Ilse Thornmere Writes a Character

From Sorrel Edge you could see the Foundry’s chimney on a clear day, and today was clear enough to count the flags. Somebody over there had taken to running up a black pennant for every catch. There were four on the line now, snapping like laundry.

Kit Lammas came up the ladder with the runner’s word: nearly four thousand carried at under two drops a span, and the usual great grey band in the middle of it, hoods to the gunwale, nobody able to say whose light went where. “Brannoch’s boatmen don’t even ask any more,” he said. “Just wave the cloaks on and take the fare.”

Ilse Thornmere looked at her crew, all lamps burning and nothing caught for it. Last time she’d paid them a week from her own purse. She opened the purse now, in front of them, and showed them the bottom of it.

“No week this time,” she said. “The Foundry’s hiring. Anyone who wants to walk over, I’ll write you a character, and it’ll be true.”

Anwen Pritchard, two months on the glass, stood and held out her shift-card. Ilse wrote on the back of it in soot-pencil: steady hands, never late, keeps her lamp clean. She signed it in full and gave it back without a word about loyalty.

Anwen went down the ladder. Kit watched her go, then picked up the trimming shears and went to see to her lamp, so it wouldn’t go out before the next link.