Chapter 38: Harrowgate Again

Thaw ledger. Days to thaw: 91. Harrowgate, east gate. Gate tax: waived. Weapon tax: waived. Gate guard's exact words: "Just go. Please. Just go through." I have recorded this as a saving of five silver. H.Q.

The gate guard was the same one. The beer money one. I'd seen him twice now, once charging me a silver for a butcher's weapon and once watching me run past him at a speed that had blown his hat off.

He saw me coming down the last of the hill in my rat-hide coat with Gristle on my back and Wrenna steaming beside me, with a red ribbon in her hair, and the horses and the black carriage fifty paces behind. He looked at all of it. He went a bit pale. Then he stepped back out of the road and waved us through with his whole arm, the way the watchman had for the Countess.

"Weapon tax," I said, stopping. "And the gate. For six. What's that come to?"

"Just go," he said. "Please. Just go through."

"I don't mind paying."

"I know you don't," said the gate guard. "That's what frightens me."

* * *

Candle Lane had a shop in it.

Widow Ostry's front room, the one that faced the lane, had a new window. A big one, with little square panes, and painted across the glass in green and gold letters a foot high, it said LEVEL ONE GOODS. Underneath, smaller: Teeth, Broadsheets, Souvenirs. Est. this year. Proprietor P. No Refunds.

There was a queue outside. In the middle of winter, in the snow. Orcs, mostly. A few drovers. A family from out of town, by the look of their boots, with three children, all holding hands.

In the window, on a velvet cloth, there was a row of little wooden cleavers, each about the length of my hand, with a brass tag through the handle. They were nailed to the shelf. A card propped against them said: TRY TO LIFT. ONE COPPER.

Pip came out of the door before I'd got halfway down the lane. She looked taller. Maybe it was the boots, or maybe it was having a shop with her name on the window. She had a proper coat on, a good blue wool one, and new boots, and her hair was cut properly instead of with a knife. She still had the gap in her teeth.

She stopped dead on the step when she saw me.

Then she came down the lane at a run, and stopped about three feet short, and stood there with her fists clenched.

"You didn't die," she said.

"No."

"Everyone said you might die. In the barn. With the hole." Her chin was doing something. "I had a whole special broadsheet ready. With a black border. I spent four copper on the black ink."

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry." She wiped her nose on her blue sleeve, hard. "I'll sell it to someone else. Somebody always dies."

Then she hugged me, very fast, round the middle, and let go before anyone could see, and went back to the shop door and shouted at the queue to stop pushing.

* * *

There were two people working in the shop. One was a big quiet orc lad about Pip's age, from the Bonecutter clan, who'd stayed in the city after the Treaty talks because, he told me, he liked the arithmetic. The other one was Wat.

Fitch's nephew Wat. From the sewer. He was standing behind the counter in a clean apron, selling teeth.

"Mister Marsh," he said, and went red to the ears. "I work here now. Pip pays better than Uncle Fitch. And it's not underground."

"That's good, Wat."

"I'm the head of teeth," said Wat proudly.

Pip appeared at my elbow with a ledger. A real one, bound, with columns ruled in red. She opened it in front of Miss Quill without a word, the way you'd show someone a new baby.

Miss Quill read the first page. Then she turned to the second. Then she went very quiet, and turned all the pages, one after the other, all the way to the end, while Pip stood there with her chin up, pretending not to wait.

"Pip," said Miss Quill at last.

"What?"

"These are very nearly honest books."

Pip's face went through about five different things at once.

"Very nearly," said Pip.

"There's a column for the nailed cleavers," said Miss Quill, "which you've labelled lifting attempts. And the nails are entered under shop fittings." She looked up. "That's not dishonest. That's just extremely clever."

Pip stared at her. Then she grinned, gap and all, the biggest grin I'd ever seen on her, the kind you can't sell and wouldn't want to.

"Will you teach me?" she said. "Proper books? The real way? Like you?"

"When I get back," said Miss Quill. "Yes. I'd like that very much."

* * *

Widow Ostry put us up for two nights. The princess included.

