Chapter 288: One More Wee Thing

Couple days after, and the sibyl had caused no trouble at the estate.

Agnes had established who ran the house, and the woman who had bargained with the supernatural had been brought to heel by a housekeeper with a set of keys.

James had no idea how that worked itself out and had learned better than to ask.

Her shells, bones, red thread, and bells were packed into a box so she could be taken down to the Code stone to put her mark on it. Ever since, she had sulked in her room overlooking the bay.

Meanwhile, the Runts had sailed with the tide, some left whooping at the prospect of plunder, while some were sour about being dragged away from the easy life.

Having dealt with keys, jungles, sibyls, and sloops, James considered to spend a day on no work in particular and walked downhill to check on his town.

The market had been busy since dawn, with stalls across the ground all the way to the customs house, and nearly two thousand people that ate, haggled, and cursed their way through the mundane routine.

Outside some shed, a cooper had a barrel between his knees and a hoop that refused to fit, and he was addressing it one mallet-blow at a time. "Ye whoreson o’ a stave! Ye bandy-legged, warp-bellied, sap-weepin’ bastard! I’ve coaxed ye, I’ve cursed ye, I’ve rubbed ye down wi’ linseed an’ sweet words, an’ still ye bow out like a drunk bosun at a christenin’! Sit DOWN, damn yer eyes, or I’ll burn ye for kindlin’ an’ warm me hands on yer sins!"

The mallet came down. The hoop, to no surprise, didn’t repent.

At the end of the fish row stood Amos Kettle’s stall, complete with a scale beam, a square of oak beneath the slab, and a hat pegged to a nail like a battle flag. Adrienne Lavigne and Sawyer stood in front of it with their backs to the market, complaining in low voices.

The Frenchwoman had her arms folded, while the old carpenter stood a pace away with his hands tucked into his belt, his shirt pale with sawdust.

James stepped in beside them, picked a fish off the slab by its gill, pushed back its eyelid with his thumb, and steadied the scale beam with one finger.

From behind the slab, Kettle rushed out in protest, slapping above the scale as though the finger had left a stain on it, then wiped his palms down his apron to compose himself. "Hands off the scale, Chairman! Hands off, I say, or ye’ll have me cheatin’ myself, and a man can’t live with that on his conscience before breakfast!"

He jabbed a thumb at the fish, chin high.

"And look at that eye, would you, clear as a church window, that is."

"Aye, I can see my own face in it, and by God, it’s not improvin’ the view."

Adrienne sighed, regarding first the fish and then the man holding it with fatigue. "Ah. Monsieur, but of course. Of all the moments in this long, long morning, you choose to arrive with a fish in your hand, just as the argument has finally died a peaceful death."

James lifted the fish and used it to conduct his own summary, ticking off each point while its tail swung along in agreement. "Well then, I’ll not be the one to stir the pot again, but let me see if I know the gist of it, just for the sake of my poor wits. The city wants a new harbor for the armada ships to lay across the water, with the Rose, the Dame, and the Fortune first through the door."

The fish swept toward the far shore. "And the rest of the commonfolk boats and trade ships bide on this side, easy peasy. We need me, you plus one to forward it for the assembly to vote."

"Oui, that is all of it, every word. Voilà, so simple when it is said with a fish."

Adrienne’s arms came down by degrees, and the stiffness went out of her shoulders with them.

"Alors, I could kiss you, monsieur, but I’m not going to."

The far shore of the bay lay green and empty in the sunlight.

Soon enough, a stone harbor would rise there for the military ships, with two piers curving out into the bay like arms to shelter the deep berths behind them for the Rose, the Dame, and the Fortune.

Those ships had claimed private berths on this side by custom and fear, and in return, they would get a pier of their own and first pick of the new harbor, with room behind it for every captain who called the town home. The old harbor would remain for merchants, fishermen, smugglers, and the small boats from the villages, with a new water lane marked out by beacon cairns.

Although for the moment the far shore had only goats, who would bite and spit in whoever stepped there.

Sawyer, silent since then, addressed the cobbles, brushing a lazy snow of sawdust off one sleeve and checking the labors off on thick, scarred fingers. "Mind, stone’s slow and the quarry’s a long haul off, cribs want sinkin’ first, then the moles, then the quay, and every bloody bit of it wants works."

He folded his fist as though it held the whole sorry list.

"I’ll start when I’m told, but stone don’t scurry ’cause a vote says so."

Adrienne swung round on him in a flick of skirts, one finger raised. "The assembly will settle it, Monsieur Sawyer. Every captain, every fisherman, every wife with a basket on her hip, all of us have bled our damned time into that bay, it should be no issue to have it approved with extra workers."

