Damp knows that coin, for the husband she buried was a Hesper boy, and something in her softens at the memory.
‘Settle lads. It’s bitter right enough. A cat-creep night, and the dead are out looking for flame. Not a good one to be abroad.’
They settle, as much as young men settle. Taking a cup of ale, and even trying some of her little winkled delights. Introducing themselves like polite lads: Quickfish and Roofkeeper.
The evening slinks by in small talk. A few new faces is nice enough, after all. Even if Tapshuck spends most of his time with the dog, and polishing the brass that’s already glimmered.
Rust lets the fire sink, and coaxes the lamps in the windows to spill a little buttered flame against the dark. The talk gets looser, as sleep and drink settle on the group like an old coat. And if the roof creaks a little, well, the building is old. And if the sheep scatter on the hill, well, they are wont to do that, wild little things.
The tavern closes itself for the night. Tap bars and bolts the door, and bids the trio goodnight. Takes the dog up to bed for some heat, and plants a little two-fingered kiss on the stair charm as he passes. Just another little brass thing in a pub full of brass things, but it gives him comfort.
The creak of him settling stretches the rafters for a while, and Damp makes a foul joke. Shanks is next to go. There’s still not enough fat on him to hold the drink, and he slides first to her shoulder, and then her lap. She adjusts her kirtle to pillow his head, and strokes his hair. Because he’s not so bad, when you get down to it. And not when the night is so dark, so cold, so close to the mountain.
Weariness weights her eyes like merchants’ lead, the fire blursand the faces around it swim. Shadows of flame dance on the chimney breast, bouncing off brass and tack. And if something moves there, then it’s just light and heat; ash becoming flame and flames falling to ash.
The new folks are tiring too, falling into each other like lobsters into the creel. And isn’t that how it should be? Shanks’s head is warm across her thighs, and all her friends are here. Dampstrand sleeps.
So there’s just Rustneck, and she’s stretched out by the fire, because the ale’s stronger than she remembers, and the cold fiercer, creeping in every crack of this little place that feels like home. She sleeps too, but fitful, a doze pulled back and forth by the aches in her shoulders where she’s dug and turned the dark soil.
She wakes in the small hours when the fire has fallen to black, and all her friends are dreaming. The rain pushes the thin panes of glass like breath, and the eaves tick with the feet of rats. And she thinks she sees something. The two young men are asleep in one of the corner chairs, twined like mice in the skirting. And the younger one is twitching, dancing. His fingers moving in a world she does not see, his lips muttering something she cannot hear.
Rust ignores it. She has made a living ignoring things that scare her. She ignores it until the light blossoms. A spatter of rain and wind pushes against the thatch, and in the same moment, a welter of gold light washes over that young man. His palm. His lips. His eyes.
He speaks again, and she steps closer, tries to make it clear, just a single word. The gold light washes her bones, brighter than fire. And she can feel something on the edge of it, like digging out something buried deep. She can almost feel the glint and turn of it. She can almost hear her own name.
She steps closer. That small parlour is washed with gold as she puts her ear to Quickfish’s lips, and makes out just one word.
‘Thell.’
The gold flares, and Rustneck dreams.
When she wakes, it’s morning, the hearth cold. Damp andShanks are already up, rubbing some life back into aching muscles, and pouring grease into a skillet to greet some eggs.
The young men are nowhere to be seen.
The light nowhere to be seen.
Rust thinks about saying something, about sharing what she felt, for that one moment. The touch of that light, the whisper of Thell.
But she’s made a living keeping her mouth shut. Her friends don’t deserve the worry.
So she sits at the table, and runs that Hesper coin through her fingers, wondering just what else those young lads will be buying. And just how much it will cost.
24
Being a city of startling prospect and prosperity, proceeding from a stark elevation through a number of close-hung districts, suitable for the lower sorts.
—An Exile’s Guide to the Cities of the Chalk Shore, Chapter 4, Hesper (The Vulture)
He takes the usual route, off the main canal and into the smaller streets that twitch their way between the regular grids of waterway and plaza. Ropecharmer looks up as he walks. Hesper is a strange city. From the grey towers high on the hill, past the porticos and pillars of the old merchant homes, and down to the sprawl of waterways that pulls commerce into the heart of the port.
The canals themselves are broad. Sometimes he crosses them on sculpted bridges, the carved faces of their benefactors slowly sifting into the water below. Sometime he hops, from barge to barge, wobbling the cargo and collecting curses. Not too hard. He’s a light lad, a thin thing.
Between the canals, Hesper stretches upwards. Apartments and galleries of fine façade nestled against lean-tos and add-upons. Little penthouses fit only for rats, and the spark-eyed kids who run errands, glimming the streets. That could have been him once, without the luck he’d had, the friends he’d made.
Into another snarl of streets. Cats sloping the gutters watch him with affront. The smell of life clings to the walls, kitchen windows spitting grease, and café porters swapping slander over a smoke.
Ropecharmer looks up. If you have a good eye, you can see the scars, the spots on a building where there used to be a shrine, orthe rough stone where the mascarons of gods were ripped from the plaster. They are shiny and strangely healed, like a burn.
