Chapter 140: Who Was He?

Mira had not meant to come to the paupers’ field below the north wall. She had turned off at the gate with bread for Nell, without thinking, and now she stood in front of a small grey stone in the second row.

AREN. HE GAVE HIS LIFE FOR ANOTHER.

The name meant nothing to her. Nell repeated it to her every day, with a hard look, and it never stuck. She broke off a piece of the bread and left it on the grass, and went back up the hill without knowing why she had come.

Roderick had followed her down, in case of dogs, and waited at the gate until she was out of sight. Then Nell came down off the wall in her first-year’s coat, fast, with a folded paper in her fist.

"I copied it off the registrar’s desk." She held it out. "A letter came from the Free Cities. Somebody in the south wanted to know what happened to the only Servant the north has Awakened in ten years. The registrar wrote back that he’s dead, and sent it."

Roderick read it, and folded it small.

Nell watched his face. "Why would anybody ask about a dead boy? Unless they’ve got a live one in front of them!"

"Then somebody down there is scouting him." He put the paper in his pocket and looked back at the stone and the bread on the grass. "And now they have it in writing that he’s dead. People who count things hate that."

He didn’t smile. Under his breath, to the stone, he added, "Sorry, ghost."

Far to the south, four days after the Veils came up through the drain, a grey pigeon walked across the tiled floor of the Kettle and stopped in front of Auntie’s feet.

She read the slip it carried, and smiled, and sent Kip running for the Cellar.

"Brother Coin." She waited until Seren and Aren were standing in front of her by the empty pool, and held up the slip between two fingers, so they could see the large, cheerful hand. "He’s heard about the Assay. He’s heard about the drain." Her needles began to click. "He’d like you both to come and see him."

"In Aurem?" Seren asked.

"In Aurem, dear. That’s where he lives."

Seren’s face went cold. "Aurem is where the Veils sell, and their great house is there. Half the pill houses in the capital belong to my uncle."

"And all the debts in the capital belong to Brother Coin." Auntie read the slip again. "Send me the alchemist, and whatever she’s making now. Send the one who borrowed a single crown with her. I’d like to meet a man who can count." She looked up at Aren over the paper. "That’s you, dear."

Teeth was standing by the door with his arms folded. He had said almost nothing to anyone for four days, and he said nothing while Auntie talked.

Auntie counted a row of stitches. "You’ll go with the House cloth wagons, up the Pale Road, at the end of the week. It’s nine days, and Brother Coin will feed you when you get there, because he feeds everyone." She went back to her knitting. "Don’t be late. He doesn’t like it when people are late."

"Rook comes on the wagons," Aren said. "Or I find my own road."

The needles stopped for a heartbeat, then went on. "Brother Coin likes a man who brings his own fence. Rook comes, and Teeth stays here, since Port Myrrh still needs a collector."

Aren let his eyes go to the copper kettle on the stove, and then back to her, and kept them there a little too long.

Auntie saw it, and smiled. "Oh, don’t look at me like that, dear! You’ll be at his table before the first of the month, and Brother Coin pours the tea there." Her needles clicked. "I told you he feeds everyone."

Aren let his shoulders drop a little, as a debtor’s should.

’A poison I don’t have, and the head of the House pouring the cure. I’ll have to look grateful at his table too.’

Aren didn’t look at the door. ’Let him stay. His notched key is in my Deep Purse, and the House doesn’t keep a Hand who sold its door to the Veils. Nine days up the road, he’s still on my string.’

’The House is paying for my road to the one city I needed.’ Aren kept his face polite. ’Never refuse a free ride.’

Teeth stood aside to let them pass. As Aren went by, he spoke without showing his iron. "Mind the steps in Aurem, purchased. They say the stairs there are steep."

"I always sleep at the bottom of mine," Aren told him, and went out.

Outside, the noon sun was white on the fish docks. Seren walked fast, with her hood up, and didn’t speak until they were halfway to the Cellar.

"What did he mean," she asked, "a man who can count?"

"I borrowed one crown from the House on my first day, and I paid it back before the month was out."

"Nobody pays the House back. That’s what the House is for." She looked at him sideways under the hood. "So now the head of it wants to see what kind of fool does that."

"A careful one."

"A goose." She walked on. "You’ll grind for me in Aurem. I won’t train another one."

"Yes."

"And if your ghost comes with us," she added, staring straight ahead, "he can keep away from my furnace."

She went down the stairs without waiting for an answer.

That evening Rook was on the ropewalk roof with his book and his bottle, as he had been every evening since they landed. He didn’t look up when Aren climbed out of the window.

"Aurem. Kip told the whole crew before you’d left the Kettle." He turned a page. "I sold a book in Aurem once. The buyer paid me, and then tried to have me killed to get his money back. Lovely city."

"You don’t have to come."

"No." Rook closed the book on his finger. "But you went into the Bureau of Bands nine days ago and came out pale, and you’ve slept in a cellar every night since. You’ve got a purse in your shirt that weighs nothing, and you touch it every time somebody says Teeth’s name." He saw Aren’s face and shrugged. "I’m a fence, stone-seller. I notice what people carry."

Aren said nothing. For a moment the real reason was in his mouth, the name he had promised himself on the ship never to say. He swallowed it.

Rook watched him swallow it, and turned a page.

"I’ll come," he said. "Your money’s more interesting than mine."

[Rook. Hostility: 60% → 57%.]

Aren sat down on the warm tiles beside him and looked up the hill, past the roofs, to the same pale road he had looked at on his first night, south between the dark fields.

At the end of it was Aurem, and the Pale Well at its heart. Vivienne was there, and near her a key with no teeth that would buy back a jar of Mira. At the Dry Gate, a glass nine hundred years old waited to look at him.

He took the cup Rook held out. "To the capital."

"To your money," Rook said.