The Jar for a Shoe

Pell the Bottler walked the Sallow Cross queue with a tray of stoppered jars on a strap, each holding a sliver of glowing phosphor he had bought from a man who bought it from another. He sold them to the hopeful for the price of a day’s bread. Nobody wanted to hear that a jar would not carry them over the water, and he didn’t tell them. The ferrymen already said so for nothing, and charged for it anyway.

Beyond the wall, the Fishpond lamp-house caught its link with a shudder that rattled the rope. Seven thousand two hundred and fourteen souls pressed toward the boats on passage at ₿0.1/vB, which was nearly nothing, and the crowd surged so hard that a child lost a shoe in the mud. Pell stooped, fished it out, and sold the mother a jar for the trouble.

When she held it up, the jar flickered, and she studied him with the look of someone who has been lied to by better liars. “Does it burn?” “It burns as long as you believe it,” he said, which was the truest thing he had sold all week. She paid anyway.