The Grandmaster's Gambit

21. Floor Price

[Day-15 (09:20)]

(Hollis's yard, Cinder Road, Sector 9, Alexandria)

"One in six," said the man at the sorting table.

He said it before Kai had finished the question. Kai had got as far as "Mr. Ruddock, I wanted to ask about the Tithe -" and stopped, because the answer had already walked in and sat down.

"Commons, I mean. One in six comes out with a rune. It's better for the heirs, one in three, because they get a sponsor and a coach and somebody else paying. The rest mostly die. A few don't, quite. That's me. Refused, they call it. That's three things, isn't it? That's all of it. Did I miss one? I can say it again, slower."

The yard was a square of cinders behind a tin fence, with a shed at one end. Husk lay on the table in grey lumps the size of fists, like bread that had been burnt and then rained on. Ruddock was sorting it into three baskets with his right hand. His left sleeve was folded up and pinned to his shoulder with a bent nail. He was somewhere in his forties, and he stooped over the table as if it were lower than it was.

He had not looked at Kai's face once. He was looking at Kai's hands.

*Hands first. That's odd. People look at a face, even when they hate it.*

"That's better than I asked for," Kai said. "Thank you."

"It's what you asked in the spring." A lump went into the left-hand basket without Ruddock glancing at it. "Same questions, same order. You said I explained it well, so I've kept it the same. Fifteen hundred to go in. That's the Writ, the keeper's f*e and a week of food. It was fifteen hundred then, too. It's always fifteen hundred. They only change what's in it."

"Why do they do it? If it's one in six, and you pay first."

"Because of the other thing." Ruddock said it fast and flat, as if he had sorted it long ago. "Standing in the road. You said that too. The Tithe or the road, when the next breach comes through the Line. A rune's a wage that doesn't stop. It's a bed, and the Basilica has to patch you, and you're never in Lane Two again. I was twenty-six. I wanted my mother out of the laundry business." Two more lumps went into baskets. "She's out of it now. She can't go back to it, with me like this. That isn't what you asked."

*The road...*

It seemed polite to give him something. Kai put a hand in his coat for a token.

Ruddock's good arm came up across his face. His shoulders folded in towards the empty side, and his head turned away from the hand. It was all done before the hand had cleared the pocket. Then the arm came down, very fast, and he picked up another lump of husk as though that had been the plan.

Kai stood still with the token between two fingers.

*Whats the matter? He flinched before I'd done anything. You flinch late at a stranger, because you wait to see what he does. You flinch early when you know what's coming.*

*Maybe it's every coat. Everyone here's jumpy. No, hang on. He's been watching my hands since I walked in. A jumpy man watches your face. This is a habit, and a habit like that has a teacher.*

*Aeron. Obviously Aeron, who else is in this coat? What did you do to him? You absolute -*

The anger came up quick and had nowhere to go. There was only the coat, and the man who had worn it was somewhere Kai could not reach. He put the anger away, and it did not go cleanly. Then he set the token on the table, well out of reach, where it could be seen to be a token.

"For your time. And I'm sorry."

Ruddock looked at it. He did not pick it up.

"What's it for? I gave you the answers. They're the same answers. Did I get one wrong? I can say it again."

"They were right. It's only for your time."

"Thank you." Ruddock laid his palm flat over the token and left it there, as though it might go off. "Thank you, Mr. Cross."

"You can call me, I don't know. Whatever you called me before."

"Mr. Cross," Ruddock said at once. "Always Mr. Cross."

A laugh went off across the yard like someone dropping a crate of pans down a stair. A broad man in a burnt-orange scarf had come out of the shed, rubbing one eye. A little caged lantern hung at his belt, with a lump of husk in it glowing the dull red of a coal that couldn't be bothered.

"Aeron Cross," he said. "In my yard. Standing up. Are you after work, or lost?"

"Work."

"You've never asked me for work in your life. I'm Hollis, if the head's taken that as well." He looked Kai over with eyes that were still mostly asleep. "I've a haul tonight, husk through the Cinder Gate to the west refinery. Ten crates, forty a head, and my nephew's got the cough. You carry. I talk. That's the whole job."

"Forty."

"Forty. Mind you, the new lad on the gate took sixty off me last time. Sixty! For handling. Since the breach every gate in the sector thinks it's the Outer Line."

