Pressed Against the Ferry Rope

The rope at Sallow Cross bellied under its weight long before the ferry was loaded. Hob Tanner, who had kept that gate since the Glare’s first crier came over the hills, leaned his shoulder into the post and told the crowd to step back. They stepped forward instead. Passage cost a tenth of a sat a byte, which was almost nothing, so everyone who had ever wanted to cross had come at once, with babies, geese and the last of their coin sewn into their boots.

Tamsin Reedwater came down the bank with her ledger under one arm and a crate of lamps clanking behind her. She did not look at the crowd. She looked at the water, where the lamp-boats sat low and the oil slicked the surface in rainbows. Hold the rope, she told Hob, and he held it, while the pump-boy hauled the last oil cans up the slip and cursed the mud.

The catch came as the ferry bell rang: a bright smear above the lamps, then nothing to see at all. Nobody cheered. A woman with a goose asked whether they were across yet, and Hob said they were, which was true for the goose. Tamsin wrote one line in the ledger and lit her next lamp from the last.