Chapter 1017 The Flour Bench Is Empty

Lema’s mother followed Orren’s stretcher into the awnings carrying the shoe he had lost. At the first treatment bench she put it beneath him, where nobody could mistake it for a donation.

"His hip was hurt before the gun hit us," Lema told the healer. "He fell off our flour bench when Tavra shut her plate. He was lying on his side when we picked him up."

The healer pushed a curtain aside with her elbow. Behind it, two men were holding a woman’s leg while a third cut through a boot. Lema recognized one of the men from the quay. He still had a rope burn across his neck.

"I have one pair of hands free. Bring him here, and leave someone who can tell me when he stops answering."

Orren lifted his head off the board.

"You can ask me before you ask them. My hip hurts; my ears work well enough."

"Then keep telling me where it hurts while I look at your back. You can complain about the bench afterward."

Lema’s mother sat beside him. She gave the boy from the bakery her apron to hold and sent him for water. With her skirt bunched under her knees and flour still on her arms, she looked like she had come to tend someone through a long shift rather than left three ovens above a harbor gun.

Lema wanted her to say whether Orren would walk again. The healer was cutting his trouser seam. Asking now would only take the time she needed to find out.

"I’ll bring word to Asti when we have a carrier going back," Lema told him. "Mother will stay here until you decide what to send."

"Tell her to save the loom shuttle. The roof can go where it likes, but she knows which box holds the shuttle."

The loom had fallen through the broken doorway after Orren came across. Lema remembered the workers letting go of the roof to save her gate. Asti had watched the same thing happen; now Lema would have to ask what else she had managed to keep. She promised to carry the request and went back through the awnings.

The gun crew were hauling a rope over the quay’s outer arch. Far above them, a sailor hung beside the fishing boat with one foot trapped against its rail. A girl was chopping the last fastening off a ladder. The cuts were too high for Lema to see, but each blow made the broken ladder shiver.

Sivra stood by the winch with a short length of polished gun rod. She had put it under the rope where the axle was wearing through. Ty remained crouched at the carriage, jaw chain drawn into the bent drum guard. His skull was tilted far enough to look uncomfortable even without a face.

"We have Orren on a treatment bench. You can stop trying to look for him through the gun wheels," Lema told him.

"Let me know if they need help carrying him afterward. I can do that better than whatever I’ve done to this winch."

Sivra waved the line crew back a step. As the ladder fell away, the sailor’s foot came free and the rope at his waist snapped tight. The girl caught his coat while he fought to get his hands over the rail. A second sailor reached across her and took his belt; between them they pulled him aboard. His boot stayed in the broken ladder.

Lema looked back toward the healer’s awnings. Someone there had taken Orren’s shoe from beneath the bench and tucked it into a sack beside the board.

The fishing crew ran a fresh mooring down through the arch. Once its weight reached the stone, the winch drum eased. Sivra put a lever through the bent guard and pulled while a worker tapped the flattened link free.

Ty picked up the released chain with his right hand. He stopped at the damaged link, turned it once, then gathered it above the ground. Lema could see the strain in the way he kept his bound shoulder away from the carriage.

"Have somebody look at that before you hang from it," Sivra told him. "I can lend you a line. I can’t mend whatever holds your head together."

"I’ll keep the bent section out of the next load. Where do your crews leave their spare lines?"

Sivra nodded toward the gun shed. She sent the harbor worker to get two, then turned to Lema.

"Your city gets one landing board while we clear this quay. Keep everyone else above the rail until I have a safe way for them to come down."

"Tavra can’t hover here on one rope while you decide how long that takes. Neral has to keep the low bell free."

"I’ve watched her hold it since the first boat moved. I want that bell used for steering, and nothing louder until we find what’s sounding in the water."

Lema glanced at the upper sea. The fishing boat’s crew had brought their injured sailor below deck. Farther out, a dark shape lay just beneath the surface. She could distinguish an overturned platform and a mast that had gone through it. Men were running a little boat along the wall below the shape, trying to get an angle for a line.

Sivra followed her look.

"Our bell boat went under before breakfast. Its keeper and three riggers were in the cabin when the platform turned. The first crew we sent came back with a broken mast and one man less."

"They’re still inside it after all this time?"

"One of them answered through the pipe when we came alongside. I won’t tell you how many are alive until we bring them out."

Lema recognized the flooded boat now. In her first season at this harbor, she had carried sacks past its broad landing platform and waited there while signal bells called the next carrier in. The keeper used to wave people off his cabin roof when they sat down to eat. She had thought he was being precious about a little shade. Now the roof was below the sea, and he was still under it.

