On the Marrick Heath road Joss Penrude of House Foundry met Lisbet Corfe of House Fishpond, both with tin lamp-hoods under their arms and nothing to show for the day. He told her the Sun-House had caught its link in fifty-five seconds, and she swore he was lying until he showed her the slate. They stood a while in the wind, then she tossed him the heel of her bread and ran on toward the Kilnrows, and he turned back the way he had come.

Nell Pascoe sat on an upturned bucket for the length of one breath, her back to the firebox, and tried to reckon what the gift would buy her boy in boots before the next Halvenfall. The sum would not come out. She stood, knocked the soot from her palms, and went back to the fire before anyone could shout for her.

Ma stood on the slip with the morning hake still in her hands, counting the boats gone over and the crowd still waiting on the shingle. Five and a half thousand, the gate-boy had bawled, half again yesterday. Her son wanted the crossing. Her husband said the nets would keep, and turned an oar over and over. In the end she dropped the hake in the basket, took the boy’s hand, and went down to the rope.

The manifest came up to Tamsin Reedwater still warm from the forge-room at Gullet Pike, and her purser, Wendel Sparrock, had already underlined one entry twice. Three hundred and twelve coins and a little more, one hand to another, crossing on Fishpond’s link. It took one line, the same width as the line above it, which was a net-maker sending her son the price of boots.

“Paid three drops a span,” Wendel said. “Same as the net-maker. Same as everyone tonight.” He leaned on the rail of the lamp-floor gallery, where the stokers were already banking for the next try. “Somebody that heavy will cross again. I could send Lisbet down the valley to find out who. Offer them a berth of their own. Front of the link, every time, and a fee to match.”

Tamsin looked at the oil cup on the ledge, the House’s share of the night’s passage. It barely wetted the bottom. Below it the Lantern’s gift sat fat in the tally, as it had all Book, and she knew to the coin how little of the floor’s heat came from travellers.

“Find out who,” she said. “How?”

“Ask around.”

“Ask whom? The gate doesn’t know. The Wakeful won’t guess.” She folded the manifest along the line and handed it back. “We carried it. That’s all we’ll ever have to do with it. Get Lisbet on the bellows instead, they’re short a hand.”

Wendel went, grumbling, and struck the double line through to a single one.

On Scriveners’ Lane Bede Lanyard cut a heron standing on one leg in the reeds, its beak aimed at a single drop of light. The mark said that passage paid in full was patience paid for, and no more. A salt-carter read it, nodded, and paid for the mark in copper.

At Carnock Gate the board by the toll-hut had been rechalked that morning: two drops a span, House Mara’s crossing, the figure copied off the lamp-house runner’s slate. A girl with a bread basket stopped to read it, moving her lips over the numbers, then counted the coins in her palm twice and joined the queue anyway.

Maudry Kell roared down the Tide House lamp-floor for wet sacks to go over the glass-pot before it cracked, and her stokers slapped them on with steam hissing off their sleeves. The link came up clean on the turn of the tide, and 5,449 travellers crossed at a tenth of a drop a span.

At Carrick Stile Keeper Hedda Lorne stood at the House Mara queue with her lips moving over her twelve words, counting them off against her knuckles while the lamp came up behind her. She did not look back at the glow. When the gate-boy asked for a name for his ledger she gave him only the fare, paid in full, and walked on with her own name still locked in her head.