"Sixty for what?"

"For standing there with his hand out." Hollis yawned. "Cinder Gate, tenth bell. Bring gloves."

Kai said yes. When he looked back from the fence, Ruddock's palm was still on the token, and his eyes were on the husk.

[Day-15 (22:10)]

(Cinder Gate, west end of Cinder Road, Sector 9, Alexandria)

The Cinder Gate was a gap cut in the old sector wall, with a brick booth bolted to one side. A girder from the breach lay across the road beyond it, so carts were turned back and everything went through on foot.

The crates were heavier than they looked and smelled of cold ash. Kai had the back end of a pole, with Hollis's two hands at the front. They were a pair of lads with the same nose, who said "right" whenever they were spoken to. Ahead of them in the queue stood two women with bundles of lamp wick.

"Refinery stops weighing at midnight," Hollis said, low, over his shoulder. "If we miss the bell it's tomorrow's price, and tomorrow's price is rubbish. So you carry and you smile. If he talks, let me talk."

The booth shutter was half up. Behind the glass sat a grey shape with a pen, lit from below by a lamp. There was no face to see, only a chin and a collar. At the collar a brass clasp had a small brass ledger beside it, and the ledger caught the light each time he turned a page.

On a stool in front sat the warden. He was young and pink round the ears, with a strap-clasp at his collar and a short iron-shod stick across his knees. His coat had been made for somebody wider. He watched the two women pay and go, and he never once looked at the window.

*Strap on the stool, ledger in the glass. Same as the arch. The boy's the junior, and the one in the window is who he answers to.*

A brass plate was nailed to the post. Everyone in the queue looked past it. Kai read it, because it was there and he had nothing else to look at.

> HANDLING OF GOODS IN TRANSIT.

> ONE TOKEN A CRATE. RECEIPT ON REQUEST.

> THE REGISTRY.

*One a crate. Ten crates, so ten. That's cheap. Hollis said sixty last time, so what was the sixty for?*

"Next," said the warden. He tapped the crates with his stick. He did not open a book. "Husk. Ten crates. Handling's forty." He held out one hand, flat and palm up. "Here. To me."

Hollis opened with a laugh. "Forty! Good lad, very good. Let's say twenty and part friends."

The warden looked at the window. "Forty."

*He looked after he said it. Hang on. Was that after?*

"Thirty, then." Hollis's laugh had got smaller. "Thirty, and a bottle for you at Sundial. We're only carrying, friend. There's no margin in forty."

"Forty."

The warden's eyes went to the window again. In the glass the pen kept moving. Kai watched the pink ears and the flat hand.

*Plate says ten. He wants forty, and no book. A f*e goes in a book, that's what the little ledger's for. So maybe the old one sent him out for his tea money. The boy does the shouting, the senior sits there. No. If the old man sent him, he'd look before he spoke, to check. Or he wouldn't look at all.*

*He looks after. Every number. He's checking the old man didn't hear.*

*So it isn't the Registry's forty. It's his. And the only thing in his way is a man in a window who isn't listening.*

"Thirty-five," Hollis said. His voice had gone high. "Please. The refinery bell, my lads have been on their feet since the ninth, I lose the whole haul if I lose the hour. Please. Thirty-five, and I'll owe you."

The warden let it sit. Then he smiled, the first time he had looked as if he was enjoying himself.

"Since you're begging, it's sixty. Or I open every crate. Husk gets graded at the gate, and that's an hour. And I write you a note for the delay, and you're in the book."

*Oh, that's bad. Sixty's more than I get for the night. And a note's my name in a Registry book, after Orme and after Voss. I can't have a name in a book.*

Hollis stopped laughing. He put his hand to the purse at his belt, and the hand shook. The lads said nothing, and behind the glass the pen went on scratching.

*He's going to pay it. Hollis, don't. The boy can't write sixty down, there's no sixty on the plate. So it all depends on the old one not looking up.*

*Fine. So I make him look. Receipt on request. It's in brass. If I ask for one where the old man can hear, what does the boy do? Writes ten, and he's lost his fifty. Writes sixty, and he's got a lot to explain. Says no, and he's refusing a plate in front of his boss. Nothing he can do comes to sixty.*

Kai put down his end of the pole. He took ten tokens out of his pocket and held them up. He did not hold them out to the warden. He held them up towards the lit window.

