Linnet Asks About the Fat Purse

Linnet Haws was eight and held the Tide House’s span-board at Skerrow Quay, which mostly meant holding it straight while Gaspard Thew chalked prices on it. Two and a fifth drops a span, said the board. Most of the queue paid it and grumbled anyway.

Then a man in a good blue coat came down the steps at a run, said his name was Orrin Vosper, and paid one thousand seven hundred and fifty-four drops a span. He tipped a whole purse onto the herring barrel and didn’t wait to see it counted. Behind him came two long files of grey cloaks, hood after hood, and Gaspard waved them aboard without a word, because there was no word to say. Nobody could tell which grey shoulder carried what.

“Why did he pay so much?” Linnet asked. “The board says two.”

“Fear, maybe. Or a fat thumb on the scale. Maudry won’t send it back. Nothing goes back once it’s on the Chain.”

“And the grey ones? Do they pay less because nobody knows them?”

“They pay the same. They just keep their own secrets.”

Linnet watched the boat pull out with the rich man’s fear and the grey men’s secrets in one hull. That night she asked her mother to teach her spans and drops, every sum, so she’d never tip a purse onto a barrel for anyone. Her mother laughed and fetched the slate.