The map seller promised Felix a direct road, a recent survey and freedom from uncertainty.
“I’ll take the last one separately,” Felix said.
“Comes with the map.”
“Most things do until you buy them.”
Five days of ordinary travel had improved his appreciation for ordinary roads. He liked their habit of remaining underneath the wagon. He liked their tendency to lead toward a place with lunch. He liked them less when three people used the same road name to mean three different bends of a valley.
The relay town offered all three interpretations on painted boards.
The seller had a fourth, rendered in red ink.
“Licensed commercial approach,” he said, tapping a bright line. “Updated this season. Every crossing marked.”
Barnaby settled on the end of the stall. Lyra stood beside Felix with a narrow folder of certified extracts. Her satchel remained closed. The town square was busy enough without displaying the evidence that had already attracted a knife party.
Felix gave the seller the old depot designation.
“Freight?”
“A component shipment. We need to find the receiving route.”
“Then this is the one.”
The man lifted a large sheet from a rack. The red line entered through a ridge cut, crossed a channel and reached a square surrounded by attractive little circles.
“Those are?” Felix asked.
“Services.”
“Which services?”
“Annotations are separate.”
Barnaby looked at the circles. “The unannotated traveler is expected to discover whether he has purchased a lunch or a blacksmith.”
“Both are useful,” the seller said.
Felix found the issue date. Then the revision stamp. Below a copied tower symbol, a smaller note gave an earlier survey period.
“These don’t match.”
“No.”
The cheerful agreement took some satisfaction out of the discovery.
The seller turned the map so the bottom legend faced him. “Base measurements. Route license. Copy date. Three different things. A hill doesn’t grow newer whenever the office replaces its stamp.”
Felix read the legend.
“Fair.”
Lyra made a small mark on her own note sheet rather than correcting the purchased map they hadn’t purchased.
He followed the approach back from the depot. Their older record referred to a service branch before the channel. Here the red road continued straight through an area of pleasantly blank hillside.
“Where’s S-eight?”
“Not licensed for commercial approach.”
“Closed?”
“Not licensed.”
“Those aren’t the same answer.”
“They’re the same answer if you have six loaded wagons.”
Under the display board, a corner of brown paper showed a line running into the blank space. Felix pointed. The seller pulled it out with the resigned air of a man whose customers had begun browsing the cellar through a crack in the floor.
“Older copy. Superseded.”
Its crossing was less elaborately drawn. The service branch was present.
So was a small hook-shaped symbol near its end.
“Store or anchorage,” the seller said. “Depending on period.”
“Annotations?”
“Included on that one. Nobody pays extra to know where a service store used to be.”
“You’ve met us,” Lyra said.
He smiled and gave them a price for both sheets.
Felix thought of the money spent on the clinic delivery. He would have liked the difference to feel less real here, with the useful object a hand’s breadth away.
“Comparison first,” he said. “Your time and access to the source copies. Then we choose what we can afford.”
The seller named a smaller fee.
Lyra asked whether it included a short copied extract from the old branch if they didn’t buy the whole sheet. They settled that before Barnaby could begin evaluating whether a hook counted as an annotation or a separate species of fraud.
The man brought out a tied roll and cleared a dry space on his table.
Felix placed small wooden weights on the corners. He had learned something from Jian about wind. Jian would be unbearable if told.
A boy arrived carrying a damp sheet in both hands. He wanted the seller to settle an argument with his father about a boundary stream.
“The stream moved,” the seller said.
“Father says it can’t.”
“Tell your father to discuss it with the stream.”
He spread the damp paper on a drying rack and asked the boy to bring the other boundary marker’s position, not merely the conclusion he preferred. Felix glanced at Lyra. She had developed a deeply irritating expression of agreement.
“Don’t,” he said.
“I haven’t.”
“You’re preparing.”
They compared the revisions.
On another local map, a closed ferry remained visible under a diagonal mark. A note gave the closure date and the crossing used instead. The service branch on the new survey had neither mark nor note. Its label disappeared from the key as well as the hillside.
“Could the road have gone?” Lyra asked.
“Could have,” the seller said. “I’ve never walked it.”
“Then how do you know this supersedes it?”
“For the commercial route. Which is what nearly everyone asks me about.”
Barnaby bent over the neighboring map. “Your ferry convention is consistent here.”
“My convention? I copy the surveys.”
“A reasonable defense. I shall reserve the accusation for the surveyor.”
The seller took back a sheet Barnaby’s claw had approached too closely.
“Reserve it without puncturing the evidence.”
Felix traced the old branch with a finger held above the ink. It left the accepted road before the damaged crossing described in their shipment reference. At the hook, a second mark indicated a cut stair descending toward the former service area.
It was a way to ask the next question. He liked it immediately, which was a reason to check it.
They bought the old branch extract and the newer commercial sheet, with the agreed comparison fee credited toward the purchase. Lyra folded the receipt into their expense book.
“Have you got a map showing where the maps are wrong?” Felix asked.
“Most popular item I’d ever sell. Out of date before the ink dried.”
