is where Anthony met Marta, where the Long Temple sits at one end of Water Street, where the ship bobs, or bobbed, at a dark pier. Signs in the city say "Good Harvest" and "Iron Bell" and "The Fatted Calf". The city is not terribly devout, only slightly wise, not brilliant enough to interfere unduly with the observations of the astrologer in his tower.

In the least poor quarter of the city, his last day with her, Anthony followed Marta up a narrow staircase, surprised and somehow betrayed to find that even here, even here where people have money, the city is still cramped and pragmatic, and that the staircase is narrow, and the carpeting worn.