Oswy Thrale Shuts His Plank

Oswy Thrale had his jars set out on a plank across two barrels at Mudbeck Sands, each one corked with tar and glowing a sickly gold that would last just until the buyer was out of sight. “Light that grows in the jar,” he told the queue. “Buy it at one, sell it at ten when the Lantern goes.”

Nobody bit. Passage had crept to near four drops a span since breakfast, and the queue was busy working out what it had left. Then the Antswarm’s boat came in, its first catch of the Book, with Ilse Marrow’s stokers grinning on the thwarts like men let off a debt. The gate-crier called the manifest: one fare of three hundred and thirty coins and a drop, hand to hand, no name given.

The queue went still and looked about for the rich man. There wasn’t one. There was a carter, a woman with a crate of geese, and a boy. Whoever owned that light had sent it over without a face.

The boy came to Oswy’s plank with four drops in his fist. “One jar. For when I’m grown.”

Oswy looked at the boat. A fortune had just crossed with no swagger and no jar, and he felt his trade go thin under him. He closed the boy’s fingers back over the coins. “Pay your span. The real stuff’s on that boat.” Then he packed the jars into straw and carried them up the dunes, calling himself a fool the whole way.