Barnaby regarded Felix. “You would still require the annotations.”
The seller gave them directions to a public lookout above the freight yard. From there they could see the tower alignment used on the base survey. For the old stair, he suggested asking the carriers rather than climbing a ridge to prove a line existed.
Felix approved of an investigation that included directions away from climbing.
The public lookout had a waist-high rail and a brass arrow that rotated when Felix leaned on it. He moved his elbow away.
“A directional device,” Barnaby observed.
“Currently pointing at my lunch.”
Lyra found the fixed stone mark beneath the arrow’s loose mounting. She aligned the map against that instead. Felix held the sheet flat while she sighted along the ridge. The tower looked smaller than its painted symbol, and considerably farther away than his first hopeful estimate.
A map could reduce half a day’s walking to the width of his thumb. It was a useful trick until somebody mistook the thumb for the walk.
At the lookout, the tower stood on the expected side of the ridge. Below its western face, a pale notch interrupted the scrub. Lyra compared it with the extract, turning the page until she had the proper bearing.
“A cut, at least.”
“Not necessarily our cut,” Felix said.
Barnaby looked at him.
“I’m learning. Don’t make it unpleasant.”
They returned to the freight yard, where an older carrier was persuading two younger men to stop measuring a crate from opposite ends of different rules.
She listened to their question while taking both rules away.
“Service eight? That stopped being a passenger route before my eldest was born.”
Felix lowered the extract slightly.
“Maintenance access?”
“Longer. We sent gear down after the passenger boards changed.”
“How much longer?”
She considered. Then she named a season and a company schedule that Lyra wrote down separately from the claim itself.
“Were the goods going to the depot?”
“To the service landing. After that I wasn’t carrying them. You want the receiving book, not me.”
She showed them where the former route marker had been fixed to the freight-yard wall. The stone retained two square holes. A later board covered the lower one, advertising winter storage.
Felix had an absurd urge to peel off the board and see if the answer was underneath.
Instead he thanked her.
One of the younger men asked whether he wanted a crate measured.
“Apparently I have a reputation for complicated questions.”
“Length’s easy,” the carrier said. “It’s the other two that get them.”
Back at the convoy’s rented planning table, Nessa listened while unloading figures arrived from three directions. She gave Felix her full attention only after making sure a warehouse runner knew which wagon needed the empty bins.
He spread the two maps.
“There’s an older approach.”
“Can my wheels use it?”
“Unknown.”
“Then they aren’t going to.”
Nessa tapped a bend where the old line pinched between two contour marks.
“That could be a gate. Or a turn tighter than my axle. Or a stair marked by someone who assumed everyone could see the stair.”
“Yes.”
“Last spring a customer showed me a beautiful shortcut. His map was accurate. It simply didn’t mention that the road had been built for goats.”
“Did he get his shortcut?”
“He got to walk beside the goats. We took the long road and met him for supper.”
Jian would enjoy that story, Felix decided. Perhaps he could arrange never to repeat it.
He had prepared a longer presentation. The short answer left him holding a very elaborate opening gesture.
“I wasn’t asking you to take the wagons.”
“Good. Now tell me what you are asking.”
They found a separation point on the licensed road, where a local party could seek the old service access without dragging commercial cargo into an experiment. The map supplied a branch designation, not a condition report. They would need provisions and someone who actually knew the changed ground.
Lyra glanced at the expense book. Felix kept his proposed guide budget inside the smaller sum.
Jian arrived with a weather notice from the yard. Strong winds were expected before the next long crossing. He studied the stair symbol and asked about exposed sections and available retreat space.
“Those go on the questions list,” Felix said.
“How long is the list?”
“Longer than the direct road I was offered.”
Barnaby copied both route labels, taking care to keep their different dates beside them. A future witness might remember one and never have seen the other.
Felix circled the blank section on the newer sheet.
“So the new map is wrong.”
“It leaves out a route we still need explained,” Lyra said.
He looked at the red commercial line, then at Nessa’s wheels beyond the open door.
“The new map answers a different question. And leaves out a route we need explained.”
“Better.”
“I’m charging you for the extra words.”
She slid the expense book toward him.
“Put them in the proper column.”
He wrote the dates and the carrier’s limited account in plain language. The colored sheet became much less beautiful and considerably more useful.
Their old coupler had spent years somewhere between removal and later warehouse transfer. Now there was a service landing to ask about, and a receiving book that might separate what had actually moved from what somebody had copied.
He could work with that.
He also wrote the unanswered question in a separate box. Not a conclusion waiting for someone to agree with him. A question with a place, a record and a route that might still exist beyond the red ink.
He could almost hear Vivienne asking which of those he had actually tested. For once, his answer would take less than a defensive paragraph.
For now, the papers lay flat, the wagons stayed on a real road, and nobody expected him to carry anything.
Outside, uniformed office runners crossed the square carrying the first weather restrictions. Orren watched them from beside the wagon, one hand on the bag he kept within reach.
Felix rolled the maps with the older branch on top.