The Book of Grey Cloaks

The Book opened on a crowded bank and a cheap river. At Sallow Cross the ferry went over loaded to the rails, seven thousand souls at a time, paying next to nothing a span, and the gatekeeper lost her count somewhere in the press and did not get it back. House Fishpond caught link after link that morning under Tamsin Reedwater, and every one of them burned thin. The oil barely covered the wicks. Almost all the light that came home to Cinder Brow came from the Lantern’s gift, and the gift is a dying god’s allowance.

A Glare agent found her twice before noon. The first time he offered warm lamps. The second time he offered the same lamps with fine print, and the fine print said who could dim them. Tamsin read it, folded it, and kept her own lamps burning on what she had.

Cheap passage is a mercy you can watch. A widow crossed with her salt fish. A boy carried cold tea along the rope. A Bottler sold a jar of false light to a mother who had lost her child’s shoe, and she paid for it because the river made her feel lucky. A girl asked her father why the Lantern looks so dim and why passage must be paid at all, and he did not have a good answer to either. Not every fare was cheap. One traveller paid 1,183 drops a span for the front of the ferry while a poor mother waited on the shore, and later a grey-cloaked stranger paid more than twice that and wanted no jars from anyone.

Then the river went quiet.

The first long dark came after House Foundry’s run in the Kilnrows: thirty-three minutes, and Wenna Cole sat at Gorse Hollow with her copyist and a cold candle until the Antswarm’s link finally came down and she found it sound. Then thirty minutes. Then forty-nine. Then thirty-nine. Passage doubled while nobody was looking. At Haverstoke Landing a cheese-seller sold her spoiling wares on the bank because she could no longer afford to carry them over. At Ruddock Ferry the bonesetter Coll Tresidder spent his supper and his lodging to cross on the Tide House’s dearer link, because a child’s leg would not wait for the price to fall. Hesper Quill of House Via rationed the last of her thin oil, and still found some to leave quietly within reach of Nan Gillow, who had pawned her wedding shawl to trim her wicks.

The worst dark ran sixty-six minutes. House Foundry broke it. Over at House Spider, Ilse Thornmere paid her losing crew their wagered bonus anyway, because a hungry crew is a crew that walks to a rival’s chimney.

But the thing people will remember from this Book is the grey cloaks.

They crossed in bands, many travellers moving together under the same colour, so that whoever stood on the bank could see that light had gone over and could not say whose. They started small. By the middle of the day they were on nearly every link. At Mossgate the Keeper Ness Corran swallowed her pride and joined Wat Ember’s band. At Tenter Wharf Gideon Spragg joined Faith Ormerod’s, and spent his traceable odd remainder on burnt chestnuts rather than cross marked. At Sedge Lock Mabyn Scorrow unpicked her initials from her cloak so she could go with Ruel Ashdown’s band, and gave up the credit for her own gift to do it.

The watchers did badly. At Wicken Steps the Wakeful Agna Fellowes refused a Confiscator’s silver to guess who had paid whom. The boy Sim Ashcombe at Fallowgate refused a watcher’s copper for the same guess. At Gannet Steep the paid watcher Perrin Haldane failed to trace two bands, lost her Copperhythe fee, and sold back her spyglass. At Quarrender Bridge the Confiscator Corvin Ashby, who that morning had asked Sabine Oakenshaw of the Old House of Braiins to shut such bands out and been refused, watched two more cross and burned a false accusation rather than invent a name for his report. A moneylender at Mallow Quay wanted his debtor picked out of a crowd; the gatekeeper Hester Brayle handed back his retainer. A steward at Hessle Bar wanted a levy on a 345-coin chest; Prudence Yarrow sent him home with nothing.

And at Pelling Mill a Glare agent called Severin Callow, sent to trace a grey band, joined it instead, so he could send money to his mother without anyone watching him do it.

Not everyone stayed. Petra Holm wrote home from Copperhythe on House Sec’s link. She sent four coins, said she had taken a warm Glare lamp, and said she would not come back yet. She did not apologise. The Glare is warm. That is the whole of its argument and it is a good one.

The big money moved through the Book like weather. A single crossing on House Sec’s link moved over 260 coins, and at Thrushmouth Gate Rook Abernethy voided a wager with her apprentice over whose it was, since nobody could know. Tamsin Reedwater’s purser wanted to hunt down the owner of a 312-coin chest and sell them a private berth; she refused. At Limebrake the Cathedral-builder Aldous Penhallow heard a rumour of a 250-coin crossing and declined to wait on it, and slaked the lime they could afford. A Longmere pledge arrived hidden inside a grey band, and Idony Forrest would not unmask the donors. She bedded their stone as a threshold, where everyone will walk over it and no one will read it.

The Houses felt the thinness. Oil factors at Pennick Wharf and Hemmick Quay refused credit to the Scribe Bede Lanyard and to Brannoch Vell alike. Bede went back to Scriveners’ Lane and carved small honest marks instead: an owl for clean passage paid in full, a heron for patient passage, sold for a tenth of a drop and for copper. A Fishpond stoker sat on the lamp-floor and tried to make the gift cover her son’s boots before the next Halvenfall, and could not make the sum come out. When one traveller paid 3,152 drops a span on the Foundry’s link, a rival named Corin Haddow refused to tout for rich fares and relit his kiln instead. When another paid 4,467 on the Old House’s link, Maudry Kell of the Tide House tore up her fare-hour chart and kept every lamp lit. There is no hour to wait for. There is only the next link.

The Book closed short: a hundred and five links where a hundred and forty-four should have been, and only six parts in a thousand of the Houses’ light came from oil. Less self-lit than the world has lately been. The Long Dawn lost a little ground today, quietly, the way it is usually lost.

House Foundry caught the last link, its twenty-ninth of the day. Up at Hob’s Landing a lone lamplighter named Tam Ogle lost his dawn bargain, put out his lamp, and paid dear passage to go home. His sister Ada had written to him earlier on House Mara’s link: twin lambs, a sound roof, come home before frost. He went.