Chapter 1020: The Message In The Provision Chest

Jade laid Solla’s old meal order on the counter with its clean side up. She needed directions on it before Velka’s load left, and an address that would still mean something if Orra shifted away from the market. From the hatch she could hear the loading crew arguing over whose turn it was to fill the courier’s water barrel.

Solla had found a pencil in the drawer beneath the bowls. Jade put it beside the paper and held down the curling edge with a cup.

"Start with this kitchen and Mira’s watch at the market," Jade said. "I want him to find one of us even if the landing moves."

Solla finished ladling beans into the last bowl. "I’ll write it when these people have eaten. Keep the paper by the cups and finish that sack while you wait."

Jade pinned the half-sewn sack beneath the bowl bar. It held the fold for her left hand without asking anything of the cold fingers against her coat. She drew the thread through the corner while Solla carried the last meal to the pantry rail.

The bean pot had fed the last people staying inside. Its owner had kept his remaining grain beside his wife, and room four’s family had sent the cups back from the market stall. Dey was washing them in water already gray from the previous meal. He asked whether the provision woman could bring another bowl when she returned. Solla told him to ask about clean water first.

Mira spread a strip of wrapping paper across the table, weighing it down with her house keys. Her workers would need a high bracket for the temporary watch lamp before the morning carts began running. While Jade sewed, Mira sketched its position beside the landing. She could order replacement glass from the courier, but she wanted a lamp here tonight.

"You can tell me what to write beside your glass order," Jade offered. "I have the clean side of Solla’s paper."

"Use it for your man and leave me room on the merchant’s sheet," Mira said. "If both our names go inside your letter, Velka has to open it to remember what I bought."

Solla returned to the counter and fetched the stool usually kept for peeling roots. Jade slid the paper toward her, leaving the clean side clear of the wet cups.

The cook picked up the pencil. "I’ll write while you finish that seam, then I want my counter back. Give me the names slowly enough to get them right."

Jade almost began by asking whether his shoulder had held. She knew Solla could put the question on paper, but nobody here could answer it. She drew the needle through the fold and dictated Solla Kint’s kitchen on Orra, at Rillhold’s west market approach. She was staying there. Ty could ask Mira’s watch for the landing if he reached the market first.

Solla wrote it, then asked where to send a reply if Orra moved before the boat returned. Jade had no answer. Mira put her key cloth on the paper to hold it flat.

"My workers will keep the watch at the market approach," Mira said. "A provision crew can ask for Solla there, even if her service landing has shifted. I’ll make sure they know you want word left."

Jade asked Solla to add that. Then she dictated the part for Ty himself. She was safe in the kitchen. Her arm still needed rest. Mira’s lamp-house people had crossed into the kitchen or gone inland through the market before their house was taken. If he met a crew looking for them, he should send it to the market watch. Nessa had stayed with Asti’s street when the line was cut. Jade did not know where that street was now.

Solla’s pencil stopped at the last sentence. Asti’s brother sat beside the pantry rail with the two children. He had heard his sister’s name and wanted the sheet to ask after her too. The older child leaned forward, keeping one arm behind his sister’s back.

"Tell them we stayed together, and she ate some bread," he said. "She thinks Mother will be angry if she finds out we ate before her."

Jade went to them before adding anything. The brother wanted his name kept off a public inquiry, but he wanted Asti told where her children were if anyone met her. Jade asked Solla to put the children’s whereabouts inside Ty’s folded sheet. It would tell him who was with them, without making a notice about the brother’s injured leg for every counter customer to read.

By the time Solla finished the directions, Jade had drawn the thread through the last corner. She worked two securing stitches and released the fold from the bowl bar. Solla tugged the seam between both hands. Jade took the sack back intact, ready to show Velka, but two more still lay on the boat. At the wash basin her possible helpers were finishing the cups before bed. She asked Solla whether one could spare the time to sew.

Solla set the pencil across the paper. "My cooks are washing up before they sleep. You can ask somebody else, but those sacks aren’t taking my table for the whole night."

The older man with the folding chair had been listening. He offered to mend the other sacks if he and his wife could keep the space beside the stove until morning. Solla told him their blankets were already there, then asked whether he could work before Dey finished the cups. The man rubbed his thumb along Jade’s seam and looked toward his wife.