She stood in her front hall with her hands folded and looked at all of us. The farmer. The auditor she'd had for six years. The third princess of Aldmere. The thing in the yard with the ribbon in its hair, which was not coming in under any circumstances. And the old man in black who'd come in behind us carrying the Countess's trunk.

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"One silver a night," said Widow Ostry. "Breakfast at the seventh bell. No guests. No cooking in the rooms. Nothing with a blade at my table. Break anything, you pay twice." She looked at Lys. "That includes Your Highness."

"Of course, Mrs Ostry," said Lys, very meekly.

Widow Ostry looked at Pellam. Pellam looked at Widow Ostry. It was the longest, stillest look I've ever seen pass between two people.

"I'll take the Countess's trunk to the cellar, madam," said Pellam, "if madam permits."

"Madam permits," said Widow Ostry, "provided the Countess does not track."

"The Countess never tracks, madam."

"See that she doesn't."

They nodded to each other, once, very slightly, like two generals agreeing a truce, and Pellam went down the cellar stairs with the trunk.

I paid for my two nights. Two silver. It felt strange, paying Widow Ostry for a room again, the same short bed under the roof with my feet hanging off the end. It felt like coming home to a place that wasn't home. I slept better than I had in weeks. Miss Quill paid for hers and wrote both down. Lys tried to pay for everyone, and Widow Ostry wouldn't let her, and said royalty paid for royalty and the rest could pay for themselves, and that was her house.

* * *

The Countess came up from the cellar at dusk, and Widow Ostry was waiting for her at the top of the stairs.

"You came in by my window, last autumn," said Widow Ostry.

"I came in by your door tonight," said the Countess.

Widow Ostry considered this.

"Noted," she said, and went to see about the lamps.

The Countess watched her go. Then she turned to me with an expression I'd never seen on her before. She looked almost shy.

"I think," she said, "that was a compliment."

"From Mrs Ostry," I said, "that's a medal."

* * *

Lark Hollis found me at the Guild the next afternoon. Miss Quill had gone up to her office to fetch some papers, and I was waiting in the hall, under the green dome, where they'd laughed at me the first day. Nobody was laughing now. People were looking at me, the drinkers along the walls and the queue at the counter, and then looking away very fast, the way you'd look at a bull through a gate.

Lark came across the hall at a walk that wanted to be a swagger and wasn't quite. He had a silver disc on his chain now, instead of iron.

"Fuck me," he said. "It's the farmer."

"Lark."

"Silver," he said, tapping the disc, before I could ask. "Last month. They had to fill a lot of places, after Ashby." He looked at the cleaver. Then at me. "I heard. About the barn. And Thornfell. And the run." He shook his head. "Six days by cart in an afternoon. The drovers have a song."

"I've heard it."

"It's terrible," said Lark.

"It is."

He stood there, rubbing his wrist, the one he'd hurt on the cleaver. Then he said, not looking at me, "If you ever need a Silver. For anything. You know where the hall is."

"Thanks, Lark."

"Don't thank me," said Lark Hollis. "I still can't lift the bloody thing." And he went off to the counter, walking a bit straighter than he'd come.

* * *

Lys took me to see Gareth on the second morning.

The cells under the palace are cold and dry, and better kept than I'd have thought. He was in the end one, on his own. There was a bed, and a table, and a slit of a window up high where the daylight came in thin and grey. They'd taken his armour. He was in a plain shirt, and he'd lost weight, and his golden hair had gone dull and needed cutting.

He was sitting on the bed when the guard let us in. There was a tray on the table with a bowl of something grey on it that he hadn't touched, and a wooden spoon, because they don't give you a knife down there. He looked up, and saw Lys, and stood, out of habit, the way he'd have stood for her at court. Then he saw me behind her.

He sat down again. Slowly.

"Farmer," he said.

"Sir."

He laughed. It wasn't much of a laugh. "Still sir. Even now."

"It's just manners," I said.

Lys stood by the door with her arms folded and said nothing. She'd told me, on the way down, that she'd let me talk. She said Gareth would say things to me he'd never say to her, because he still thought I was nothing, and men tell nothing everything.

