Chapter 1023: The Wood Set Aside

Lema saw the yellow cloth on the hoist block’s handle before the harbor worker finished dragging it out of Tavra’s salvage shed. Her crew had marked it to keep it out of the laundry, and now the cloth was getting wet on the landing board.

"Put it down before you take another step," she told him. "That belongs to the salvage crew, and I need to know what you’re hanging from it."

The worker lowered it beside the post. He was breathing through his mouth and holding a strip of paper with a knot drawn on it. Beyond him, Sivra stood at the mill ramp watching the bell boat. A line ran from the loading arm to a cradle caught against its damaged stern.

"Their own tackle can’t lift the carriage and keep the rescue cradle up," he said. "Your block has two wheels. They asked me to find one."

On the greasy paper, the worker pointed out the rigger’s two separate rings, one for the cradle and one for the bell, then the line running back to the mill stone. With Tavra clear of either load, Lema folded the drawing and kept it.

She looked up at the empty salvage hook. Its net had been brought onto the lower walk before the harbor shot, and now lay between the shed and a house door. Inside it were roof stones, bent hinges, pieces of a mill she had watched break, and the lamp hood she had promised Ty to keep for Mira. Two boys had put a bread tray across the net to stop the pieces rolling.

If the block went, her crew could not lift that net back beneath the walk. Tavra’s next turn would put loose stone against somebody’s wall. Lema moved the bread tray, found the hood beneath a fold of rope, and carried it to the shed shelf. One side of its yellow glass was scratched. It was still in one piece.

Lema told the worker, "Wait here with the block while I speak to Sivra. Nobody unfastens a house rope for this."

She crossed the landing board past the flour sacks. Her mother had taken the patients’ flour into the bakery and left two sacks beneath a cloth beside the gate. The bakery boy was kneeling beside the torn sack with a pan under it. He looked up as Lema passed.

"Mother says the second oven needs its own man," he said. "The gate workers keep leaving when somebody calls from the quay."

"Tell them I sent them back until those trays are done. I’ll find different hands for the boat."

The boy kept his pan under the sack. Lema went up to stop a gate worker leaving the bakery. Her mother opened the oven door behind him and used her peel to block his way down the stair.

"I said two men on these trays. The patients don’t stop eating when somebody shouts."

The worker looked at Lema. "My sister’s room has no bread left. We carried their sacks first."

Lema knew the room. His sister had been putting a pot beneath the last leak there since the crossing, and she would have heard every sack come up the bakery stair.

"Your flour comes after their bread, as I agreed with the seller," Lema said. "Stay with Mother. I’ll bring your sister down to help take our sacks when they’re sold."

"You promised you’d bring the sacks. She can’t leave the little ones to carry flour."

Lema looked down the stair toward the men waiting for a block. She had counted this worker among the hands she could borrow. His sister’s children would not become spare hands because her first bargain was inconvenient.

"Stay at the oven. I’ll carry your share myself when the seller releases it."

Her mother pulled the peel clear, and the worker went back to the trays. Lema took an empty basket from beneath the bakery bench and found a salvage worker to take her place at the hauling bar. She would help set the rescue up, but she could not promise to stand at that bar until it ended.

At the mill ramp, Sivra held a funnel toward the bell boat. The older rigger was beside the service window, gesturing toward a heavy frame beneath the flooded platform. Ty stood close enough for Lema to recognize his bound shoulder, though the boat had turned him nearly upside down from where she watched.

Lema said, "I have the block they want. Tell me where its load goes before you take it."

Sivra lowered the funnel. "The mill’s stone anchor. Not your carrier, and not that boat’s service eye. Ruvet wants the cradle line left alone."

"Then show me who checks the stone anchor. I’ve had people promise a floor would stay under them today."

Sivra led her under the loading arm, where a mill worker was testing the stone anchor against a loaded cart. Lema stayed until he gave an answer: they could take up the new tackle slowly while he watched the ring. She asked him to stay for the lift.

"I can lend the block if you leave me a way to clear the net," Lema said. "It’s full of stone outside somebody’s door. We can’t carry it loose through a crossing."

"Put it in the mill yard until you can lift it again."

"The yard charges for stone. My coins are already set aside for flour."

Sivra looked toward the bakery, where smoke had begun to rise above the stair. "I’ll speak to the mill keeper about the charge. You’ll still have to move it yourselves."

The woman with yellow net floats was waiting beside the mill door. She held a knife in its leather sheath. Two fish moved in the pool behind her; out on the water, the skiff crew were searching along a line newly brought from the bell platform.

"I sent six with Ruvet, and only those two came back," she told Sivra. "Put four breeders on your catch account. His owing me won’t grow them."

Sivra said, "I’ll put a share of the harbor catch aside. It won’t buy your six back today."

The woman passed her the knife. "My son kept that in his boot. Look at the strap above where the line’s rubbed it. That’s been cut."

Above the fraying from the wreck line, a diagonal cut divided the leather. Sivra touched it with her thumb while the mother waited. Lema stepped back from the mill door to leave them room.

"I’ll have them search both sides of the wreck line," Sivra said. "This doesn’t tell me which way he went."

"Don’t put his knife in a shed with the broken nets."

The woman put the returned knife into its sheath and waited until Sivra sent a runner to the skiff. Lema left her at the mill door and went to find what Tavra could give. She did not ask for the two fish still in the pool.

Lema called two of her salvage workers from the shed. One came down with the heavy block; the other stayed by the net and wanted to know which stones were being thrown out. She went back up to answer him. If she shouted from the quay, three neighbors would hear the wrong part before he heard the right one.

"Carry the stone to the yard in baskets," she told him. "Nothing leaves an occupied house. The hood stays on that shelf."

