Petra Writes From Copperhythe

At Brindle Ford the river stayed knee-deep, so the Tide House’s catch went over the shallows on foot, the way smugglers and Confiscators both preferred. Sefton Mirrel, the border sergeant, took the toll in dry coin and gave back one word, low, through the reeds: through. Across the water the Glare’s lamps burned warm and close, every one of them watching.

Morwen Tallis came down to Cowl Staithe with empty hands, which was how Keepers of Names always came, and the gate-guard still turned her pockets out from habit. He found a comb and a bit of string. Her light was in her head, where no guard had ever looked.

House Foundry’s boat was loading. The bell had gone from Brannoch Vell’s chimneys up the valley, and Joss Penrude was hurrying the Throng aboard at two drops a span, a price even the staithe’s net-girls could manage. Half the deck had already gone grey: one great band, every traveller hooded alike, their light poured together so that no one at the rail could say whose went where.

Lowri Bassett, who led the band, held out a spare cloak. “You’ll want this.”

“I’ve nothing to hide,” Morwen said. “Look. Nothing.”

“I know. That’s why I’m asking.” Lowri nodded at the hooded rows. “Every cloak makes the rest of them harder to read. A woman in there is paying her son’s debts without his creditor knowing. One more of us, and the Confiscators’ sums get one row longer.”

Morwen had spent eleven years keeping her name where no eye could reach it. She had never thought to lend that dark to anyone else.

She took the cloak, pulled the hood over her bare head, and went aboard to stand among the others, one more grey shape no one could pick out.

From the House Sec terrace in the Kilnrows, Dury Mallin watched the Fishpond chimney two roofs down cough white, then settle into the steady pale draw that meant a catch. Sec’s own chimney beside him gave nothing but grey. Nine links into the Book and Sec had not caught one, and the stokers had begun counting their boots instead of their shifts.

He took his coat off the nail by the door.

Lisbet Corfe came out onto the Fishpond terrace with the manifest under her arm, and Dury called across the gap to ask what they’d carried. She shouted it back without looking: near three thousand travellers at two drops a span, and two long bands in grey cloaks, paid in full, nobody’s name showing. “Tamsin had them written down as weight, same as sacks,” she said. “She won’t guess at them either.”

“Is she taking on stokers?”

Lisbet laughed, though not unkindly. “On what? That was gift and a cupful of oil. Same as you’d have got. Reedwater pays the crews out of the Lantern and prays, same as Corrigan.” She held up the manifest so he could see the two blank bands for himself. “Lucky isn’t richer here, Dury. Just luckier this morning.”

Dury stood with the coat over his arm while the Fishpond smoke thinned. Then he hung it back on its nail, went in, and banked Sec’s fire for the next try.

Hilde Mawson’s ledger at Tarnby Slip had always had a fourth column. Name, span, oil, and then, in her own cramped hand, faces: a scar, a limp, a red beard. Nobody had asked for it. It had simply proved useful, and a gatekeeper who is useful gets tipped.

The House Spider boat nosed in with its black eight-legged mark flaking on the bow, and two long bands of grey cloaks came down the plank in step, hoods up, every hem the same mud-brown. Passage was two and four-tenths of a drop a span, twice the morning’s price, and they paid it without fuss.

Ferris Quayle leaned on her table. He was a wool-broker from upriver, and a debtor of his was in there somewhere. “Which one’s carrying Daws’s light?” he said, and set a coin on the faces column. “You’ve a good eye, Hilde. Everyone says so.”

She looked at the bands. She could have picked a man, any man of the right height, and Quayle would have paid and gone after him, and perhaps been right. The boatmen were already shouting that Ilse Thornmere’s crews would be fed tonight whether the House caught again or not. They had a light of their own to row by.

Hilde pushed the coin back. Then she took her pencil and drew one hard line down the fourth column, top to bottom, through every scar and limp she had ever written there.

“I’ve no eye,” she said. “Next.”

Aldous Penhallow had turned the sand-glass over twice by the kiln at Longmere, and still no bell came across the lake from the gate. The quicklime cracked and muttered in the slaking pit while he waited. Somewhere the Houses were all straining at the Veil and none of them had it, which happened, and which never made waiting shorter.

Wynn Treloar came down the scaffold path with the lodge purse held against her ribs as though it might bolt. The glazier at the far landing would hold the clerestory panes one link more, she said, then sell them to a buyer from Aurelhold who had not haggled. Passage was four and six-tenths of a drop a span now, near four times the dawn price. “We could wait for the morning boats,” she said. “We always wait.”

“We do,” said Aldous. He stirred the pit and watched the white skin break. “And the ferrymen live on a gift that halves before that window’s leaded. Somebody has to buy them oil, or there’ll be no boats the year the roof goes on.” He did not say it like a sermon. He said it like a man pricing mortar.

The bell came then, the Sun-House’s flat brass note, Delphine Copthorne’s lamps having finally torn the dark open. Wynn untied the purse and counted the dear passage out without being told twice. Aldous turned the sand-glass a third time and went back to his lime.

The last link was barely forged when the bell on House Via’s floor at Brackle Edge rang again, and Wren Hollins, nine years old and sent up with her father’s dinner, nearly dropped the pot. The stokers laughed at her. One said the Veil had blinked. Another said it was the oil Hesper Quill had been saving, finally earning its keep, which got a harder laugh because everyone knew how little of it there was.

Wren wanted to know what had been caught. Hesper Quill, who did not usually let children near the manifest, turned it round on the desk for her. Most of it was lines, a name-mark and a sum each, tight as stitching. Two lines were fat and blank. Two great bands in grey, the purser said, carried as one entry apiece.

“Whose light is in them?” Wren asked.

“Theirs,” said Hesper.

“But which of them?”

“I don’t know. Neither does the Glare, which is rather the point.” Hesper held out the pen. “Write what you can see.”

Wren held it over the margin for a long time. She could have put a guess, thirty souls or fifty, rich or poor; the purser would not have scratched it out. In the end she wrote only “two bands, grey,” in letters too big for the column, and handed the pen back. Her father ate his dinner cold and said she had the makings of a Wakeful, which he did not mean entirely as praise.