Ripping Time by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

The roar of smelting furnaces could be heard and the scent of molten metal, rotting vegetables, and dung from thousands of horses hung thick on the air. Human voices drifted through the murk as well. Dim shapes resolved occasionally into workmen and flower girls and idle ruffians lurking in dark alleyways. The East End was getting itself busily up and at its business, right along with the chickens cackling and clucking and crowing mournfully on their way to the big poultry markets further west or scratching for whatever scraps might’ve been left from breakfast in many a lightless, barren kitchen yard.

Dogs slunk past, intent on canine business as muddy daylight slowly gathered strength. Cats’ eyes gleamed from alleyways, their shivery whiskers atwitch in the cold air, paws flicking in distaste as they navigated foul puddles of filthy rainwater from the previous night’s storm. Along those same alleyways, ragged children sat huddled in open doorways. Most of the children clustered together for warmth, faces dirty and pinched with hunger, eyes dull and suspicious. Their mothers could be heard inside the dilapidated cribhouses they called home, often as not shouting in ear-bending tones at someone too drunk to respond. “Get a finger out, y’ lager lout, or there’ll be no supper in this cat an’ mouse, not tonight nor any other . . .”

Margo glanced at her charges and found a study in contrasts. The reporters were taking it all in stride, studying the streets and the people in them with a detached sort of eagerness. Conroy Melvyn looked like the police inspector he was: alert, intelligent, dangerous, eyes taking in minute details of the world unfolding around him. Pavel Kostenka was not so much oblivious as simply unmoved by the shocking poverty spreading out in every direction. He was clearly intent on objective observation without the filter of human emotion coloring his judgements.