By the time Ysabet reached the bathhouse lane, the fish crate had acquired an opinion about being carried.
It expressed this by leaning.
The first time, she thought a slat had shifted beneath her arm. The second brought her shoulder against a wall. At the third she put the crate down beside a closed cooper’s shop, shook the feeling back into her left fingers, and crouched to look through the gaps.
The amber eye looked back. Six feet gripped the boards. Its body remained low, but all its weight had moved toward the bread shop opposite.
The bread shop was shuttered. A sack of sweepings stood under its eaves.
“You and me both,” she said.
She could buy a heel tomorrow. Tonight she still had yesterday’s bread, half an onion, and the eggs Mara’s sister had brought in payment for examining a carriage lizard’s swollen knee. There would be supper. Winter was the difficulty. Winter had been eighteen silver in a folded piece of flannel, and now it had an eye.
She lifted the crate against her left hip. Her right hand steadied the upper edge; its two stiff fingers could manage that much. Inside, the creature clicked once.
“That’s a useful suggestion. You could take the other end.”
At the yard she unlatched the gate with her elbow. Kettle raised her blunt head from the shelter beside the wall, saw no basket of greens, and lowered it again. Tallow rustled in his bedding. Sedge’s narrow face appeared under the bench, whiskers trembling.
Ysabet shut the gate before she opened the crate.
Then she stopped with her hand on its fastening.
The yard had seemed adequately furnished that morning. Now she saw the drains, the loose board above Sedge’s sleeping place, the grain sack Tallow had pushed against a door, and Kettle’s substantial beak. The newcomer was smaller than all three residents. It also had a jaw whose hinges she could not identify.
“Wait there,” she told it.
It had very little choice. She felt foolish saying it.
The old laundry shelter occupied the corner nearest her room. Its roof still kept rain out, although half its floor had been lifted when Mara sold the copper wash vat. Ysabet moved a basket of harness scraps and swept the remaining brick. She fetched two broad hurdles from behind Tallow’s stall, lashed them to the shelter posts, and laid a low board across the gap beneath the gate. The enclosure was large enough for her to stretch out in, with an open patch of earth at one end and shade under a shelf at the other.
She checked every lashing twice. A creature might pass a head through a gap it could not pass a body through. This one might do the reverse. For tonight, a double fold of sacking along the bottom would have to serve.
She set the crate inside and opened its end.
Nothing emerged.
She backed away, took the lamp with her, and sat on an upturned bucket beyond the hurdle.
A foot appeared. It had three toes, each laid down separately. Another foot followed, wider and paler, with a blunt joint bent so far outward it ought to have hurt. The creature eased its folded body through the opening. All six legs took weight. The last pair lifted the loose edge of its skin clear of the wood.
Its eye turned toward Ysabet, toward the gate, toward the dark under the shelf.
“That’s all yours,” she said.
It went under the shelf.
Ysabet stood slowly. Sedge had advanced to the outside of the hurdle. The marten stretched her neck toward the new smell, then sneezed with such violence that her weak hindquarters sat down without her permission.
“Good evening to you too.”
Ysabet carried Sedge to her basket. When she returned with a shallow water dish, the creature had moved to the crate’s far side. It did not come out for water. She left the dish where it could see it and went to make supper.
She ate standing by her little stove. The onion had begun to soften at the center; she cut that out and put the good part into the pan. Through the open door she could see the laundry shelter. Twice a foot came around the crate and withdrew.
Meat first, she thought.
Most creatures at least investigated meat. She cut a small shaving from Tallow’s boiled offal, placed it on a saucer, and set it just inside the enclosure. Then she returned to the doorway.
The amber eye appeared. The creature approached sideways, touched the offal with the tip of a narrow forefoot, and moved the saucer behind the crate.
Ysabet waited.
When it emerged again, it had left the meat untouched.
She tried a little grain in a separate saucer. It pressed the grains together into a ridge along the dish’s rim. She tried a drop of honey on the end of a clean stick. That drew it close enough for her to see the folds above its jaw stir. The jaw opened sideways. The stick entered between two smooth plates, then dropped across its forefeet. The drop of honey still clung to the end.
Then it pushed the stick back toward her.
“An excellent tool,” she said. “Unfortunately, I was offering the other part.”
She withdrew the honey. The creature remained near the front of the enclosure, watching her hands.
