Idony Ships the Keystone

The keystone for Longmere’s north arch sat on rollers at the foot of Pale Quarry, chalked with Idony Forrest’s mark and a date forty years off, when someone might finally set it.

The Antswarm’s barge came in under its ring-of-ants pennant with the crew singing the haul, a long grey band packed amidships in hoods cut from one bolt, and passage near nothing. Tegan Ruddle, the quarry’s youngest dresser, had heard the talk off the boat: one traveller aboard had paid nine hundred and ninety-eight drops a span, alone, for the speed of it.

“That’s a patron,” Tegan said. “Hold the stone. Let me run down and ask him about the arch.”

“Ask which one?” Idony nodded at the hoods. “He’ll be in among them, or he’ll be gone. And he paid for haste, not for arches.” She put her shoulder to the rollers. “A man who pays that much to cross in a hurry won’t wait forty years for a door.”

“Then we wait for a better one.”

“We’ve waited on rumoured money since my mother cut stone here.” She whistled up the Antswarm’s bargemen, who took up their song again and walked the keystone aboard. “It’s cheap today. It goes today.”

Tegan watched the barge sit lower. Then he picked up a pry-bar and went down the plank after it, because someone had to see the stone off at the far bank.