Tamsin put the receipts in three piles and moved Felix’s cup away from all of them.
“That one’s household money,” she said. “That one’s public materials. That one’s money customers can still ask to have back.”
Felix examined the smallest pile. “Could we give that one a more encouraging name?”
“No.”
Outside, Pell tapped the garden cover with a stick.
“Not a door,” she called.
“I’m checking it.”
“From the other side of the fence.”
The tapping stopped. A moment later, the stick appeared through the kitchen window.
“Checked.”
She took it and set it against the wall. Her own workshop had once contained a rack for measuring rods, a dry cupboard and nobody else’s breakfast. Now she had a corner of Vivienne Frost’s bench, three bags of fittings and a son who thought finding a hole under onions was the beginning of a distinguished career.
It would do for today.
She turned the timber quotation toward Felix.
“This was before the storm.”
“I remember before the storm. Very affordable period.”
“The sound stock’s going to roofs first. We need to see what’s left.”
He reached for his coat with his right hand, winced, and let his left finish the job.
She watched without commenting until he looked at the paper again.
“Could we buy the missing part while we’re there?”
“We don’t know its size.”
“We know the size of the hole.”
“And nothing about what happens inside it.”
He accepted that with a little grimace. She gave him her notebook instead of a tool bag.
“You can write.”
“Have you seen the evidence?”
“Then people will have to listen when I read it.”
She checked the garden cover herself before leaving. Its crossbars held. Pell showed her the fence knot he had tightened, then returned to making destination labels under Lyra’s eye. The boy would stay on the island. There was enough excitement in getting him through breakfast without putting him beneath a timber sling.
The replacement basket carried Tamsin first. At the academy landing, she waited while the operator brought Felix across separately. He emerged gripping his notebook so hard that its cover had bent.
“How’s the arm?” she asked.
“Currently losing to the stomach.”
They took the district stair down past a roof patched with sailcloth. A woman standing in the doorway was arguing with two roofers about whether moving her bed counted as labor. Below them, another crew hauled fallen tiles out of a blocked drain. Tamsin recognized one of the men. He lifted his hammer to her and went straight back to work.
At the timber yard, the straight beams were already marked with blue chalk.
The merchant saw her looking. “Terrace infirmary. Booked yesterday.”
“All six?”
“Four there. Two to the washhouse roof.”
Felix inspected the unmarked stack. “Those look straight.”
“From here,” Tamsin said.
Up close, one beam had a split running back from its end. She slipped the thin edge of her rule into it. The crack swallowed the metal farther than Felix expected.
“We could cut that off,” he said.
“Then it won’t reach.”
“Nearly?”
She held out the notebook.
He wrote something.
She checked it. “Not nearly. Put the length.”
The merchant rubbed his chin. “I’ve stair timber behind the shed. Reclaimed. Lower price, if you sort it yourselves.”
“How much to have one of your people turn it?”
He named a handling fee. She agreed before Felix could offer his injured arm as a saving.
The stair timber looked like the remains of an argument between three decorators. Green paint covered white paint. Red showed through both. Old bolt holes marched down some lengths; others were black underneath where rain had stood between the stacked faces.
Felix surveyed the heap. “Does the color affect the price?”
“Only if you want it to match,” the merchant said.
Tamsin laid two blocks on level ground. The yard worker rolled the first piece onto them. She struck it with the hammer.
A clear knock.
She worked along its length. At an old bolt hole, the sound dulled. She pushed her probe against the grain, felt the yielding wood and marked a cut line well beyond it.
Felix crouched beside her.
“That much?”
“The surface isn’t the end of the damage.”
The next timber had handsome green paint and a soft underside. A third looked terrible but rang clean after one short end came off. She marked that one for a diagonal brace.
The yard worker rolled another onto the blocks. It shifted before settling, and Felix put his good hand out to stop it.
“Hands clear,” Tamsin said.
He pulled back. The worker wedged it with his boot and waited until she had placed a chock.
“I can do a small pressure test,” Felix said. “If I just—”
He stopped. His gaze dropped to the sock over his bandage.
“No. Poor suggestion.”
“Look at the holes instead. Tell me if you find the same spacing.”
He leaned forward without touching the wood.
For the next quarter hour, she tapped and marked while he compared. By the fifth piece, he’d stopped writing descriptions such as reasonable and probably. He called actual measurements, then checked his own marks because writing left-handed had made two figures look like the same small catastrophe.
“These three,” he said at last. “Same holes. Same distance from the edge.”
She laid her rule across them.
He was right. The old stair brackets had used a repeated pattern. With the weakened ends cut off, the sound portions would make a matched brace set without drilling close to any old hole.
“Those are useful,” she said.
Felix straightened, pleased.
“I have an eye for wood.”
“You have an eye for holes.”
“A specialized practice.”
They found the remaining stock behind a stack of short boards. The worker pulled the boards aside while Tamsin marked sound lengths. There was enough, if they cut here rather than paying to carry useless ends across the cable. She drew the cutting list before agreeing to the purchase.
The merchant studied it. “You’ll leave the offcuts?”
