At noon, the sun broke through the grey river mist. It cast long, sharp shadows across the Fish Gate boat ramp.
Tomas stood before the iron-grated window of Master Kessel, the licensed pawn-factor of the South Ward. Kessel, an ancient man with a velvet skullcap and three magnifying loupes mounted on a steel spectacle frame, held Emmet Reed’s silver buckle beneath an animal fat lamp. He scraped a tiny corner of the back with an agate touchstone, applied a drop of aqua fortis from a glass vial. Then he watched the clear acid remain bright and clean.
“Sterling silver,” Kessel murmured, his dry voice rattling in his throat like gravel down a chute. “Fourteen ounces of pure metal. Hammered by Master Hallam of the Silversmiths’ Row before the war. A fine piece, Tomas. It’s a pity to melt an all-valley porter prize.”
“Don’t melt it, Master Kessel,” Tomas said. “Hold it on a ninety-day pledge. I’ll redeem it with interest when I return.”
Kessel glanced at Tomas’s face, saw the flat, unbending look in the young man’s eyes, and sighed. “Six crowns upon pledge. Seven crowns and two silver coins to redeem within three moons. Take it or leave it on the counter.”
“Seven crowns upon pledge,” Tomas said firmly. “The silver weight alone is worth six crowns and four silver coins at the mint. You know my father’s mark, Kessel. He never defaulted on an iron debt in thirty years.”
The old pawnbroker grunted, reached into his iron-bound chest. Then he counted out seven silver crowns onto the oak ledge. They were worn coins from the old kingdom, their edges smoothed by decades of trade. But the silver was sound and heavy.
Tomas pocketed the silver, took his pawn ticket. Then he walked down to the chandler’s row near the Timber Basin.
He didn’t buy weapons. A porter with an iron sword was merely a porter who looked like a clumsy target for footpads. He bought tools of his own trade. Fifty feet of three-strand tarred manila rope, tested to six hundredweight of dead strain. A block of hard sheep fat mixed with pine resin for waterproofing leather. Two pairs of thick wool socks knit from raw, unwashed sheep’s fleece. A six-inch horn-cased grease pot. A stout ash quarterstaff six feet long, iron-shod at both ends with square ferrules. And a flat tin box containing two dozen dry birch splints, a piece of sulfur match-paper, and three sticks of hard slate chalk.
For food, he bought what river wagon drivers carried. Two pounds of hard salt-beef that tasted of salt water and woodsmoke, a round of aged skim-milk cheese as hard as a brick. A sack of very thirsty grey pease that could be chewed dry or boiled in river water.
He walked past the tanners’ drying yard, where hides of steer and horse hung from cedar racks like stiff brown boards. He smelled of alum and stale urine. At the far end of the boat ramp. There, the river road turned into the levee embankment, stood the timber shed of Master Corven, the unsworn notary.
Nessa Vale was already there. She sat on a dry cedar baulk with her land-mapper’s instruments neatly arranged on a clean strip of canvas. She had traded her working smock for a heavy, dark-green wool cloak with heavy leather shoulders, patched at the elbows with greased sailcloth. On her back was a narrow, oilcloth-wrapped pack holding her three-jointed levelling staff, her brass land-mapper’s chains, and a small pine case of drawing instruments. Her brass sound horn hung from its silver chain against her collar, gleaming in the pale sunlight.
Beside her sat Master Corven, a man with ink-stained glasses who charged two coppers to witness agreements between dock workers who couldn’t write their names.
“The terms are ready, Tomas,” Nessa said. She pointed to a sheet of rough grey rag paper resting on Corven’s portable writing desk. She looked at his lips as he approached.
Tomas stepped close so she could see his face clearly. “Read the lines aloud, Master Corven.”
The notary cleared his throat, running an ink-stained finger down the lines:
“Agreement of Independent Guidance and Topographical Service. Between Tomas Reed, Porter, of the first part, and Nessa Vale, Licensed Land-mapper, of the second part.
“Clause One: The land-mapper agrees to guide the carrier from the South Gate of Bellwether to the village of Fen Hollow by the lower levee road, providing sound navigational transit and depth checks of flooded terrain.
