Maudry Kell Tears the Tide-Table

The runner reached Skerrow Point wet to the knees and said it before he had his breath: the Old House had caught it, Sabine Oakenshaw’s lot, and one traveller aboard had paid four thousand four hundred and sixty-seven drops a span while everyone else paid two.

Maudry Kell did not look up from the tide-table nailed beside her door. She had been marking it in pencil all week: which hours the dear fares came, which hours the Throng paid crumbs, which lamps she might bank to save coal. Gaspard Thew, her purser, read the runner’s slip aloud. One king’s fare, and behind it a great grey band, cloaked alike, so the gate couldn’t say who had carried what to whom.

“So we can’t learn who the rich one was,” Gaspard said. “Or court them.”

“No.” Maudry did the sum on the doorframe with her thumbnail. Even the ransom, added to the rest, came to a pinch beside the Lantern’s gift. Sabine’s old House lived off the dying god like everyone else, and tonight a stranger had tipped it a little oil. Next time it might be anyone’s lamps. Nobody could tell her which hour.

She pulled the tide-table off its nail, tore it down the middle and handed Gaspard the halves for kindling. “Keep every lamp lit,” she said. “The rich don’t keep hours, and I won’t bank my glass on a guess about them.”