Eleven Days

Nim's shop had not been ransacked.

That was the frightening part.

The cloth was back on the shelves. Not only back, but neatly folded. Marlow had been coming to this shop for ten years, and it was the first time he had seen cloth folded and set down. Nim throws cloth. He makes piles. That is how he knows where everything is.

The weights for the scales stood in one line, smallest to largest.

The ledger was closed and lying in the middle of the desk, parallel to the edge of the desk.

“Nim.”

No answer. When he called a second time, Nim came out from behind the barrels. He was not hurt. But the green of his face had gone pale.

“Didn't touch it.”

“Touch what?”

“They didn't touch a thing. Not one piece. The coins, the grains, the ledger, it's all right there. Not one piece, you hear me, not one.”

“Settle down, Nim.”

“I am settled down!”

His voice had cracked upward. Nim noticed it himself, shut his mouth, and gripped the edge of the desk with his seven fingers.

“…They read, is all. Read the whole ledger, closed it, set it down, then tidied up and left. In front of me, mind. While they tidied, they said things like 'our apologies.' Twice, even. Our apologies, our apologies.”

“Two of them?”

“Four.”

Marlow noticed his own palms were sweating.

“That's not all of it,” Nim said.

“There's more?”

“Half an hour after they left, an orc came. That captain from yesterday. Drag, the one scraping the ceiling with his head.”

“What did he ask?”

“Not one word about cloth. Had I bought a gray coat. That was it.”

Marlow remembered what was at the bottom of his pack. The gray coat, stripped and sold to nobody.

“What did you tell him?”

“Told him I hadn't bought one. That's no lie. I hadn't bought it.”

Nim put a fingertip on the ledger lying parallel to the edge of the desk and deliberately pushed it crooked. After he pushed it, his face looked as if breathing had gotten a little easier.

“Now, Marlow. I've been in this trade a hundred and sixty years. I've seen hundreds of them that come to take things. That was different. That wasn't coming to take. That was coming to count.”

“Count what?”

“If I knew that, would my fingers be shaking?”

＊

He reached Vesta's shop after the morning bell had rung four times.

Marlow set thirty copper coins on the table. Thirty out of the forty-two. Twelve left.

Vesta looked at them and put them in a drawer without counting.

“Not enough.”

“I know.”

“First time in half a year you knew it and came anyway.”

“Talk. The rest of last night.”

“Sit.”

Gus was asleep on the cot in back. The sewn hand was strapped to a board.

Vesta put a fresh root in her mouth and began chewing. She pulled a piece out of the pile of cloth and spread it on her knee. She started working the needle as she talked. She was not watching her hands. She was watching Marlow with the white eye.

“Forty years ago, I was in the army. Not here. A port town in the south called Calva.”

“What did you do in the army?”

“I sewed. The same as now.”

“Is there a wall there too?”

“There is. Lower than this one. About fifteen meters.”

The needle went through the cloth three times.

“There was a soldier who fell over the wall. An accident in training. His name was Garry. He was nineteen.”

“He fell, and then what?”

“Nothing at all. He rolled all the way to the waterline, took water over his head, and came back up alive. Nobody shot him. He came up before anyone could.”

“They didn't shoot?”

“You cannot shoot. You know the face. You ate supper with him the night before.”

Vesta stopped the needle and spat the root on the floor.

“I sewed him. Three ribs broken. He was in pain. He was in pain like anyone, and he cried like anyone. He called for his mother. He was nineteen.”

“And?”

“Eleven days.”

Vesta looked at the cloth on her knee. It was the first time that day she had looked at her hands.

“On the morning of the eleventh day, Garry said to me, good morning, ma'am. Not once in his life had that boy talked that way. Up to the day before, all he said was, get up, old woman.”

“What did he call you?”

“Madam Halm.”

The shop went quiet. In back, Gus rolled over in his sleep.

“The pain goes first. That is how it starts. On the third or fourth day, he stopped hurting with three ribs broken. I thought he had healed. There is no healing. Ribs do not knit in three days.”

“What happened to him?”

“An officer took him away in a wagon. Not as punishment. With every courtesy. They gave him a hand getting up.”

“Where to?”

“I did not hear.”

“You didn't ask?”

“Two men asked. The next week they were transferred to another unit. After that everyone understood.”