Sivra rubbed dried blood off her knee. The blue coat had been cut short where it caught on the winch. She pulled it out of the tear before a worker could tie a bandage around her leg.

"You fired on an occupied lower walk. Orren was already hurt when he came aboard. Your shot put him back on a stretcher," Lema said.

"I fired at the plate beside the landing board. If I had let your carrier roll over our boats, the people under those awnings would have been hit again."

"And now you have him under the awnings too. I need room to bring the others ashore without another gun tracking my gate."

Sivra looked toward Tavra. The creature’s wounded plate was partly shut. Above it, a woman was moving plant pots away from a cracked balcony. Another household had lowered bedding into a net and was waiting with the children behind the railing.

Sivra walked past Lema to check the path between the landing board and the awnings. She crouched by a broken paving stone and had two workers shift it, then called a gunner down from his carriage.

"Set this gun toward the water. Leave the landing board clear, and put a line along its outside so people can hold it."

The gunner glanced at the wounded plate.

"If that thing moves again, we lose the quay before you can give another order."

"Then keep your eyes on its bell deck. If its keeper loses course, warn the line crew before you shoot into the houses."

Lema watched him turn the carriage. The barrel that had followed her scarf now pointed out beneath the damaged bell boat. She went to Tavra’s board and called Neral down far enough to hear Sivra’s terms. Neral made her repeat the part about the low bell.

"They can stay off my course rope and take the upper clapper themselves," Neral said. "I won’t have somebody fire because a passenger drops a pan near the deck."

Sivra agreed to send a bell worker rather than a gunner. Neral went back up the stair, muttering about harbor officers who had never kept an oven level through a crossing. Lema let her finish.

Near the market steps, a grain seller was gathering flour sacks off a cart. Half the wheels were chalked with orders for boats that had failed to come in. Lema asked what he could spare for Tavra. He looked at the city behind her and started pulling the smallest sacks onto his cart instead.

"I have patients to feed before I sell flour to your whole lower street. Find a market boat and pay its crew."

"I grew up three terraces above that mill," Lema said. "There’s no boat running from the grain market while your bell is under water. My mother has three ovens. Yours are behind the closed landing."

The seller kept lifting sacks. She caught the cart handle before he could move it past her.

"Bring what you owe the healers up to our bakery. Mother can bake it while they work. After their bread is done, let her buy enough for the city’s morning shift."

He wanted payment for all of it first. Lema opened her purse. There were coins for the crossing fee, a little food at the market, and a replacement buckle she had promised the gate crew last week. The sum bought less than half what he had on the cart.

He counted the coins himself and left them in her palm.

"Put that toward your own flour. The patients’ sacks are already paid for, but I’m not carrying them across a board your city can pull out."

"My gate crew will carry them. Wait here until I ask Mother what she can bake."

Her mother was still beside Orren. He was gripping a folded towel while the healer worked a splint along his leg. Lema waited through his next complaint, then crouched on the other side of the bench and explained the flour.

"I’ve got one boy and trays all over the floor," her mother said. "If you promise their bread for supper, bring people who can clean an oven without cracking it."

Lema named two gate workers. Her mother sent the bakery boy to find them and told Lema exactly how many sacks to bring. She would go back when Orren could safely lie without her hand on his knee.

Orren opened one eye.

"I’ll tell her if I fall off the bench again. Get some bread made before you start another argument over me."

By the time the first sack crossed the board, Ty was beside the little rescue boat with a borrowed rope over his shoulder. Sivra had given its crew leave to try the flooded bell platform again. Lema caught him before he stepped onto it.

"I asked about couriers while you were at the winch. The western provision launches visit Rillhold, but their crews won’t leave while that bell keeps turning the boats."

"Then tell me which crew to ask when this boat gets back. I need someone who knows the actual landing, not another direction to follow."

She pointed to a green cabin halfway along the wall. He looked long enough to remember it, then climbed into the rescue boat where its sailor showed him. The borrowed line stayed on his right side. He had tied the flattened chain section close to his chest, clear of the places where it could take weight.

Lema helped push them off. A flour sack caught on a splinter in the landing board behind her. Her mother called for a pan to catch what was spilling through the tear before it fell into the rope grooves. Before Lema could turn to help, Sivra took the speaking funnel from its strap and leaned over the waterward rail.

"The bell keeper’s name is Dorel. Call his name before you touch the cabin door. He’ll know somebody came for him."