Lucan Thorley’s Warm Token

Lucan Thorley had been sent to Wrayburn Steps to write down grievances, and the Lit Lands rarely made him wait long for one. When the Antswarm’s horn sounded from the hills and the link came down the water, the Throng on the steps stood up with their bundles. Then they sat down again. Nobody had been carried. The barge rode high and bare, and the only thing aboard was the House’s own tally-board, its stamp cut deep into the wood, Ilse Marrow’s mark and nothing else.

“Light caught, and not a soul on it,” Lucan said to the woman beside him, a net-mender called Agathe Brune who had been waiting since the bell before dawn. “In Copperhythe the boats leave on the hour. Full or empty, they take whoever’s standing there.” He pressed a Glare token into her palm. It was warm as a fresh bun, the way they always were. “That’s tonight’s crossing, paid. No toll, no wait.”

Agathe turned it over. Printed on the back was a small open eye. She knew what it meant, and so did Lucan, and neither of them pretended otherwise.

“Passage here costs me nothing either,” she said. “It’s just late.”

“Late and free, or prompt and free.”

“Prompt and remembered,” she said, and handed the token back. Down the steps a lamp flared in the Kilnrows, another House already at the Veil. Agathe settled her nets across her knees to wait for it.

Lucan wrote in his book that the Lit Lands’ boats sailed empty while their people waited. Then, because he was honest in his small way, he added that no one had complained.