Vesta began working the needle again.

“I heard two officers talking, only the once. People who came back from the other side of the wall, nine of them in three hundred years, they said. Garry was the ninth.”

Marlow remembered the number Drag had given yesterday. Nine cases in three hundred years. All nine turned into trouble later.

If there was a ninth forty years ago, what was the number now?

“Marlow.”

“Don't say it.”

“I will say it. What hour yesterday did you come back from over there?”

“Before noon.”

“Then today is the second day.”

“So what.”

“Nothing. I am telling you to count.”

＊

Gus woke up past midday.

As soon as he was awake he lifted the strapped right hand and looked at it for a while. Three fingers. The thumb, the index, and the little finger. The middle two gone.

“…Can't hold a hook with this, can I.”

“Learn with the left.”

“Twenty years I've done it right-handed.”

“Then take twenty years and learn the left.”

“You're cold, you know that. You're really cold.”

Gus laughed. After he laughed, his face went tight with pain. That his face went tight with pain was a small relief to Marlow.

Then Gus shifted himself upright on the cot. Shifting upright took him time.

“Say, Marlow. He said one companion at most, right?”

“He did.”

“Take me.”

“Can't take a man who can't use his hands.”

“Don't need to use them. I just need to stand there. Standing I can do.”

Gus did not raise his voice. That made it harder. Being shouted at is easier to refuse.

“Otto's been with me since I was seventeen. And Sam, he's got a sister. Lives right next to us. She's only fourteen. Yesterday morning she was out front washing the pot. She'll be making her brother's supper right about now and waiting on him. Doesn't even know what happened.”

“There's no saying they can be brought back.”

“I know there's no saying.”

Gus gripped the edge of the cot with his three remaining fingers.

“Even so… call them and maybe they turn around, right? Yesterday they didn't. But maybe that was the way I called. If I call them properly, then maybe—”

“Gus.”

“I know. I know, so don't say it…”

No chance of that, Marlow thought. He thought it and did not say it.

“You planning to take that girl?” Gus said.

“Not taking her. Not Willa.”

“That girl will follow you.”

“I know.”

“Knowing it and saying you won't take her, that's called being a liar.”

＊

In the evening, Marlow climbed up on top of the aqueduct.

Willa was there first. She was sitting with her legs over the edge, looking down at the town. The two of them had been using this place for three years. There was no particular reason. It was high, the wind came through, and nobody else came.

The western sky had gone red. Because the light comes from the far side of the Sea Wall, evening in this town starts with only the line on top of the wall burning. There are a few people in town who climb up to see it.

“It's pretty today.”

“It's pretty.”

“…Wait. Did you just say pretty?”

“I said it.”

“Last year all you said was, it's red. I remember it. ‘It's red.’ That was all.”

“Then I've improved this year.”

Willa laughed, swinging her legs. Then she opened her hand and showed him what was on her palm.

One black grain. About half the size of a grain of rice.

“You've been carrying that?”

“I picked it up. Leaving it on the floor didn't seem right either.”

“Throw it away.”

“No.”

“Willa.”

“I said no. Because look, this one doesn't have a stamp.”

Willa pinched the grain between her fingertips and held it up against the red sky.

“The cow ones and the sheep ones all have a proper stamp, right? It says what was spent. This one doesn't say anything.”

“Because there was nobody to write it.”

“I know, but still…”

Willa closed her hand around the grain again and put it back in the cloth pouch at her waist. After she put it away, she spoke more quietly than usual.

“I don't like things that don't have names.”

Marlow had no words to answer that with. It was the third time in three years.

＊

That night, back in the barn where he slept, Marlow rewrapped the cloth on his shoulder.

Last night, after Otto and Sam left, Vesta had undone the bandage and stitched it. Eight stitches. Around the stitching it was red and swollen. The bleeding had stopped.

While he was rewrapping it, his fingers slipped and pressed hard on the stitches.

After he pressed, he stopped his hand.

He pressed again, this time on purpose. The pad of his thumb, into the middle of the stitching, with his weight behind it.

He could see the thread pulling at the skin. The swollen part went white, and when he lifted his finger the color came back.

It did not hurt.

Marlow sat there like that for a while.

Then he got up and scratched one line into the post of the barn with his nail.

The second day.

End of Chapter 4