“The damaged ones. I want these two sound pieces included.”
He adjusted his price.
Felix frowned. “It’s smaller now.”
“The other half didn’t grow longer,” the merchant said.
Tamsin paid for the pieces she needed. The bargain was still a bargain. It simply had people attached to it who also expected lunch.
A loader arrived with a sling and looked at their chalk marks.
“Bridge job? I’ve a frame that’ll carry the whole lot.”
“Not the bridge,” she said. “Supports at the footing.”
“Everybody says you’re putting it back.”
“Everybody isn’t signing the load test.”
He indicated a broad timber frame leaning against the fence. “Could get your beams up in one lift with that.”
She measured its width. Too wide for the approved cargo rig. Worse, its weight would eat into what the surviving cable could take before they added a single piece of purchased wood.
Felix looked from the frame to the cut list.
“Several boring lifts?”
“Several successful lifts.”
“A category I have recently come to appreciate.”
They hired the loader for the smaller bundles. Tamsin numbered each length and kept matching pieces together. The cutting began with a rasp of teeth through painted wood, revealing clean pale grain beneath.
For a little while, the job was simply satisfying. The bad ends fell away. Useful pieces accumulated. She ran her thumb over a fresh cut and found exactly the sound timber she’d hoped for.
Felix held the notebook open while she entered the lengths.
“Does that mean we won?”
“On wood.”
“I’ll take a narrow victory.”
By the time the first bundle reached the loading point, the sorting had consumed most of the morning’s labor allowance.
Tamsin knew that before she added it. Adding it made the problem stay put on the page instead of following her around as a feeling.
The cable operator checked her bundle marks against his limit. They took one piece out, shifted the remaining weight and tried the balance again. This time the sling hung square.
“Cargo run after the next passenger,” he said. “No passenger with it.”
Felix peered into the valley. “I was going to volunteer my notebook.”
“It can wait its turn.”
While the operator brought the basket back, Tamsin sat on a low stone wall and opened the accounts. She moved the cutting charge into the public materials column and wrote the loading charge beneath it.
The space left for paid hours was small.
Felix sat beside her, carefully enough that she knew his chest still hurt.
“How bad?”
“Enough that we choose what happens first. Not enough that we pretend the contract pays for everything.”
She showed him the figures without inventing a final balance they didn’t yet have. The next fittings needed inspection. Transport could change with wind. Dorr and the potter were still expecting visits.
“I could tell them the public work ran over,” he said.
“Tell them when we can actually come. Give them the choice.”
“They might take their money back.”
“It’s their money until we do the work.”
He studied the page, then held out his hand for the pencil.
His first draft began with unfortunate circumstances. Tamsin crossed it out.
“The storm,” she said.
“Yes. More direct.”
The second promised soon. She crossed that out too.
He wrote a visit window that left room for the support work, then an offer to refund the deposit if the customer couldn’t wait. The potter’s note took less time once he’d stopped trying to make disappointment sound like an unexpected benefit.
A district runner agreed to deliver both for the ordinary fee. Felix paid that from his own purse, watched the runner leave, and sighed.
“I preferred the part where we won on wood.”
Tamsin gave him the separate sheet listing fixings he’d damaged.
“That hasn’t gone away either.”
He looked at her.
She waited.
“You’re very good at keeping things alive,” he said.
The operator waved them back. Across the gap, Pell stood well behind the marked line with his destination tags. Lyra held the first one up for Tamsin to see.
Tamsin checked the knot herself, stepped away and gave the signal.
The bundle rose, settled and traveled slowly over open air.
Nothing cracked. Nothing twisted. Felix didn’t need to hurt himself to keep it there.
“What do you actually need from me when that’s down?” he asked.
She turned to a clean page and drew three observation points.
“Watch these while Jian takes the test load. Call any movement. Don’t decide it’s too small to matter.”
“And if I see something?”
“We stop.”
He nodded and took the list.
On the far landing, the first bundle reached the ground. Pell waited for the hauler to unhook it before approaching with a tag.
Tamsin let herself smile.
Then she saw the second bundle waiting behind her and put the notebook away. Satisfaction was useful. So were the remaining beams.
Felix fetched the tags they had kept on this side. He compared each number to her drawing before handing it over, taking care.
“Lyra’s going to the registrar,” he said. “Mara said she’d meet her here.”
“Does she need either of us?”
“I asked. She said she needed her papers and somebody who remembered what happened. Apparently my memory adds commentary.”
Tamsin checked the next sling. “It does.”
Below the landing, Mara climbed the stair with an empty post case knocking against her hip. She stopped to catch her breath, then looked at the beams.
“Is the bridge coming back?”
“Not today,” Tamsin said.
Mara nodded, disappointed but unsurprised. “I’ll tell the baker. He keeps asking whether to bring his cart.”
“Tell him not yet.”
Felix watched her go to wait by the passenger basket. The pencil had left a dark smear across his good hand.
“Not today is becoming a very expensive sentence.”
Tamsin lifted the second tag. “Cheaper than yes when we haven’t checked.”
He helped her match the number.