Thornmere Pays the Hourglass Wager

By the fourth turning of the hourglass on Sorrel Edge, House Spider’s stokers had stopped talking. Sixteen minutes a glass, and the sand had run through four times with no horn from anywhere in the hills. Lamps guttered along the ridge. Down on the road the Throng had begun paying four drops a span just to be near the front when somebody, anybody, broke the dark.

Ilse Thornmere had promised a week’s pay to whichever crew pierced it. Kit Lammas, who had shovelled through all four glasses, was already spending his share out loud.

He was halfway into the fifth glass when the horn came. It was Foundry’s, low and smug, rolling over from the Kilnrows. Sixty-six minutes of nothing, and Brannoch Vell’s lamps had taken it.

Kit set his shovel against the wall. Nobody said anything. The wager was plain. Spider had not caught the link, so nobody had won.

Thornmere looked at the hourglass, then at the soot on Kit’s forearms. She tipped the glass on its side so the sand lay still. Then she counted the week’s pay out of her own purse into his hand, and the same into the next man’s, and so on down the floor.

“For staying lit,” she said. “Foundry gets the gift. I’ll not have them get my crew too.”