A Strip Torn from the Tally

Wicken Steps lock had six gates and one lamp worth reading by, and Agna Fellowes had the Foundry’s link spread under it before the lower pound had finished filling. She went through it the long way. The gift was claimed at three and an eighth, not a drop over. There were 4,954 travellers at a drop a span. In the middle sat a great band in grey, hundreds of crossings knotted into one so that no line said whose light went where. It was sound at every seam. She signed.

Corvin Ashby came down the towpath as she blotted. He wore no coat and carried a carpet bag. “I go south on the next boat,” he said. “They’ll ask me what I saw. One name out of that band, Agna, and my mother keeps her south rooms.”

“You asked me that once with silver.”

“I’m asking without it now.”

She looked at the band again, because the Wakeful always look twice. Nothing in it had a face. “There’s no name there to give. Not to you, and not to me.” Then she tore a strip from the foot of her tally and wrote on it: Link checked at Wicken Steps. Band sound. Owners unreadable by any honest eye, mine included. She signed it in full. “Take that instead. It’s true, which is more than they’re used to.”

Ashby folded it into the bag. “It won’t save the rooms.”

“No,” Agna said. “It’ll only save you lying.”