“Clause Two: Remuneration is fixed at six silver crowns. Three crowns payable in advance upon signing. Three crowns payable upon formal delivery and witnessed receipt of article LC-039-VOSS at Fen Hollow.
“Clause Three: The carrier agrees to indemnify the land-mapper against the loss, damage, or seizure of one brass sound horn, value four crowns. One three-jointed levelling staff, value two crowns. And one brass measuring chain, value three crowns, should such damage occur through actions arising directly from the cargo or town interference.
“Clause Four: Either party may end this transit upon thirty minutes’ notice should violent hostilities occur, retaining earned wages to the hour of termination.”
Tomas took three of his seven silver crowns from his coat pocket and laid them on the writing desk. The heavy silver clicked against the dry wood.
“The three crowns advance,” Tomas said. “Clause Three is accepted. Clause Four is accepted.”
Nessa looked at the coins. She picked up one, weighed it in her palm, bit the milled rim to test the metal, and nodded once. She dipped the notary’s iron pen into the stone inkpot, signed her name in a sharp, sharp-angled script that looked like land-mapper’s hatching—Nessa Vale, Land-mapper—and handed the pen to Tomas.
Tomas signed beneath her: Tomas Reed, Carrier.
The notary pressed his lead seal into a wafer of red wax on the margin, collected his two copper pennies, and handed each of them a witnessed copy.
“The road is bad, Tomas,” Nessa said, tucking her copy into her inner oilcloth pocket. She raised her brass horn to her right ear, pointing the flared bell toward him. “The morning tide pushed two feet of brown water over the Lower Dike. If we walk the road before two o’clock, we can cross the Willow Sluice before the evening flood backs up against the ruined bridge. Look at the drainage ditches—the reeds are leaning southward, which means the upper marshes are emptying into the lower basin faster than the under-road drains can draw.”
Tomas checked his boots, testing the birch thin wedge on his left heel against the stone curb. The leather was greased, the hobnails bit cleanly into the wet wood. His haul-strap was snug across his chest.
“I have fifty feet of tarred manila and dry pease,” Tomas said. “And the box is wrapped in three coats of oilcloth.”
“Then we move,” Nessa said. “And remember: when we pass the marsh gate, keep your eyes on the waterline. Silt doesn’t warn you before it takes your knees.”
Tomas shouldered his pack. The cedar box rested against his lower back, secured inside his hemp haul-strap so the weight was borne by his hips and chest rather than his arms. In his right hand, he held his iron-shod ash staff.
“Lead the way, Land-mapper,” he said.
They walked out through the South Gate of Bellwether.
The city wall here was eight feet thick, built of rough limestone blocks that cried water and grew long beards of green river moss. The guards at the gate were two elderly city watchmen in rusted iron caps, leaning on billhooks and warming their hands over a fire bowl of damp peat. They didn’t even glance at the porter and the land-mapper as they passed beneath the dripping drop-gate. Hundreds of laborers walked south every day to dig ditches, cut reeds, or gather willow osiers for the basket weavers.
Beyond the gate, the paved stones of the King’s Road ended suddenly, swallowed by forty years of unchecked river silt.
The landscape opened before them: a vast, grey, drowned valley where the northern river had spread its mud across seventy square miles of rich farmland. Dead apple orchards stood in two feet of stale water, their grey, moss-covered branches reaching into the sky like the bones of drowned cattle. Ruined stone farmhouses, their straw roof roofs long collapsed and their walls choked with black water-weeds, stood like islands among the drainage channels.
In the distance, three miles to the south, the brown ribbon of the main river surged toward the coast, swollen with mountain runoff. He carried tree trunks and clumps of torn marsh peat on its yellow foam.
Nessa stopped on the crest of the earthen levee. She pulled her sound horn from her ear, pointed her ash levelling rod toward a narrow, raised ridge of clay that wound through the flooded orchards. Then she looked at Tomas.
“Keep five paces behind me,” she said, her voice cutting through the damp wind. “Step where I step. If my rod sinks more than two feet, we turn back and find a gravel ridge. And don’t drop the box, Tomas. Swamp mud doesn’t give back what falls into it.”
Tomas adjusted his hemp strap. The cedar box rested cool and solid against his spine.
“I won’t drop it,” he said.
They stepped down from the levee into the cold, gray silt.