He looked at the two straight beams beneath the shed wall. "We were keeping those for the gate stair. You’ve seen the stair since the crossing."

Lema had seen its lower tread lift against a pale plate. Her crew had tied the rail back to a sound post, keeping families above it until they could replace the supports. The beams were long enough to make the repair without cutting good wood out of an inhabited house. She had marked both in chalk before Tavra entered Mera.

While she was looking at the marks, Sivra’s worker brought another request: packing wood to go under the bell carriage after they lifted it. All the cabin crew could offer were buckets and a split door, neither strong enough to hold the bronze weight.

Lema put her hand on the nearer beam. "How much of this would they have to cut?"

"Enough for blocks under both sides of the carriage. Ruvet says short pieces, so they can bring them through the window."

Her salvage worker ran his fingers along the grain. "Cut it that short and we can’t make a stair bearer out of it again. I can prop the tread until we buy wood, but I won’t take a family over it at a turn."

Above the stair, a woman was taking children’s shirts off the washing line. Lema called her down to the sound landing and waited while she gathered the pegs. The beams under Lema’s hand had been set aside for her household’s way out.

Lema told her, "The bell crew need short packing wood. Your stair stays propped, and you use the upper walk until I replace the bearers."

The woman took the last shirt from the line before answering. "My husband gets back at the low turn. He’ll try the lower stair unless somebody waits for him."

"I’ll leave a worker at the corner. Have him take the upper walk even if he sees me below."

The woman put her shirt basket on the beam. "Pick one and leave the other. You’ve taken men off our stair for their bakery, and now you want all the wood too."

"There’s an injured man who can’t get out through a window."

"Then give him one beam. If you take both, you can come back tomorrow with another man who needs them more than we do."

Lema had sent the carpenter to the ovens herself. The woman had seen him go and had waited by the damaged stair for him to return. Lema asked the salvage worker to measure the thicker beam against the rigger’s request. He checked its sound length and showed her where it would make packing for both sides of the carriage. It would take that whole beam, but not the other.

The woman lifted her basket. Lema put her hand on the thinner beam and told the worker to leave its chalk mark intact. Her gate crew would have one bearer waiting when the repair could begin; Lema would owe them the second before the lower stair reopened.

She left a worker at the corner to turn the woman’s husband toward the upper walk. Then she stayed beside the shed while the thicker beam was cut. The woman stood with her shirts against her hip until the last packing piece had come free. Lema saved a cut end for the carpenter to measure and carried the blocks down herself.

At the mill, the heavy block had reached the new line. The men had enough rope for the lifting run, but not enough to bring its free end around the loading arm to the drum. Sivra asked for Tavra’s long salvage rope. Lema watched its lead run disappear beneath the net, through the same lashing her crew would need at the next landing.

"You can take the spare length in the shed," she said. "Leave the net’s own lash where it is."

Her salvage worker drew the spare coil out. One end had been mended at a crossing long before she joined the gate. He shook that repair apart enough for Sivra’s rope man to inspect it. The man rejected the join for a suspended load and marked where he wanted to cut.

Her worker measured the spare rope against the salvage hoist’s drop, holding two fingers at the proposed cut. Neither part would reach below Tavra’s plates afterward. A join would serve for hauling a cart against a floor, but lowering a worker beneath the carrier would require an unbroken length. Lema had him add a new long rope beside the stair bearer on their market list.

"Cut at your mark and keep the sound length," she said. "Don’t ask my crew to hang a person from the join to save me rope."

The rope man cut. Lema brought the short end back to the shed and put it beside the cut end they had saved for measuring. The second beam was still where the woman had made her leave it.

They sent the block, rope, and wooden packing to the bell boat along a light line. Ruvet brought the block beneath the carriage’s lifting eye. He had stopped calling toward the mill; the older rigger used the funnel now. Ty passed the sling through the service opening with his right hand, his chain coiled out of the work. The rigger made Ruvet wait while she moved the sling away from a split weld.

"Have him keep that left arm inside his harness," Lema called through Sivra’s funnel. "It can’t take a jerk when you lift."

The rigger reached across Ty and fastened the loose waist strap higher on the service rail. He moved his good hand to the window lip, then let go when she tapped his knuckles. Ruvet had the sling. Ty rested his forearm along the sill while the woman checked its other end.

The mill crew took up the heavy tackle, which ran to a fresh hauling bar beside the cradle drum. Its line straightened toward the stone pier without dragging the cradle from the service eye. A wheel beneath the bell carriage left the broken stop. The rigger slid a test block into the gap and raised a hand. Sivra stopped the hauling bar.

The rigger called, "Dorel goes first, lying in our sling. We pack both sides, clear the bow chain from the frame, then open the wide door. Keep the cradle’s drum ready."

Lema asked Sivra to repeat the rigger’s order through the funnel so the hauling crew could hear it. From the cabin, Dorel called that he wanted the sling under his good knee, not over his bowl. The young rigger moved something beside him. Lema looked toward the searching skiff, then back to the cup Dorel held out through the window.

She took the spare return cord to the salvage worker who would replace her at the hauling bar. Ty was at the cabin window, holding Dorel’s good knee while the younger rigger spread the cloth sling. Lema waited until her worker had watched the woman’s hand signal and could tell Sivra when to stop. Then she went far enough down the ramp to see the flour seller’s cart without losing sight of the window.

At Tavra’s gate, her worker turned a man away from the lower stair and pointed him toward the upper walk. The rigger took the test block out to shift it against sound iron. She would not open the wide door until both packing points had been set. Lema put the empty flour basket against her hip. The mill crew waited for the rigger’s hand, and she waited for her mother to open the bakery door.