Tallow closed the Fair on the twenty-eighth evening, at the last bell of the last Turn, in the ledger tent at the end of the outer ward. The canvas had been rolled back on one side to let the air in, and the wind came off the marsh with the smell of wet reed and the first real cold of the year. He sat on his stool with the lodgers’ ledger open on the trestle and a candle at his elbow, and he counted the takings aloud, slip by slip, because the Hold did not trust a sum it had not heard.
“Booth fees,” said Tallow. “Forty-one copper, which is nine shares. Grain, by the sack and the stone, as weighed at Harrow’s booth: three hundred and two shares, and a quarter. Tool-coin from the planks: thirty-four shares, and a Lessaran slug which I have not yet been able to value. Infirmary slips, paid in shares, from the bonesetter’s booth: one hundred and six. Eel-tokens from the reed stall, which are not shares but which the Hold has agreed to count as shares because Wren would otherwise sell them to the Lessaran factors at a loss: sixty. Wool, by the skein, four to six: two hundred and some. Carters’ weights, tolerance one sack: correct.”
