2026-11-08 17:03:35
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62. Marrow Collects
[Day-62 (09:20)](The ropewalk back stairs, Market Row, Sector 9) The street door banged behind him. Kai put his foot on the first step and found it was a long way up. Nine steps to the turn, then eight to Marrow's landing. He had climbed them twice that week without thinking. Now he took each one with a hand on the wall, the iron plates on his heels ringing on the boards. Every Row man nailed a plate to his heels so the leather lasted a year. On a stair that narrow it sounded like someone knocking to be let out. A scrap of paper had come under the door at first bell. Someone had drawn a bucket on it in tar and written one word. *Today.* Oren had looked at it and said, "Who draws a bucket?" Kai had said, "A customer." Oren had said nothing for the length of one bite of bread. Behind him the street door banged again. *Wind,* thought Kai, and almost smiled. Two sets of boots came in out of the passage. A man's voice, quiet and civil, said, "After you, Mr. Cross." He turned his hea
61. Face Down
[Day-60 (11:20)](Aeron's room, Chandler Court, Sector 9) Binding. All morning the Exchange's lamp-men went down the Row, a hundred yards from the door, and he heard the stalls take their covers off and put them on again. Ten lit discs sat behind the brick. He sat on the bed with his hands between his knees and listened to the brass go by. Nothing came up the stairs. He kept away from the window. A lamp-man could not read through a wall, probably. He had no proof of that either. At noon he took Mrs. Wray's bowl back down, washed, and she took it from him on the landing without a word. She looked at the bowl, and then at his face, and nodded once at the bowl. The colours came back in patches. The red on Oren's thumb was red again by four. The taste did not come with it.[Day-60 (23:30)](Aeron's room, Chandler Court, Sector 9) He used the first one again, the knight on f2 and the rook on g1 and the king in his corner. He had nothing better. He didn't try for it. The gold was back
60. The Grey Lamp
[Day-58 (22:40)](Aeron's room, Chandler Court, Sector 9) Sundial had been quiet. The bells at noon, the smell of other people's dinners, the court empty by the afternoon. Oren had gone to his mother's for the meal and come back with a pie in a cloth, and had been asleep by ten. Kai lit the lamp to count the blanks. The flame came up the colour of dishwater. He turned the wick higher. The flame got taller and no warmer to look at. *Oil's gone off.* He carried the lamp across the room and held it over Oren's hand, over the thumb with the Guild's stamp on the nail. The stamp was dark grey. It had been red on Friday. Oren's coat was grey. The door was grey. His own cuff, stiff with two nights of blood, was a darker grey. *It isn't the oil.* He stood there with the lamp. *Seventeen days of keeping that colour from everybody, and tonight I can't see it myself.* He pinched the lamp out, with the right hand this time. Under the corner blanket the first disc came up pale as a candle behi
59. Second Run
[Day-56 (23:10)](Aeron's room, Chandler Court, Sector 9) Fifty blank discs sat in a flour sack under the table, and they clinked every time Oren turned over. The sack had come off the scrap heap in Hollis's yard, where anyone willing to carry them could have them for nothing. Hollis had watched him tie the neck and had not asked what they were for. Kai had watched him not ask, and it had looked like it hurt. The room was dark and close. The blanket hung over the window again. A second one was hooked to the curtain nails over the corner by the table, so that whatever lit up there would stay there. Oren lay across the door in his coat with one arm out and the white thumb turned up on the boards. He had gone down at ten like a sack off a cart. He still smelled of the bakery. Marrow had said yes that afternoon, up the ropewalk stairs, with his mouth full. Two lots: Firstmark and Draftday. Nothing on a Sundial, when the Row shut. Nothing on a Binding, when the Exchange sent its lamps
58. Husk Money
[Day-55 (07:10)](The Preserver's counting-house, Ring Road, Sector 7) "Four hundred and twenty-three," said the buyer, "in all, for husk and chair." He said it to the scale, not to them. He was a thin man in a brown apron with a pencil behind each ear. The room was cold on purpose. A woman in grey sleeves stood at the end of the marble table with her palm flat on the husk, not looking at it. The dry crackle that had followed it all the way up Ring Road had stopped the moment she touched it. Beside it the armchair sat on the floor with its scorched arm and its plain high back. Kai had carried it up the iron stair on his shoulders. His palms had been wrapped in strips of Marcus's shirt ever since. "Fed, middling," the buyer went on. "Wasn't a Swelled one. It ate, but it wasn't greedy. The chair's good wood and nobody sat in it for years but the one thing. I'll write it as one lot." "Write it as two lines," said Marcus. "It's one slip." "Two lines. Husk, then chair." The buyer si
57. Ten Heads
[Day-54 (22:03)](The Sunken Playhouse, stage left lip and pit) The water had come up to a forearm below the boards and it was still coming. The brass lay tilted in the middle of the pit with one side up, black and streaming, its near rim against the foot of the stage. A pale hand lay flat on the water between two of its arms. "Marcus." The voice came from under it. "Marcus, it's me. It's Joss. I'm under it, I can't get out. Please. You said no one left behind." *It kept that.* Kai's hands had begun to hurt. The real lad lay on the grey boards with his head in his sister's lap and his foot turned the wrong way. He had been grey and silent. He opened his eyes. He heard his own voice come out of the dark, and his face crumpled. "I'm here," he said. "I'm here! I'm..." Dina's hand went over his mouth, too late. The brass lifted. It came up a finger's width on the far side and water poured off it in sheets. A second pale hand slid out beside the first. "Joss? Joss, help me. Please.
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