She could not keep offering every substance in the yard. Hunger was urgent, but a stomach she knew nothing about might object to her whole kitchen. At the auction it had lain among straw without eating it. Perhaps it ate at dawn. Perhaps it was too frightened. Perhaps eighteen silver and a needle had bought her an animal already dying of something a better keeper would recognize.
She put that thought down. There were things to check first.
No dragging feet. No list to one side. Its eye followed a moving fingertip, though it drew back when she came too close. There were no wet patches beneath the jaw, no visible wound, no breathing she could count with confidence. Occasionally the loose hide rose along its back. A pulse of warmth reached her wrist without contact.
She lifted the lamp away.
The warmth subsided before she could decide whether the lamp had caused it.
Her drinking cup stood on the shelf over the enclosure. She had left it there that morning after washing the dust out of her mouth. A crack ran from its lip nearly to the base; she had meant to mend the handle, which lay beside it, for three weeks.
Now she reached past it for the folded cloth behind.
Her stiff fingers caught the handle fragment. It knocked the cup off the shelf.
Ysabet swore, too late to soften the word.
The cup struck a brick and broke.
The creature flattened. Its forefeet slid beneath its body. For an instant every fold seemed drawn inward, leaving the eye exposed.
Ysabet held still.
The yard settled. Tallow sighed through his nostrils. Somewhere beyond the bathhouse wall, a man was arguing that he had delivered seven sacks and wished to be paid for seven sacks.
The creature slowly rose.
“Only a cup,” she said.
She fetched the small broom. When she returned, it had put a foot on the largest fragment.
“Careful.”
She stopped outside the hurdle. It lifted the fragment and placed it on the bare earth. A second piece followed. Its little outer feet worked with an awkward delicacy, turning a curved shard, setting it against the first, shifting it until the broken edges met.
Ysabet put the broom down.
The thing took nearly a quarter of an hour. Twice it tried a piece that did not fit and set it aside. Once it knocked the growing arrangement over. It waited, eye almost closed, then began again.
By the end there was a low, uneven bowl where her broken cup had been. The handle lay beside it. Two chips were missing, and the rim gaped.
Ysabet found herself leaning forward.
The creature turned its eye toward her.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “That’s how it went.”
Its jaw opened. It took the rim between the plates and bit.
The crack was sharp enough to wake Kettle.
Ysabet’s hand jerked toward the hurdle before she stopped it. The creature chewed twice. She could see clay powder at the joint of its mouth. It swallowed, or performed a movement beneath the loose skin that might have been swallowing, and took another bite.
By the time Kettle decided the disturbance did not concern her, half the cup was gone.
Ysabet picked up a remaining shard. Plain red clay, fired hard, without glaze. The cheap cups sold beside the charcoal market. She had always disliked the gritty taste they gave water.
The creature watched the shard.
She set it down inside the hurdle. It picked it up after she withdrew her hand.
“Well,” she said. “I can afford broken crockery.”
There was plenty under the bathhouse steps. She rejected the old blue tiles, whose glaze flaked under her thumbnail, and the mortar streaked green from the copper pipes. From the back wall she collected a handful of clean brick chips. She rinsed them, warmed them near the stove to take off the chill, and added a little lump of plain potter’s clay she used for sealing cracks in water dishes.
The creature came out before she finished arranging them. It ate the clay first. Its narrow forefeet held the lump against the sideways mouth; several bites made it visibly smaller. Then it chose a brick chip and carried it under the shelf.
Ysabet sat beside the lamp and wrote on the back of an old bill.
Refused offal, grain, honey. Ate fired clay. Unfired clay also. Water uncertain.
The bill had a blank space where she ought to have entered Vennick’s payment. She turned it over.
When she looked up, the creature had returned. A little heap of crumbs lay inside the hurdle opposite her knee. It nudged one through the gap.
She touched it. Clean, warm clay. Not chewed; she could see the smooth face where she had broken the piece herself.
“For me?”
The eye remained on her.
She placed the piece beside the lamp.
“Thank you. I’ll keep that for later.”
It waited a while longer, then took another chip beneath the shelf. Ysabet left the empty crate where it stood. There was bedding in it now, dry sacking over straw, but the creature chose the bare earth behind it. She moved the lamp so the crate sheltered that patch from the light.
Before she went inside, she secured the hurdle gate and checked the roof’s leaking corner. The night was turning cold. She hung a cloth along the windward side, leaving the other end open to the yard.
From behind the crate came a small, hollow tick.
“Good night, Pip.”
The sound did not come again. Ysabet waited for another moment anyway.