Barnaby placed his map on the table with the northern edge facing north.
Tamsin turned it so she could read it.
He turned it back.
“The labels don’t move the stairs,” she said.
“They establish a consistent frame of reference.”
She placed a newer district diagram beside it, followed by a grease-marked sketch borrowed from the haulers. None of the three agreed about the lower landing.
Barnaby inspected the sketch. It called the eastern passage Back Way and identified a roof by the phrase red, mostly.
“This has no approval mark.”
“The man who drew it walked there this morning.”
“That doesn’t make him a cartographer.”
“No. It makes him less likely to send us into a wall.”
Tamsin tapped his formal route, which continued through the present washhouse store.
Barnaby examined the date. He remembered the official who’d approved it, including the man’s objection to abbreviated compass points. Unfortunately, he could not remember anyone mentioning the washhouse extension.
He brought his head closer to the current drawing.
“An alteration should have been registered.”
“Perhaps it was. We still need to get tools to the lower workshops without taking three flights through the market.”
Pell was sorting the remaining destination tags at the other end of the bench. He leaned over a pile.
“That’s Stair Seven.”
Barnaby followed his finger.
“The Seventh Service Descent.”
“No. Stair Seven. It’s on the wall.”
“The proper designation—”
“If I get it wrong in the proper words, do I get more marks?”
Tamsin took the measuring rule out of the space between them.
“Show me. Both of you. Same place.”
Barnaby indicated the landing on his plan. Pell pointed farther down on the newer diagram.
The positions did not match.
“They count from the bottom,” Pell said.
Barnaby looked at the numbers again. His map began at the top. The modern diagram began at the district terrace, where an ordinary worker was more likely to start.
He folded his wings against his sides.
“I haven’t checked the present markings.”
Nobody laughed. That made admitting it less unpleasant than he’d expected.
Pell offered to show them.
Tamsin looked out at the weather, then toward the waiting cargo.
“I need to check the turn with the trolley anyway. You stay where I tell you. No climbing past a barrier because you can see the number better.”
Pell nodded with the unnecessary speed of someone hoping agreement would shorten the preparation.
It did not.
At the landing, his mother checked his coat fastening and waited through her own crossing before he entered the basket. Barnaby flew alongside, keeping enough distance not to interfere with the cable.
His adjusted wing joint moved smoothly. He checked the return wind before settling on the academy rail.
The basket came in carrying Pell alone. The boy unfastened his harness under the operator’s eye and stepped onto sound boards.
“You don’t pay,” Pell said to Barnaby.
“I provide my own transport.”
“Can we charge you for landing?”
“Not without providing a service.”
Pell looked thoughtfully at the bird droppings on a nearby post.
Barnaby moved to another rail before any enterprise could develop.
They descended the district stair. A pair of workers carrying a rolled mat stopped to let Tamsin bring the empty hand trolley past. She thanked them and angled it against the wall while a woman climbed with a basket on her head.
This was the delay the sketch meant to avoid. There was no spare width for a second load, and anybody stopping to change hands blocked everybody behind.
At the next landing, Pell pointed to a painted seven.
Tamsin tested the rail before allowing him forward. Barnaby flew to the wall and tilted his head.
Beneath the modern white numeral, older dark paint showed through. He could make out the bottom of a different number and the beginning of a formal service designation.
“Turn the diagram,” he said.
Tamsin held it up.
He compared the wall to the marked landing, then to the ink line he remembered from his own map.
“Same landing. Renumbered.”
Pell grinned.
“Stair Seven.”
“Presently.”
“For all the time I’ve been using it.”
Barnaby allowed the point to stand.
The service ledge branched behind the lower workshops. Its first turn was hidden by a stack of empty bins. Tamsin moved one far enough to see the ground beneath, checked the tread and pushed the trolley through without a load.
One wheel caught at the narrow corner.
Pell opened his mouth.
His mother held up a finger before he could offer to pull from the other side.
She backed the trolley out, measured the turn and folded its handle down. The second attempt cleared.
“That’ll take tools,” she said. “Not our long brace timber.”
Barnaby flew along the ledge to inspect the next visible section. Three stone steps led down to a timber walk. Beyond them, one board was missing, leaving a dark slot beside a shuttered workshop.
He landed on the stone.
“Gap. Right side after the three steps.”
Tamsin approached without Pell and examined it. The remaining width would take a careful adult with a modest load, but nobody should discover the hole by putting a trolley wheel into it.
She marked the edge with a spare tag and took a charcoal rubbing of the nearby workshop number.
Pell read it back from where he’d been told to wait.
“Twenty-four.”
“Good. Stay there.”
Barnaby couldn’t see whether the supports beneath the walk were sound. Flying over them provided a view, not a load test. He recorded the missing board and left the unseen supports unclaimed.
They continued as far as a little lower court where racks of cloth stood behind a wall. There was room to set down a toolbox without trapping somebody on a stair.
Tamsin checked the customer’s entrance against the job slip.
“Drying yard. That’s the carry we needed.”
A woman at the racks lifted a dripping shirt and watched the trolley emerge.
“You bringing something through?”
