Via’s Glass Fills Fast

Ines Carrow stood where the rope bent at the ferry stage, her twelve words moving behind her teeth while nine thousand three hundred and fifty-four people shoved toward the boards. Passage was a tenth of a bitcoin a vB, which was cheap by the standards of the Lit Lands, and the crowd knew it, so nobody was willing to be left on the shore.

A runner from House Via came down the wet steps at a half-run, slate under one arm, and shouted the catch across the stage before anyone had turned to look. Seventy-eight seconds from the last link to this one. The Houses kept their glass hot for that, and Via had kept it hot all Book. Hesper Quill’s name went up the rope from mouth to mouth, and somebody near the front laughed, the way people do when a thing they don’t understand has gone their way.

Ine did not laugh. She finished her twelve words, the way she always did, and let the last one sit in her chest. A name is only a key, and a key is not a light. She had told that to a dozen children at this rope, and none of them had ever believed her.