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Chapter 167: The Open Court
The First Factor would not have it called a court.He had sent his clerk round to Tarpaulin Row on the tenth day of the year to say so. The Bench of Contracts was the only court in Tollenhaven, and it sat indoors. What a relieved Inquisitor and a chartered captain chose to do on the public steps at noon was a disputation. It bound nobody. The League took no notice of it. The League would, however, be obliged if the parties kept the fish-stair clear, and it had lent a table.It was a fish-porter's trestle, scrubbed white. Somebody had set it on the broad landing halfway up the Weigh-House steps, under the green copper cap, where the public scales were hung out on market days. There were two stools at it and a third a little apart.Below the landing, the square was full to the walls.Ravel had not thought that there were so many people in the town. They stood on the mounting-blocks and the well-head. Boys sat along the roof of the salt-store with their legs
Chapter 166: Avelline
Pim had been on the Herring Quay since first light, and would not say why.She had taken a bucket to sit on. She had taken Smoke, in a basket, on the ground that Smoke liked boats. She sat at the head of the fish-stair with her chin on her knees, and looked at every sail that came round the mole as a customs officer looks at them.Ravel found her there a little before noon. He had been sent."She wrote that it would be the eighth day or the ninth," Pim said, without turning her head. "It's the ninth. She doesn't tell lies. She can't, it comes out in her face. So it's today.""Who wrote?""I'm not to say until she's here. She said that you'd worry." His sister considered him sideways. "You do worry. You go quiet, and then you count something."He was about to count something when a herring-buss from up the coast put her nose round the mole, low in the water and stinking, with gulls over her like smoke. She tied up at the foot of the stair. A
Chapter 165: Letters by the Packet
The winter post came into Tollenhaven all at once, as it always did, when the north road opened for three days between one snow and the next.Pell's cousin brought the company's share up from the Exchange in a herring-basket. There were bills in it, and a writ from a rope-maker, and an offer of marriage addressed to the Captain of the letter above from a widow in Senna who enclosed a miniature. At the bottom, tied with tarred string, were six that Edda would not let anybody else touch.She laid them out on the mangle table in a row, as she laid out shirts."Six," she said. "You never had six letters in your life. Sit down. You'll read them in order of who's least likely to upset you, and I'll have the worst ones while I've still got my strength."The Prince's was a half-sheet in a plain round hand, and it read like a return of stores.The gate is hung. It is oak on ash, eleven feet, and it faces the right way, which I am told I owe to a Sarthic file-leader who has taken over my carpen
Chapter 164: Affirmation
The town talked of nothing else for a fortnight, and Ravel stayed indoors.He had said a thing on a brass pan in front of four hundred people, and by the next evening it was in every cookshop from the Salt Gate to the Lantern Steps. A man could not buy a herring without being asked whether it was true about the hook. He had nothing to add. He had been asked a question by an honest woman and had answered it, and he found that he could not walk down Tarpaulin Row without somebody's grandmother coming out to look him in the face.Some of them crossed the street. A good many did not. On the third day a carter's widow from the Rope Walk climbed the stair with a pudding in a cloth, and sat an hour with Mother Tibb, and went away again without having said what she came for."She buried her man at Candle-tide," the old Graveweaver said afterwards. She was plaiting a hand. "She wanted to know if he'd minded. I told her that none of us remembers the taking, only the being asked. It's true enoug
Chapter 163: The Suit
The Old Weigh-House had not been so full since the summer, and in the summer nobody had known what they were coming to see.They knew now. The gallery had been let by the seat at a lock apiece, and the tallow-chandlers' guild had taken a whole row. There were fish-wives on the stair. There were Factors in fur who had left their counting-rooms at an hour when no Factor did, and porters from the Herring Quay who had paid to stand. Along the north wall, where the great beam of the public scales threw its shadow, sixty-five of the dead stood in two ranks with their hoods back.That had been Halvard Reem's doing. Dame Rochelle had said that she would ask every one. The Magister had replied that she should then have every one to ask, and had marched them across the town at first light, in wicker, through the fish market.Ravel sat at the pleader's table with his hands on his knees. He had the iron plate inside his shirt. He had faced Orn with less water in his stomach.In the front of the g
Chapter 162: Potter's Acre
Ser Odran took his helm off before they were within twenty paces of him.Ravel had not asked the old knight to come. He had gone down the Row by himself, in the last of the light, with his hands where they could be seen. He had got as far as the chandler's when he heard mailed feet behind him on the cobbles. He turned, and there was the skull, bare under the lamps, in the open street, in a town where even now it was thought better manners to keep such things covered."You'll frighten the fish-wives," he said."They may be frightened. I do not stand covered before that one." The dry voice had something in it that he had heard only once, in a wraithglass passage, in front of the dead of the Fourth Host. "Boy. Do you not know what is leaning on that spade?""An old man who gave my sister's bread to a dog.""So I supposed," said Ser Odran. "Walk behind me. It will look better."The old man had not moved. He watched them come down the Row with his chin on his folded hands. Near to, he was
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