James raised a finger.

"Och, one more wee thing, while I’ve your attention."

Adrienne closed her eyes in extreme exhaustion, and Sawyer looked down at the ground, as if he could burrow and hide from the words.

As for James, he simply picked an iron hook off Kettle’s slab, turned it over in his fingers, and looked up the slope toward the smoke rising over the foundries.

The workshop district was voted as priority, and that was obvious enough in its development. Yet even if the smiths produced hooks, hinges, nails, and tools, no one had ever cast a gun on the island.

That was the next step, an arsenal. It would need a furnace large enough to fill a cannon mold in one pour, casting pits, a boring shed powered by a capstan, a smithy for blades, boarding axes, and pistol locks, and a power magazine well away from the township.

James held the hook up between them and let it turn on his finger, catching the light.

"I’ll be straight, I want a gun foundry. That’s the whole of it, no more."

He nodded toward the smoke over the workshop district. "Look at us, now. A wee fragile thing, some free town in a world full of kings that still depends on goodwill to buys its guns and say thank you kindly when the powder’s wet."

The hook stopped turning.

"We ought to make our own."

Sawyer spat to one side.

Each word came heavier than the last. "I’ve hulls on me slips and moles to sink, and now ye want a furnace big as a bloody church! Sweet suffering Christ, Captain, have ye any notion what that costs? And that’s without the fire!"

James clicked his tongue. "Ach, mate, look at your face, as though I’d asked you to lift the sea in a bucket and tip it on the far shore."

"Sea’d be easier, that, it got no shite to say about where it goes."

Adrienne’s arms snapped back across her chest, and her voice climbed. "Have you even considered the smoke on the market wares, monsieur, or powder in a town with a schoolhouse. Mon Dieu, only one spark in the wind and the whole street goes up like a bonfire at Saint-Jean, children, cloth, and all."

She drew a breath and lifted her chin.

"And what do the merchants get for it, a louder morning?"

James dangled the hook before her nose. "More ironware, Adrienne! Hinges, kettles, ploughshares, hooks the likes of this bonnie wee fellow, sold dear in every port that wants one, and there’s not a port that doesn’t. And the powder goes well off to leeward, with a wall about it thick as a bishop’s skull."

He grinned.

"And smoke follows the wind, lass, same as the rest of us."

Adrienne breathed out through her nose. "Bah. It is your proposal, monsieur, so of course the assembly will say yes. They would vote you a gallows, and thank you for the rope, if only you asked them kindly."

Sawyer shrugged the sawdust off his shoulders.

"It’s daft, daft as a bucket wi’ no bottom. ...Aye, well. I’ll build it anyway."

Adrienne glanced at the sun and finally let her arms fall to her sides. "Eh bien. Then I have an assembly to arrange, and a square full of merchants to inform that they have won a new harbor. Good morning, monsieur."

Sawyer hitched his belt, sending another drift of sawdust down to the cobbles, and didn’t trouble to look back.

"Stone don’t count itself."

Both left in opposite directions, both in a hurry. Adrienne headed into the cloth stalls, while Sawyer went toward the stoneworks, whispering at the cobbles along the way.

James remained where he was, fish in hand and the day still ahead of him. A laundress swept past with a basket on her hip and a wink for the catch.

"Mornin’, Chairman! Mind that fish don’t take ye for a sweetheart!"

Kettle’s voice cracked across the market, followed by the slap of boots on cobbles as he came round the slab at a waddling run, two boys at his heels.

"Chairman! Oi, Chairman! Hold on, hold on, don’t ye go nowhere!"

He flung out an arm toward some monstruous fish with flourish, then dropped his voice to the hush of a conspirator. "Came in on the dawn tide, sir, and I says to myself, I says, Amos, there’s only one man on this island good enough for a fish of this quality, and that’s the Chairman. So..."

The hush cracked into a grin.

"Chairman’s price! Same as the fair price, only dearer."

"Och, Kettle, Kettle, Kettle. Fair pricing’s carved in the stone, mate."

Kettle laid a hand on the fish’s flank, tenderly, and sighed. "Aye, sir, and it’s a fair price, that is! And fair, sir, fair’s a stretchy word. Stretchy as a bosun’s conscience."

He leaned in, rubbing his hands together. "Tell ye what, since ye drive such a hard bargain, I’ll throw in the hat to carry her home, out of retirement, special occasion."

The fish’s dead eye stared up at James, and he grinned.