Supper

At midday on the sixth day, Marlow took the cylinder to Vesta's shop.

Baggage was searched at the gate. You could not slip private goods in among the Empire's load. If he could not take it, the only thing left was to leave it.

He could have sold it to Sybil. He did not. The reason was clear even to him. Sell that, and his reason for going east turned into money.

Vesta took the cylinder and held it up to the lamp. The water inside moved.

“And what do I get out of keeping this?”

“Nothing.”

“Honest. I like that. How much are you paying?”

“Twelve coins. All of it.”

“Not enough. But I'll take it.”

Vesta pulled a bolt of cloth off a shelf. Heavy hemp, wound hard. She unrolled it halfway, set the cylinder in the middle, and wound it back up. She sewed the end shut with twelve stitches and put it back on the shelf. Dozens of bolts of the same thickness stood on either side of it.

“Good idea, that.”

“You hide cloth inside cloth. Forty years at it and anybody thinks of that.”

“If they find it.”

“I say I don't know. And so it won't be a lie, I don't ask what's in it.”

Vesta spat the root onto the floor, and then looked at Marlow with the eye that still saw.

“Come back and I'll give it to you. Don't come back and it stays on that shelf till the day I die.”

＊

That evening they ate at Nim's shop.

Nobody had suggested it. Willa brought a pot, Gus made a chair out of a barrel, Nim shut the shop. Vesta came without being asked.

In the pot were beans, dried meat and root vegetables. The meat was two days' leavings that Nim had haggled down. He said so three times.

“Thirty percent off. Thirty. On account of me holding out, mind.”

“You said that already.”

“I've said it twice.”

“Three times!”

Gus tried to hold the spoon in his left hand and dropped it three times. He got hold of it on the fourth, but all the beans spilled on the way to his mouth.

“Damn it.”

“Give it here. I'll feed you.”

“Stop that! I'm not a brat!”

“A brat would be better at it.”

“Listen to the mouth on you, missy!”

Vesta reached out without a word and took Gus's spoon away. She wound cloth around the handle, made a loop and slipped it over his wrist.

“Now it won't drop.”

“…How much.”

“It's a scrap of cloth. You think I'd charge for that?”

Gus carried the spoon to his mouth. This time nothing spilled.

He ate three mouthfuls, and then sniffed.

“Beans sting my eyes, that's all. Shut up.”

“Nobody said anything.”

“Your face is saying it.”

＊

Nim brought out an old liquor. Ten years sunk in the bottom of a barrel, he said.

Willa smelled it and screwed up her face.

“Is this off?”

“Liquor doesn't go off!”

“It smells off, I'm telling youuu.”

“That is what aging is. A goblin's tongue is four times finer than a human's, I'll have you know.”

Vesta drank a mouthful and spat it on the floor.

“It's off.”

“…That can't be,” Nim said.

Nim drank some himself and went quiet. Willa laughed so hard she nearly fell off the barrel, and bumped into Gus's knee. Gus yelped in pain, and that set them laughing again.

Marlow leaned against the wall and watched.

He had dealt with each of the four separately. It was the first time the four had been in one room.

＊

When they cleared up, Willa carried the pot outside. Marlow took the plates and followed.

They washed them at the well.

“Marlow.”

“What.”

“What did you say to Nim back there?”

“About the liquor?”

“No. On the way out. You said something when you went past him.”

Marlow remembered.

“…I said, excuse me, sir.”

Willa's hands stopped. The pot knocked the rim of the well with a dull sound.

“Marlow, you don't talk like that.”

“No, I don't.”

“Ten years going to Nim's and you've never said it once.”

“Never.”

Marlow counted off the three signs Drag had given him. Their speech turns polite. They stop feeling pain. They stop refusing orders.

Two had come.

“…Does anything hurt?”

“No.”

“Are you cold?”

“Not cold.”

“This water's cold, isn't it.”

Marlow put his hand into the well water.

He could tell the water was moving. He could tell it was going between his fingers. Only the cold never came.

“…It's cold.”

“Liar.”

Willa took up the pot and went back into the shop ahead of him.

＊

The morning of the seventh day came before the bell rang twice.

Six wagons stood in a row in the square at the East Gate. Two oxen to a wagon, twelve head in all.

Gus had come to see him off. The cloth from the spoon was still looped over his wrist.

“Marlow. Do one thing for me.”

“No.”

“Hear it first, then say no!”

Gus pointed his left hand toward the market.

“If I go to Sybil's and don't come back. Tell Sam's sister her brother's dead.”

“He's alive.”

“You don't call that alive.”

Gus did not laugh.

“That girl waits. People who wait, they wait till somebody tells them he's dead. Ten years, twenty years. My mother was like that.”

“You're telling me to lie.”

“What doesn't come back is dead. Somebody's got to say it, or she never gets to be finished.”

Marlow was quiet a while.

“All right. I'll tell her. On one condition.”

“What.”

“If you're alive, you say it yourself. I'm only going the once.”

“…Aye. That's fair enough.”

Gus clapped Marlow's shoulder with the three fingers he had left. There was no strength in it.

＊

Drag was beside the third wagon, looking over a roster.

“Loader, Marlow Kane. That's two. Full.”

“Two?”

“I said I was two hands short. You're the second.”

“Who's the first.”

Drag turned the roster toward him. A thick finger held down the line above.

Loader, Willa Dorset. Fifteen years. Stamped with yesterday's date.

Marlow looked over at the wagons. Willa was sitting by the wheel of the fourth, arms around her knees, watching him.

He walked over. On the way he thought of three things to say and threw all three away.

“Get off.”

“No.”

“It's nineteen days. One way.”

“I know. I read the papers.”

“You can read that kind of thing now?”

“I've been able to read for three years, I keep telling you.”

Marlow had nothing to say to that.

“Why. Give me the reason.”

“…Last night you said excuse me, sir. Didn't you.”

“I did.”

“So in four more days you might be calling me Miss Willa.”

“I'll put you off before that.”

“Call me that and I'll get off. Till then I stay on.”

Willa lifted her face. Her eyes were red. Her voice was ordinary.

“Four years ago I saw them off, you know. Eleven head. I'd given every one of them a name, and all I did was see them off.”

“This is different.”

“It isn't. That's why I'm going.”

Marlow opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

＊

The bell rang twice and the wagons began to move.

As they passed under the East Gate, Marlow looked back.

Gus was standing there. Nim had climbed on top of a barrel and was waving. Vesta had not come. She had said she would not, so that was that.

Behind them, at the edge of the crowd, stood a tall, stooped man. It was Otto.

He had not come to stop them. He was not even looking at the wagons. He had a hand on the gatepost and was only standing there.

“…That's Otto, right?”

“That's him.”

“Why isn't he stopping us? You never gave her the cylinder.”

“Sybil wants me to go east. So she doesn't stop me.”

“Wait, so we're doing whatever she says?”

“For now. Because we're going the same way.”

Willa took hold of the wagon's rail.

“…And how long is it the same way for?”

“Don't know. I'll think about it when it isn't.”

End of Chapter 7