Antwerp · The Living

The Flat

Bram's rooms in Antwerp, and the foxed mirror that came with them, screwed to the hall wall a hand too high. It is where he first reads the family on his own skin.

First seen in The Names I Woke With Book One of The Borrowed Dead

Also in Antwerp

The Vestibule The neutral order at the city's edge. They neither keep nor take. They study the door, channel energy, and broker passage for a toll of self. The Bar A low room with the light the colour of weak tea. Where a dying stranger bought Bram a drink and laid a whole family on his skin. The Flats of the Dead Twelve years of rooms where people died alone. Sell, skip, scrub. The work that taught Bram not to look. The Scheldt The cold river through Antwerp, running to the sea. Water keeps, in its own way, and the city's dead were always near it. The Port The machine north of the city: cranes, container stacks, the reverse-beep of something backing up in the dark. It drones under every night of Bram's worst week, and it does not stop for anyone. Noor's Kitchen The warm room where the kettle lives, and the one place in the city that has always been safe. Until a courteous woman sits down in its warmest corner and makes Bram an offer. The Dock-Cut Footbridge An iron footbridge over the old dock cut, where the new flats give out and the brick goes black. Lean on its rail long enough and a mill comes up under your hands, its wheel turning the water white, and with it the man who kept the lock below.

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