Of the half-dozen apples he buys from the street cart, he offers one to Gwenaëlle and sticks another into his mouth like he's a pig on a dining table. The leaves four—or five, depending on Gwenaëlle's opinion on tart yellow summer apples—nestled on top of the other contents of his haversack as they continue down the street.

It's a good street, in his opinion. One of his favorites, and convenient as any other north-south route for their purposes. It's a border: a few smaller roads to the west is a fine neighborhood with its fair share of masks, and to the east some places no one with a mask would be safe after dark. Here there's some crossover of the lesser extremes of both of those types. Wealthy merchants, ratty buskers. And in the center there's a relatively clean stretch of canal, set low, with its own narrow sidewalks reachable by ladders and the occasional set of cramped stairs. Bastien walks along the edge. Not more interested in the water than in people. There are people down there.

Kids, a lot of them. People washing threadbare clothes. An old man with a whistle and his feet in the shallow water. Shallow now. In the spring or after storms, it fills with water from the river that cuts through the city, to help keep it within its bank.

A muffled sound, eh-ah, before he decides he has to stop sucking juice out of the apple and take a proper bite en route to making himself comprehensible. He chews and swallows first, then tries again, pointing down at the pillars of one of the bridges connecting the two halves of the street.

"Where they pulled the brick out there," he says, "it's to mark when it's deep enough to jump in and not break anything."

Inexpertly. But if or when someone breaks something, they'll probably lift the marker.