Sim Ashcombe Keeps His Copper

Sim Ashcombe had waited half an hour on the Fallowgate bank with his aunt, long enough to learn every knot in the mooring post, before the House Via runner came down the lane shouting that Hesper Quill’s lamps had caught at last. His aunt paid three drops a span for them both and muttered that it was twice the morning’s price, and the ferryman waved them into the stern behind two great bands of travellers in grey.

Sim watched the grey ones closely. He had seen a woman among them hand a bundle to a man, or thought he had. Then the band shifted, and every cloak had the same horn buttons, the same frayed hem, the same hood pulled low, and he could no longer say which woman or which man.

On the far landing a gentleman in a good wool coat crouched to Sim’s height and held up a copper. “Sharp eyes,” he said pleasantly. “Which of them took the bundle?”

Sim looked at the copper. It would buy a hot pie. He looked at the grey backs going up the road like one long animal. “I don’t know,” he said, and was surprised to find it was true.

“Guess, then.”

“A guess isn’t knowing,” Sim said, because his aunt said it about weather. The gentleman pocketed the copper and stood. Sim’s stomach complained the whole walk to market, and he let it.