Cressida Faull Won’t Lend on Hares

Cressida Faull hung the Foundry’s oil purse on her steelyard at Hemmick Quay and slid the weight along the beam. It barely needed sliding. Edda Pike stood at the counter with the manifest unrolled, and Cressida read it upside down out of habit. Nearly every line was a hare. Little carved hares, sitting, running, one wearing a crown, ninety-five spans in every hundred given to them, each paid for in oil like a traveller with a cough and a cart.

“The Scribes paid,” Edda said. “Same as anyone.”

“Same as anyone at a tenth of a drop.” Cressida tapped the beam. “Your master caught this seven breaths after the last one and his reward is a purse I could carry in my teeth. The rest is the Lantern’s gift, same as yesterday.” She knew the gift’s weight without a scale. Everyone on the quay did. It was the only honest heavy thing left.

Edda folded the manifest. “Brannoch asks for an advance. Lamp oil against the next run of marks. The Scribes say there’ll be a rush on hares by the turn of the Book.”

Cressida unhooked the purse and gave it back. “Tell him I’ll sell him oil for coin, and I’ll weigh it in front of him. I don’t lend on pictures. When the hares stop running I’m the one left holding them.” She wrote the refusal on a slip, signed it, and kept the copy.