"The Chancellor's box," I said. "The strongbox he had on the wyvern. What's in it?"

Gareth was quiet a long time.

"Keys," he said at last. "Old ones. Six of them. A sickle, a hook, a spade, a sort of iron comb, a pair of shears. And a thing like a fire-iron." He rubbed his face. "He showed me once. At the Tower House. He kept them in a box lined with lead, because he said they hummed. He said they'd come off six farms, and that they opened six doors, and that one day he'd have the seventh key, and then he'd have all of them."

He looked at Gristle, on my back.

"He meant that," he said. "Your cleaver. He meant that one."

"Where's he gone?"

"I don't know." He shook his head. "I swear I don't. He never told me where he went when he wasn't in the city. But he talked about the salt. Twice. Drunk, both times. He said there was a woman in the salt who owed his family. He said a grandmother of his, a long way back, had done her a service once and never been paid, and one day he'd go and collect." Gareth looked up. "I thought it was just drink. I don't know any woman in the salt."

Behind me, Lys had gone very still.

"Thank you," I said.

Gareth stared at me from the bed, with his mouth working.

"Why couldn't I lift it?" he said. Quietly. Not angry. Like it had been sitting in him for weeks. "I've lifted everything. My whole life. Every sword, every lance, every weight the masters ever set me. I'm Level four hundred and twelve. And I couldn't lift a meat cleaver off a bench." His voice cracked on the last word. "Why?"

I thought about it. I always think about things before I answer.

"I don't think it's about strong, sir," I said. "I think it's just not yours."

He sat there looking at me. Then he put his face in his hands, and his shoulders shook, and he didn't say anything else.

Lys opened the cell door.

* * *

"They won't hang him," she said, outside, in the cold corridor. "My father doesn't hang men who confess. He'll go to the quarries on the Iron Coast. For twenty years. Ashby too." She was walking very fast, the way she did when she was angry. "And some grandmother of Kell's did the Witch of Hollowmere a service, and Kell's going to the Saltfens to collect on it, and he's got a wyvern and a three-week start, and we've got a pack pony and a carriage and an auditor who can't ride."

"She's getting better at riding."

"She fell off twice yesterday."

"Once," I said. "The second time she got off on purpose and pretended."

Lys stopped walking. She looked at me. Then, for the first time since the cell, she laughed, short and surprised, and put her hand over her eyes.

"Fathers," she said. "Grandmothers. Debts." She shook her head. "Everybody in this kingdom is paying for something somebody else did a hundred years ago."

"Most of farming's like that," I said. "You harvest what your grandad planted. Or you dig up the rocks he didn't."

She took her hand away from her eyes and looked at me, in the cold grey light of the palace corridor.

"Tobin Marsh," said the third princess of Aldmere. "Sometimes you say things, and I can't tell if you know how good they are."

"Was that a good one?"

"Yes," said Lys. "That was a good one."

* * *

We left Harrowgate on the third morning, by the south gate this time. The Master of Coin had sent a purse with a royal letter in it: twenty gold for the road, from the King, and a writ for Kell's arrest anywhere in Aldmere, and a second letter, sealed, that Lys said was for the Witch and she didn't know what was in it.

Miss Quill wrote the twenty gold in the ledger, under a heading that said ROYAL. She looked at it for a while. Then she wrote, in the margin, very small: first time.

Pip was on the south gate when we went through. I don't know how she'd known which gate. Pip always knows.

She had a broadsheet under her arm, rolled up. She held it out to me.

"It's the black-border one," she said. "I'm not selling it. I'm giving it to you. So you know what it'd have said." She glared at me. "So don't make me use it."

I unrolled it on the road. It was a drawing of me, with the cleaver, standing in a barn door. Underneath, in Pip's big careful letters, it said:

THE LEVEL ONE. HE COULD DO RATS. HE DID EVERYTHING ELSE TOO.

I rolled it up again, very carefully, and put it inside my coat.

"I won't make you use it," I said.

"You'd better not," said Pip. "I've got a shop to run."