The Tide House sounded its catch from the headland above Mallow Quay, and Hester Brayle stuck one more pin into the cork board behind her toll-hatch. One pin per fare. It was the only count she trusted, and today it had taken a beating: a band of grey near three hundred strong had gone through her gate at two drops and a bit a span, dear for the quay, and every hood alike.

Silas Pengelly leaned on her rail, ringed finger tapping. He had paid her a small retainer since spring to tell him who crossed owing him money.

“Tobiah Venn was in that lot,” he said. “Him and the forty coins he borrowed for a boat. Which one carried it over?”

“They paid in one purse and walked in one shape,” Hester said. “The link has every drop of it, sound as a bell. It doesn’t have Venn.”

“You stood at the hatch. You saw the hands.”

“I saw three hundred grey sleeves.”

He slid a coin-slip under the hatch, more than the retainer. “Guess, then. Point. I’ll do the rest.”

Up on the headland Maudry Kell’s lamps were already dimming for the next attempt, the Tide House having taken its gift and moved on. Hester looked at the slip, then at the board, where the pins stood in no particular order, as they always had.

She pushed the slip back, and the spring’s retainer with it.

“Find another hatch,” she said. “I count fares. I don’t sell guesses.”

Pengelly went. The board kept its pins.

By the fourth turning of the hourglass on Sorrel Edge, House Spider’s stokers had stopped talking. Sixteen minutes a glass, and the sand had run through four times with no horn from anywhere in the hills. Lamps guttered along the ridge. Down on the road the Throng had begun paying four drops a span just to be near the front when somebody, anybody, broke the dark.

Ilse Thornmere had promised a week’s pay to whichever crew pierced it. Kit Lammas, who had shovelled through all four glasses, was already spending his share out loud.

He was halfway into the fifth glass when the horn came. It was Foundry’s, low and smug, rolling over from the Kilnrows. Sixty-six minutes of nothing, and Brannoch Vell’s lamps had taken it.

Kit set his shovel against the wall. Nobody said anything. The wager was plain. Spider had not caught the link, so nobody had won.

Thornmere looked at the hourglass, then at the soot on Kit’s forearms. She tipped the glass on its side so the sand lay still. Then she counted the week’s pay out of her own purse into his hand, and the same into the next man’s, and so on down the floor.

“For staying lit,” she said. “Foundry gets the gift. I’ll not have them get my crew too.”

Tamsin Reedwater stood alone on Cinder Brow after the catch and counted Fishpond’s lamps down the valley, pressing her thumb against each cold brass hinge as she went. Thirty-one were burning, one fewer than her crew had promised. She counted them again, slower, and got thirty-one again. Then she walked down the brow to tell Gethin Stray which lamp had gone dim.

Haul the pot and mind the heat, / Brannoch’s glass will cool down sweet. / Four thousand souls upon the rope, / Pull together, bellows, hope, / Lift the ladle, let it lie, / Feed the mouth before the bell goes by.

Lucan Thorley had been sent to Wrayburn Steps to write down grievances, and the Lit Lands rarely made him wait long for one. When the Antswarm’s horn sounded from the hills and the link came down the water, the Throng on the steps stood up with their bundles. Then they sat down again. Nobody had been carried. The barge rode high and bare, and the only thing aboard was the House’s own tally-board, its stamp cut deep into the wood, Ilse Marrow’s mark and nothing else.

“Light caught, and not a soul on it,” Lucan said to the woman beside him, a net-mender called Agathe Brune who had been waiting since the bell before dawn. “In Copperhythe the boats leave on the hour. Full or empty, they take whoever’s standing there.” He pressed a Glare token into her palm. It was warm as a fresh bun, the way they always were. “That’s tonight’s crossing, paid. No toll, no wait.”

Agathe turned it over. Printed on the back was a small open eye. She knew what it meant, and so did Lucan, and neither of them pretended otherwise.

“Passage here costs me nothing either,” she said. “It’s just late.”

“Late and free, or prompt and free.”

“Prompt and remembered,” she said, and handed the token back. Down the steps a lamp flared in the Kilnrows, another House already at the Veil. Agathe settled her nets across her knees to wait for it.

Lucan wrote in his book that the Lit Lands’ boats sailed empty while their people waited. Then, because he was honest in his small way, he added that no one had complained.

Dury Mallin sat on an upturned crate at the end of the House Sec lamp-floor, boots stretched toward the kiln mouth, and let his shoulders drop. Hauling coal since the last catch had blistered his palms. He thought about the gift, three coins and change a link, and how little of it reached his own pocket. Then he thought about his daughter, who had asked why the light was going grey, and whether he would have an answer by supper.

At Brindle Ford the Old House of Braiins caught its link under a low grey sky, and Ine Carrow leaned in beside a smuggler’s boy and passed him a word so quietly the river covered it. He did not repeat it to the Confiscator on the bank, who asked him twice and got only the water for an answer. Sabine Oakenshaw’s crew carried 6,656 across at a tenth of a drop a span, and the boy went over the ford with the word still behind his teeth.

On Scriveners’ Lane Bede Lanyard bent over a slab of soft grey stone and cut a small owl, two drilled dots for eyes and a hooked beak, the way his master had taught him before the fever took her. The owl was meant to say that the crossing was carried clean and paid in full, a promise nobody at the ferry would stop to read. He blew the dust off the mark, wiped his chisel on his apron, and sold it to the next buyer for a tenth of a drop.