Merriel Dunstan Keeps the Cloak

Merriel Dunstan had the Antswarm’s link half checked when the woman came back through the door of the Wakeful hut at Brockwell Weir, still in grey, rain beaded on the wool. Merriel held up one finger and kept working. The seal held. The work behind it was real, every measure of it caught honestly against the Veil. The sums of passage came out even, a drop a span for most, which counted as dear for the week. She breathed on her reading glass, wiped it, and signed the link off.

“I can’t find my bundle,” the woman said. “I crossed with the band, sixty of us in the same cloth, and I wanted the gate to show me it got to my son. Your clerk says the gate can’t tell one of us from another.”

“It can’t,” Merriel said. “Nor can I. Nor can the man from Copperhythe who drinks at the weir-house asking after sheep.” She turned the Roll so the woman could see the entry for the link, sound and closed. “But you know your own name. Say it to yourself and look for what answers. It’s there. It’s forged in. Nobody can pull it out now, and nobody but you and your boy knows which thread it is.”

The woman stood a long while with her hand on the counter. She had folded the cloak over her arm to sell it back to the band’s organiser for a copper. Now she shook it out and put it on again.

“Next time,” she said, “I’ll cross the same way.”

Merriel was already reaching for the next link.