The Grandmaster's Gambit

22. The Market's Ledger

[Day-19 (18:00)]

(Market Row, Sector 9, Alexandria)

The Row lit its lamps from the east end, one stall at a time. Each one burned a little yellower than the last, and by the time the light reached the Rest corner it was the colour of weak tea.

The middle of the road was clear, and Kai walked down it with a bag of barley and his hands in his pockets. The rubble gang started at seven now, so Senna had moved his look to the lamp hour. Hollis's second haul had slipped to the end of the week, because the buyer was off somewhere. Two stalls in, every one of them seemed to know him. None of them said so. A hand moved a scoop, or a head turned half an inch, to make room for a customer coming up the line.

"You're late," said the plum woman.

Marta Olu had purple to the wrists and a stool she never used. She held out two dried plums on a leaf before he had stopped walking.

"First lamp, two plums, and you tell me they're too sweet. Every day since I took this stall. You've missed the first lamp by a street."

*Two plums, every day. Somebody's been keeping my diary.*

"Are they too sweet?"

"Yes. Sweet's what a plum is." She looked quite pleased. "A token."

He paid the token and ate one. It was far too sweet. "Too sweet," he said, and she laughed behind her hand, as though a sum had come out right.

Three stalls on, a man was filling a can from a barrel. He had a small gold lamp inside a ring pinned at his shoulder, and he did not look up. A ledger lay open on the barrel lid with a lead weight on one page. Garrow sold oil to half the Row, and no one ever argued with his prices.

"You still owe me for the lamp oil," he said, to the can.

Kai stopped.

*Lamp oil. All right. Hold on. He's not looking at me. If somebody owed me money, I'd be looking at them. I'd want to see it land.*

On the barrel stood a row of cans, each with a band of blue paint round the neck.

*Blue. And the can by my stove has a red band, the paint all cracked. I've been filling Aeron's lamp out of that for two weeks. I noticed it the first night. I notice everything in that room, I've got nothing else to do in it. So it came from another stall. The other end of the Row, probably. East. Which means Aeron bought his oil somewhere else.*

*Unless he bought it here as well. No. A man's loyal to his oil. Everyone I've met is.*

The ledger was the other thing. Every page was the colour of old tea, with a thumb mark in every corner. The page under the lead weight was white and clean.

*So he's got a new page for a debt that's never been touched. That's not an owing. That's a prop.*

*Right. Then it's a test. What's he testing? If I pay, I'm soft. If I shout, I'm Aeron. If I say I don't owe him, I'm a liar, or a man who's forgotten, and the head's gone worse. Is there a fourth one? There's always a fourth one. Something that isn't paying, shouting or arguing.*

*Ask to see it. Make him do the work.*

"Show me the page," said Kai.

Garrow looked up. He kept the can tilted, still pouring, and he did it for about three seconds. Then he laughed, a short bark that went off like a cork.

"Wrong colour, wasn't it? And wrong end of the Row, I should've known." He turned on his stool towards the stall across the way. "Marta. You owe me a plum."

"I owe you nothing," said Marta. "I had him paying."

"Berit had him shouting. She's lost, too." Garrow wiped his hands. "Nobody had him asking. Half the Row's been betting on you for a week. Soft, or clever, or still hit on the head. Take your oil, it's on the house. I've never seen a man so annoyed to be let off."

*Paying and sulking, or shouting. No wonder they were all watching.*

Pleased, that was what he was. It was a daft thing to be pleased about, a bet on a can of oil. He let himself be, for about as long as it took to walk to the Rest corner.

Senna's lamp was lit, and the barrow stood where it always did, with the basin and the tin kettle on its spirit flame. She sat on her stool with a boy's hand held out flat in her lap. The boy was perhaps nine, with a graze on his chin and a tin lid still stuck in his other fist. Across his palm ran a cut as long as a finger.

"Look at the kettle," she said. "Tell me when it boils. It'll itch in a minute. That's the good part."

Her sleeves were rolled. The bruises ran up both arms from the wrist, old ones going yellow and new ones coming up purple, with the green showing faintly under them in curve after curve. She looked less grey than she had on the second day. She looked about as tired as everyone else on the Row.

She lifted two fingers above the cut and drew a slow circle in the air, no wider than a saucer. Then the green came up and ran down her wrist into the boy's palm. The edges of the cut drew together as if somebody were doing up a coat.

Kai's eyes stung.

He had not been thinking about anything. He had been watching a woman and a kettle. He blinked, and it did not stop.

*What's my face doing? That's the spirit lamp. It's smoke.*

*Two fingers. That's what it is. Naomi, when I came off the bike at fourteen, over the handlebars and into the bins. She pressed two fingers along my collarbone from one end to the other. Breathe in. Does that hurt? She'd never even seen anyone do it. She'd got it off a programme. That's all this is.*

It was a good reason. It fitted, and it was kind, and he took it.

"It's boiling," the boy announced.

"It is. Well done. Off you go." The boy looked at his hand, turned it over twice, and ran. "Next," Senna said to the air.

She looked at Kai. Then she looked at his hands, which were holding the edge of the second stool. She felt his ribs through his shirt with two flat fingers, low on the left, and he took the token out of his pocket and put it in the tin.

"Mm," she said. "Better. Still loud." She put a bowl on the barrow lid, filled it from a pot, and pushed it across to him without a word.

Kai took it. It was broth with barley in it, and a good deal of salt.

*It wasn't her hands. I don't know whose they were.*

*Naomi's. It was Naomi. I've had four hours' sleep a night for two weeks.*

He drank. It was too hot, and he drank it anyway.

Berit was shutting her stall at the corner, and she brought her stool with her. She was the barley woman, with a brass balance on a chain and the forearms of a baker. She sat down at the barrow without being asked and took a heel of bread out of her apron.

"Garrow's telling the whole Row," she said. "Show me the page. You'll have a name for it by tonight. I had you shouting, you know. I lost a button on it."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. It's the most fun we've had since the breach." She tore the bread in two. "You were always at it, though, Aeron. Always asking. Even when you were rude, you were asking."

"Asking what?"

"The healers." She said it as if it were common knowledge. "Every month, regular as rent. Who's good, who's moved on, who's stopped. Here. Declan's, down south of the Row. The wards at the Basilica. Marta and I put it down as a cure, for yourself, or for somebody. A man doesn't keep asking that regular unless there's a bed in it somewhere."

The bowl was warm in both his hands.

*A cure. Or a grief. They look the same from the stall. Somebody ill, or somebody lost, and he wanted a better pair of hands. Everybody on this Row has got a bed in their year, or a Quiet. He was one more.*

*It's not a lead. It's just sad.*

Senna was winding a bandage round an old docker's thumb. She did not look up, and she did not slow.

"You never said who for," Berit went on. "Never once. I asked you, one time, and you went off down the Row as if your coat were on fire." She chewed. "Don't suppose you remember."

"No," Kai said.

"No," said Berit, and passed him half the bread.