He wanted somebody to carry the chair to the market when his daughter’s message came back. His wife had kept her blanket over her knees all evening, watching other households choose to leave. She asked whether Jade meant to follow the courier. Jade said she was staying. The man agreed to do the seams while she carried the chair and helped his wife across the boards when they chose to go.

At the provision bay, Velka tested Jade’s sack by turning it inside out. She pulled at the repaired corner. Jade watched her fingers rather than the boat, waiting to hear that the work was good enough.

"This one will take grain if you leave the loose end longer," Velka said. "Bring the other two done, and I will carry one folded sheet with my orders."

"I can get them done before your boat is hauled out," Jade said. "Tell me where that sheet will actually wait in Mera."

Velka opened the wooden chest beneath the water barrel so Jade could see where the wrapped orders lay. At Mera she would deliver the jars, then place her return grain order at the carrier counter. The sheet would go to its keeper at the same time. Jade could pay for inquiries among the buyers there; taking Velka away from her cargo would be another job.

Velka pulled an order bundle from the chest. "Tavra’s buyers use that counter, and I know three other regular crews. I’ll ask whoever’s there. I haven’t seen your man or the carrier that took him."

Tavra was one of Velka’s regular customers. Jade had no name for the carrier Ty boarded and no destination for it. She took a strip cut from a ruined sack label for the outside instructions: ask Tavra’s buyers and the three other buying crews Velka knew for Ty Hockenson. His bound left shoulder, absent left hand, and missing right index could identify him. Jade added that he had gone across for an older man on a mill roof. The folded sheet would tell him where she was; the strip would help several crews ask for him without claiming any of them had brought him here.

Velka said the description was enough to ask with. She would put the outer strip beside the counter keeper’s order book and leave the wrapped sheet with him if none of the crews knew Ty. A crew that recognized the description could take the sheet to him. A reply could travel on her return run, but she could not bring one from a man she had not met.

Jade asked how long the run took. Velka pointed to the upright cut of darkness past the outer guide stones.

"The cargo roadback takes that crossing once we’re loaded," she said. "We stop at the water ledge, then run to Mera. It’s two days if the crossing keeps its usual turn, longer if we wait outside the harbor."

The return depended on grain being loaded and the route opening again. She expected to be away several days, not back for Jade’s next meal. Jade repeated the two stops so she would remember them. Velka returned to her jar straps. She would wait for the remaining seam work only until the tow crew came for her boat.

Jade carried the other sacks to the kitchen. The older man opened them across the table while his wife directed Dey to move the damp cups out of his stitching space. Solla wrote the outside strip, making the surname Hockenson legible after Jade spelled it twice. Jade read both pieces herself before the inner sheet was folded. At the sentence saying she would wait for Ty, she pressed a fingertip beneath the words. She wanted him back. She also remembered Orren unable to cross without him. She asked Solla to put that she was staying here and wanted word when he could send it.

When the sacks were ready, she took them to the bay in two trips. Mira came with the sheet and her separate glass order. Velka checked both repaired seams, tucked the message into a piece of oiled wrapping from the chest, and set it under the order bundle. She repeated the price in front of Mira. The three mended sacks paid for carrying the sheet to the counter and asking the crews there. They bought no private search and no place aboard for Jade.

The loading crew put their shoulders to the hauling cradle. Beyond the guide stones waited the small cargo roadback, a broad timber deck strapped over its back. Jade kept her good hand free of the ropes as the crew hauled the provision boat aboard. With its wheels across the deck edge, the cradle was lashed beside two other loads. Velka climbed in and fastened the order chest beneath the bench.

Between a chest and the water barrel, Velka cleared a space where Jade could have put her foot. Jade stood by the deck edge with her hand on the cradle. The crew had nearly finished lashing it down. She could ask what a rider cost, but she would be leaving the address written on that sheet. She lifted her hand and stepped back to the guide stones.

At the outer stones, the cargo crew released the mooring ropes. Velka checked the jars once more as the roadback turned its loaded deck toward the crossing. Its course keeper rang from beside the forward rail. Jade watched the provision boat, still lashed in its cradle, move beyond the last guide lamp with the chest beneath its bench.

Jade stayed until she could no longer see the boat’s stern. Back at the service landing, the older man had his chair folded against his knee. His daughter’s answer had reached the market stall while she was gone. He asked her to carry it after the last brace cart crossed. Jade took the chair with her left hand, set its weight against her hip, and waited beside his wife for Holl to clear the boards.