The Black Book

On the morning of the fifth day, Marlow was not cold.

The shed had only three walls. The north side was still fallen in, and mornings always set his teeth rattling. Six years of that.

That morning his teeth did not rattle. His breath was white. His fingertips were white too. Only the feeling of cold never came.

The pain had gone on the night of the second day. The cold had gone on the morning of the fifth. There were three lines scratched into the post with a nail.

＊

When he stopped by Nim's shop, Willa and Gus were sitting on the floor.

Gus had a hook in his left hand. He did not have hold of it. He dropped it three times, and only on the fourth got a grip.

“Look, look! You held it!”

“Held it, is all. No use if I can't swing it.”

“So swing it then.”

Gus swung. The hook flew out of his hand, hit a barrel and made a great noise.

“That's my barrel, thaaat is!”

Nim shouted it from the back. Willa rolled over laughing. Gus looked at the three fingers he had left, and then he laughed too.

Marlow stood in the doorway and watched it for a while. He did not go in. He felt that if he went in, this hour would end.

＊

It was midday when he pulled the gray coat out of the bottom of his pack.

Four days, and he had not once opened it out. Not because he had no mind to sell it. Because opening it out made him remember that face.

Spread flat, it was good cloth. Close weave, double-lined. Bone buttons.

And under the right arm there was a mend.

Marlow followed the stitching with a finger. Followed it, and stopped.

Eight stitches, and two of them, in the middle, spaced wider than the rest. The thread turned back to the left. The end was not folded into the underside of the cloth but left cut short.

It was the same as the thread in his own shoulder.

＊

Vesta's face did not change when the coat was laid on her table.

She took it up, turned the underarm inside out, and looked at it a while. Then she spat the root onto the floor.

“That's my hand.”

“When did you sew it?”

“Don't recall.”

“Don't recall won't do. Not with this.”

“No, it won't. That's why I get the ledger out.”

Vesta dragged a thick sheaf of paper out from under a shelf. It was bound with cord, and the cover had gone black with oil.

“I write down everything I sew. Forty years of writing. What I sewed, what I was paid, whose it was.”

She licked her finger and began turning the pages. Partway through, the turning slowed.

It stopped.

“Autumn, three years back.”

She turned the ledger toward Marlow. In Vesta's hand it read:

Gray coat, eight stitches under the arm. Four copper coins.

In the column beside it was a name.

Marlow Kane.

“I never came here.”

“I wrote those letters.”

“I never came! Autumn three years back, I remember all of it. That's the autumn I picked Willa up. There's no way I'd forget.”

His voice had gone loud. It surprised him.

It did not surprise Vesta. She looked at him with the white eye, and then closed the ledger.

“I don't recall it either. Not one scrap of writing it.”

“Then who wrote it?”

“It's my letters. My hand. I wrote it. I wrote it and I don't recall.”

Vesta looked at her own palm and closed it lightly on the table.

“Forty years and this is the first. If what you say is true, then the both of us have forgotten the same day.”

＊

Outside the shop, three of them closed around him.

Imperial gray uniforms. Two orcs, one human. All three with guns in their hands.

A fourth came out of the alley behind. It was Drag Mortensen.

“Marlow Kane. Hand over the coat.”

“It's salvage.”

“Salvage from the far side of the wall. There are four buyers in this town. I went to all four this morning. None of them bought it.”

“So what now. You arresting me?”

“No arrest. We talk. Thirty minutes. Come.”

＊

They took him to the guardhouse at the south gate of the Sea Wall.

A stone room with a single window. A desk, a chair, and shelves the whole length of the wall. Drag sent the soldiers outside and shut the door.

From the very bottom shelf he pulled out one volume. Thicker than the rest, with a black cover.

“The ledger the wall watch has kept for three hundred years. Only the ones who went past the wall and came back alive get written in it.”

He opened it on the desk. For all its thickness, few pages had writing on them.

“I'll give you the end first. There are nine written here. All nine of them, eleven days from the day they came back, became someone else.”

“Became someone else how?”

“Their speech turns polite. They stop feeling pain. They stop refusing orders. Nine entries, all worded the same.”

Marlow thought of Otto at the old lighthouse. The stooped man bowing his head so politely.

“Today's my fifth day.”

“I know. That's why I'm talking to you.”

Drag opened to the ninth page.

Garry Knotts. Calva. Imperial Year 307.

This year was 348. Forty-one years ago.

“And the next one?”

“There is one.”

Drag turned the page.

The tenth column had writing in it, with a line drawn over the top. Not one line. A line run back and forth many times, until the paper had worn thin.

It could still be read.

Imperial Year 345, autumn. This town. Marlow Kane.

That was autumn, three years ago.

“This too.”

“This too what?”

“This morning the seamstress's ledger said the same thing. Autumn three years back, my name. And the one who sewed it doesn't remember.”

For the first time, Drag's hand stopped.

“That's large.”

“Large, is it.”

“Two ledgers. Two different people, the same year, the same name. Neither of them remembers writing it. One man misremembering doesn't account for that.”

“Then what does?”

“I don't know. Not knowing is why I'm talking to you.”

＊

Drag closed the book and sat down in the chair. Sitting, his eyes came level with Marlow's.

“Here's my business. In two days a load goes out to the eastern outpost. Once a month. Six wagons, twelve guards, nineteen days one way.”

“What's that to me.”

“I'm two hands short. I'll put you on as a loader. The condition is that you leave the coat behind.”

“That's all?”

“That's all.”

“Why put me on. Give me the reason.”

Drag was quiet for a while. Then he said it short.

“Three years ago my brother went east. My predecessor. He sat in this room.”

“He didn't come back?”

“The load arrived. The man didn't. The report says the wagons and the water were all in order.”

“And the search?”

“None went out. Because the load arrived. If the load arrives, the Empire writes down no problem.”

Drag tapped the black book with a finger.

“This book has nothing in it but dates and names. What became of those nine afterward, nobody has written in three hundred years. I want to know what became of my brother. So I'm sending one person east who can write.”

“Who can write.”

“I hired a scribe. A woman named Roslyn Vake. She goes with the same wagons.”

“And I'm the one who gets written about.”

“You are. Refuse if you don't like it. The load goes out either way.”

Marlow laid the number nineteen out in his head.

The eleventh day would come on the road.

“Tell me one thing. What do you do if I turn on the way?”

“Tie you up. Tie you up and carry you east. If there's a way back, I think it's east too.”

“You won't kill me?”

“Kill you and there's nothing left to write.”

＊

It was after sundown when he got back to the shed.

Willa was there first. Sitting where the north wall had fallen in, arms around her knees.

“You're late.”

“Quiet.”

“Where were you?”

“The guardhouse at the wall.”

“Wait, were you arrested?!”

“Not arrested. I made a deal. I'm going east in two days.”

“Hold on. Hold on, hold on, hold on. East is the place nobody comes back from, right?”

“That's right.”

“So why go?”

Marlow put his back against the broken wall.

“In six more days I turn into something like Otto.”

“…You don't know that yet.”

“Nine of them, all the same. Every one on the eleventh day. I know it.”

“And going east doesn't help, the eleventh day still comes on the road!”

“It comes.”

“So there's no point!”

“Whether there's a point, nobody knows, because nobody's gone.”

Willa stood up. She stood up and said nothing more. In three years Marlow had seen Willa out of words twice.

Beyond the broken wall, the lights of the town went out one after another.

Marlow scratched a fourth line into the post.

End of Chapter 6