"Sorry, officer, I'm new. It's one token a crate, it says on the plate, and we've ten crates. So that's ten." His voice was polite and clear, and it carried. "I'd like to pay that, please. And I'd like the receipt. It says on request. In the carrier's name. Hollis, H-O-L-L-I-S."

The warden's smile went out.

"You don't pay at the window," he said. "You pay me. Here."

"Of course. You." Kai kept his hand where it was. "And you'll write it down, then? Where the clerk can see?"

The pen in the booth had stopped.

The shutter rose a hand's width. The grey shape did not lean forward. A dry voice said, to the road, "Warden. The receipt book is on the shelf by your left knee."

The warden's ears went from pink to white. He found the book and opened it. He wrote for a long time, in a small hand, with his tongue between his teeth.

> Haulage, husk, ten crates. Ten tokens. Carrier: Hollis.

He took the tokens out of Kai's palm like someone handing back something hot. His shoulders came down an inch. Of the men at the booth he was the only one who looked relieved.

He tore off the slip and shut the book. The brass covers clapped together like a small trap, and the shutter came down on the lamp.

*He wasn't scared of me. He wasn't even scared of Hollis. He was scared of a chin in a window.*

"Through," said the warden to the road.

They were over the girder and half a street along before Hollis laughed. He put his end of the pole down on the cobbles and laughed with his hands on his knees, and it sounded like the whole tower of crates going over.

"Ten. Do you know what I paid last time?"

"Sixty."

"Sixty! He took it in his sleeve." Hollis wiped his eye. "Who taught you that?"

"It was on the plate."

"Nobody reads the plate." He looked at Kai for a good while. His eyes had woken up. They were less friendly now, and much more interested. "Eleven years I've been through gates, and I've never once bothered read the plates because the bastards make rules on the fly."

At the refinery, under the yellow light of the weighing shed, Hollis paid him forty tokens, counting them out twice with his lips moving. He did not offer the ten back. He said he would have paid sixty, so Kai had saved him fifty, and fifty was something he would remember. He said it as though remembering were a kind of payment.

*He'll remember it. Instead of the ten. Lovely.*

Asking would turn a clever thing into a small one. Kai put the tokens in his pocket.

"Binding night," said Hollis, locking the shed. "Another haul, forty. Bring the plate."

[Day-16 (00:50)]

(Aeron's room, Chandler Court, Sector 9, Alexandria)

Oren was asleep on his blanket roll under the window, boots on, face to the door. He had left the stove banked and a bowl on the table with a rag over it. Someone had chalked EAT on the rag, in the same hand as on the door.

Kai ate standing up, and then he sat down with the tokens.

*Two seventy. That's two forty and thirty from tonight, ten out and forty in. Fifteen hundred, so twelve thirty to find. Thirty-six days.*

*Rubble's four a day, if the foreman doesn't dock me for the rib. Thirty-six days at four is one forty-four. Hollis does forty a haul, say one a week if he remembers I'm alive. That's two hundred. Two seventy, one forty-four, two hundred. Six-ten, near enough. Six hundred and ten by Quarter Day, with nothing going wrong.*

*So nine hundred short, and that's a good month. A month where no one dies and the Rampart turns up on time during a breach.*

The pipe in the wall ticked twice. Oren said something in his sleep, a word with no ends on it, and turned his face into the blanket.

*It's not the work, then. It was never going to be the work. Somebody's got to pay me for something that isn't carrying.*

Kai kept his voice down. He said it to the pawn on the sill, because the pawn was the nearest thing in the room that didn't breathe.

"It's going to have to be crooked."

It sounded worse out loud than it had in his head.

"Mm?" said Oren from the floor.

"Nothing. Go to sleep."

"Eat the thing."

"I ate it."

Oren was asleep again by the end of the sentence. Kai sat on with the tokens in a heap in front of him. He turned over who in Sector 9 might sell something, and who might buy it, and how much of the difference a person could take without being written down. Then he found the chalk on the sill and wrote *Hollis: who buys husk?* on the table leg, low, where Oren wouldn't see it.