“Tools later,” Tamsin said. “Checking the way first.”
The woman pointed her peg at a door standing open against the wall. “That stays clear. Laundry goes out while customers are coming in. They all think their own basket is the only basket.”
Tamsin moved the trolley away from the doorway. Barnaby added the clear space to the sketch. His old map marked the whole court as a receiving area, which was technically broad enough to include laundry and practically useless if everybody interpreted it as somewhere to park.
Pell spotted the small, badly painted yellow arrow on the wall.
“That’s the delivery turn.”
Barnaby followed it toward the bins. “It points back uphill.”
“So people can leave.”
The woman shook the shirt out and pegged it beside a row of larger ones. “Some need telling.”
Tamsin tested the trolley’s folded handle once more, then opened it in the clear corner. There was enough space to do that without striking cloth or blocking the door.
Barnaby noted the change in width, the arrow and the place to unfold. The woman went back to her washing. She had supplied three corrections without once wondering whether his map possessed an approval mark.
He chose not to ask her opinion on the subject at all.
The return route took less time because they knew which bins concealed the turn. Tamsin pushed the empty trolley. Pell carried the rolled diagram. Barnaby followed above the wall, keeping the mapped places aligned with the physical ones.
At the academy landing, he dictated the revision while Tamsin wrote.
“Seventh Service Descent, present district designation Stair Seven. Take the branch behind the storage bins.”
“Way behind the bins,” Pell said.
“That isn’t a formal name.”
Tamsin looked up from the page. “It’s what the hauler will ask for.”
Barnaby considered the grease-marked sketch. It had been right about the turning point, and his approved map had been wrong about the wall.
“Include both,” he said.
Pell’s smile became intolerably broad.
“I have not approved a naming authority,” Barnaby added.
“Of course not,” Tamsin said, writing.
On Solitude, Felix was still using the stool as a chair. He asked whether they had discovered an alternate bridge.
“No,” Tamsin said. “A shorter carry after the crossing.”
“I’ll try to contain my unreasonable expectations.”
He took the route sheet and read it before handing it back. Barnaby appreciated that. People often requested maps and then relied on the nearest person to become one.
At the workshop table, they placed the old maintenance index beside the updated route. Barnaby wanted the registration entry for the washhouse alteration. It should have explained which older service route the extension had blocked.
He turned to the reference.
The numbering jumped.
He checked the index again. The page should have come between the lower approach drawing and the buried service housing notes. Instead, a thin strip of paper remained beside the binding.
“Water,” he said. “The cupboard leaked.”
Tamsin leaned over it.
“That edge?”
The neighboring pages were stained and feathered. Their torn corners wandered with the grain. The strip at the binding was straight.
Barnaby brought the lamp closer, then moved it back before its heat touched the paper.
“Cut,” he said.
Pell counted the page numbers aloud. He stopped at the missing one and looked at his mother.
“Did somebody steal it?”
“Somebody took it out,” she said. “We don’t know why.”
Barnaby’s memory supplied the old cupboard, its swollen lower door and a familiar hand turning the key. It supplied no missing page. He waited for more and received only the uncomfortable awareness of waiting.
He did not invent the rest.
Felix stood beside the bench, supporting his right arm.
“What would have been there?”
Barnaby read the index entry aloud. An alteration reference between the bridge approach and buried service housing. Not the component specification itself, not a complete route beneath the island. Enough to make the absence specific.
“When was it cut?” Felix asked.
“I can’t establish that.”
“Who had access?”
“More people than I remember.”
Felix nodded without offering him the mercy of pretending that was a better answer than it was.
Tamsin flattened the binding gently so the straight edge showed. “Could’ve been taken to a workbench. Could’ve been kept out of the register on purpose. Preserve this before anybody decides which.”
Pell reached toward the strip, then withdrew his hand.
“We don’t pull it out.”
“Correct,” Barnaby said.
He copied the surrounding references onto a fresh sheet. The work calmed him. Here was a thing he could check, letter against letter, without pretending he remembered what no longer existed on the page.
When he finished, he made one more route copy for the workshop wall. He included the missing board, the folded trolley handle and the waiting space by the lower court.
The cable crossing remained a separate instruction at the top. One passenger at a time. The white gap between the islands remained white.
Tamsin read the route from beginning to end. Pell checked the painted numbers and corrected the shape of the turn behind the bins. Barnaby made the correction without arguing about the boy’s pencil grip.
Felix pinned the completed sheet beside the paid job slips.
“I could follow that,” he said.
“Please do,” Barnaby replied.
Tamsin set a toolbox by the door for the drying-yard visit. The trolley would stay folded until the lower turn. It was a small improvement, but no one would have to carry that toolbox through the busiest part of the stairs.
Barnaby closed the damaged index and put it where the binding would not be crushed. Beside it lay the survey permit and Felix’s rough drawing, three questions sharing a table without yet supplying one answer.
He spread his wings.
“My maintenance interval begins now.”
Felix looked at the route sheet, then at the toolbox.
“We’ll manage.”
Barnaby flew to his dry perch above the workshop door. Below him, Tamsin checked the job address against the new map and found it without asking.