Perrin Haldane Sells the Spyglass

Perrin Haldane had bought the brass spyglass on credit in spring, on the strength of one good season. From the stair above Gannet Steep she could see the whole gate, and men in Copperhythe paid her by the bundle to say which traveller had carried what, and to whom. Two drops a span kept the cheap crossers off today. Those who came paid it, and she had liked her odds.

Then the Tide House flag went up over the harbour wall, and the first band came down the quay in grey: forty-odd of them, same cloaks, same pace, bundles held the same way at the hip. A second band followed before she had the first one counted. She put her eye to the glass and watched them mingle at the gate, part on the far side, and walk off in every direction. They wore no marks and hurried nowhere. She wrote down a great deal and none of it was worth a copper.

The Copperhythe man found her at dusk on the stair. He read her pages, folded them neatly and handed them back. “Ninety travellers, and you’ve written ninety times ‘grey’,” he said. “I pay for names.”

Perrin walked the spyglass back to the brazier’s shop on Rope Street and took half what she owed for it. On the way home she passed two women in grey drinking at the harbour tap, laughing about nothing. She didn’t ask them a thing. She had already decided she was finished with asking.