Chapter 199: Sixteen A Day

Logan did the sum in his head before he answered.

’Burr was a Rare, and the counter paid four a day for him. Pebble is a Mythic, and it paid thirty-two. It doubles at every rank.’

"Sixteen points a day," he said aloud. "If it pays for a Legendary the way it paid for the others. A crust is three thousand two hundred. That is two hundred of Bread’s days for each one."

"And he has?"

"Two thousand nine hundred and nineteen."

Oswin worked out the rest for himself. Logan watched him do it.

"Fourteen," he said. "And then he is old, and then he is gone."

Bread leaned against his knee. Ash sifted off the dog’s grey scales onto the stone.

"It will not be fourteen," said Helen.

She had walked down the Table while they were talking. Now she was standing at the far end beside the man who had laid his head on the cloth.

She had her hand on his back between his shoulder blades. She took it away.

"He is gone," she said. "He went just now, while it was falling."

Helen drew the end of the grey cloth up over the man’s head, carefully, the way she would have drawn up a blanket. Then she counted the others with her eyes, and Logan counted with her.

There were nine of them left.

Two were women. One was hardly older than Logan, with her hair cropped short, and the other had been the first to cry. The rest were men, and the oldest of them could not have been far from Rishin’s age.

None of them had run or even stood up. They sat in their chairs and looked at the family across the grey heap that had fed them, and they waited the way people wait who no longer expect anything to happen.

"Nine," said Oswin.

"I can take some of it, boss," said Pebble.

He had come up on Logan’s other side without being called. The grey lock at his temple was grey with ash too now. It was hard to see where one ended and the other began.

"No," said Oswin at once. "You have done enough for me."

"It is not for you, sir. It is for them." Pebble nodded at the Table. "The old man said unless somebody is dying. Those are nine somebodies."

Logan studied him. Then he turned to Oswin.

"Two," he said. "Pebble pays for two. Bread pays for seven. Nobody argues."

Oswin opened his mouth.

"Nobody argues," said Isolde from behind them. Her voice was very dry. "He said."

Oswin shut his mouth again. He looked down at the dog.

"Fourteen hundred days," he said to it. "It is nearly half of you."

Bread pushed his head up under Oswin’s hand, the way he had under the willows. Then he turned and walked off toward the falls by himself, and his bell rang with every step.

The door was beside the stair.

Logan had not seen it before, because his eyes had been on the Table. It was set into the rock wall a little way from the first step, where the spray from the falls drifted across it. It was black wood, plain and old.

The amber lantern beside it was lit. Its flame stood quite still in the wet air.

Bread had stopped in front of it and sat down.

Oswin walked up to the dog and stood looking at the lantern. His face had gone grey under the ash.

"It was here," he said. "All the time. Right beside them."

"It always is," said Rishin.

Oswin turned round and looked at the Table. From where he stood, he could see every chair along it and every bowl. The eaters could have seen the lantern from any one of them.

"They sat there eating ash," he said, "beside a door that sells bread."

"With nothing to give it," said Rishin. "The same as you."

They chose it outside, as before.

"Whatever keeps those nine alive until they leave the Fourth Layer," said Alice. She said it slowly, so that Oswin could hear every word. "Say it exactly like that. Nothing else."

Oswin said it over twice to himself. Then he nodded.

Logan went in with him. Pebble came, and Bread came because nobody could have stopped him. Alice stayed outside on the wet stone with the rest of them, and she did not take her eyes off the door.

It swung inward before Oswin touched it.

It was the same room. The same warm smell of beeswax and dust came out to meet them, and the counter of black wood stood where it always stood.

Oswin stopped dead on the threshold. Logan remembered Oswin saying he had stood in this room before, on the Second Layer, with a fever-bottle and two units and every day they had.

"Whatever keeps those nine alive until they leave the Fourth Layer," Oswin said to the counter. His voice did not shake. "Nothing else."

The lanterns did not dim this time.

The crusts were already lying on the counter. Nine of them lay in a row across the black wood, each one the same dark heel of bread with one corner torn away by hand.

Logan felt the skin on his arms tighten.

’It had them ready,’ he thought. ’Before we were through the door. Before we had decided. It knew.’

[ Wayfarer’s Crust x9 ] [ One use each. The eater is fed as though by one who loves him, until he leaves the Fourth Layer. ] [ Price: 28,800 Abyss Points ]

Oswin read it and did not move. Then he looked down at the dog beside him.

Bread put his front paws up on the worn step. He was tall enough to set one broad paw in the second hollow of the counter, and he did it as if he had seen it done a hundred times.

[ Offered: Ironcoat Mastiff (Bread) ] [ Rank: Legendary ] [ Rate: 16 Abyss Points per day ] [ Available: 2,919 days ]

"Sixteen," said Logan. "I was right."

He did not feel glad about it.

[ Exchange: 1,400 days (Bread) → 22,400 Abyss Points ]

Pebble stepped up beside the dog and put his hand in the hollow next to the great grey paw.

[ Exchange: 200 days (Pebble) → 6,400 Abyss Points ] [ Purchased: Wayfarer’s Crust x9 ] [ Bread: Lifespan 1,519 days ] [ Pebble: Lifespan 4,632 days ]

Logan watched it happen to both of them.

A second white thread ran through the hair beside Pebble’s grey lock. It was finer than the first.

Bread’s muzzle went grey.

It did not happen slowly. It went grey from the nose back to the eyes in the time it took to blink, the way the dog’s whole coat had once gone to scale.

The brown of his eyes did not change. He took his paw off the counter and set it down on the step, and he sat there, and his tail moved once across the floor.

Oswin went down on his knees in front of him.

He did not say anything. He put both arms round the dog’s thick grey neck and pressed his face into the scales behind its ear, and he stayed there.

Pebble looked away to give him room. So did Logan.

When Oswin got up, his face was wet, but his hands were steady. He gathered the nine crusts off the counter one at a time and stacked them in the crook of his arm like firewood.

"Thank you," he said to Pebble.

"You are welcome, sir," said Pebble. "It was a good thing to buy."

The door opened at the first touch again.

They came out into the spray and the roar of the falls. Alice came forward and caught Logan’s hand.

Oswin walked straight past her to the Table.

He did not give the first crust to the nearest person. He walked the length of the Table to the woman who had cried first.

She was still sitting with her finger grey with ash, and she looked up at him as he came, and she shrank back a little in her chair.

Oswin set the crust down in front of her, on top of the bowl of ash.

"It is bread," he said. "I promise you it is only bread. Eat it."

She looked at it. She looked at him. Then she picked it up in both hands, the way Vina had, and she bit into it.

It did not turn to ash.

Vina had come up beside Oswin. He looked down at her, and then he gave her half of the crusts from his arm without a word.

They went down the two sides of the Table together, Oswin on one side and Vina on the other, and they put a crust in front of every chair that still had somebody in it.

The young woman with the cropped hair would not take hers until Vina put it into her hand and closed her fingers round it.

The oldest man looked at his for so long that Oswin finally broke a corner off it himself and held it to his mouth.

One by one, they ate.

Logan watched the color come back into nine grey faces. He watched hands that had been lifting spoons of ash stop shaking.

The first woman had finished hers, and she sat with her hands flat on the cloth, looking at them as if she had never seen them before.

Then Oswin surprised him.

He went to the empty chair beside her, the one that had stood between her and the next eater.

He picked it up and turned it round, so that it faced her instead of the bowl. Then he did the same with the next empty chair, and the one after that.

He went all the way down the Table. When he had finished, there was not a chair at it that faced a bowl of ash. Every one of them faced a person.

"There," he said. He sounded tired and very sure. "That is better."