The Smuggler's Supper

Brenda's supper came out of a pot with a dent deep enough to hold a thumb. She set it between Celia and Mira on the salvage lugger's cabin table and handed them two bowls that did not match.

"Fish," she said. "Potatoes. If either of you finds anything else, put it back."

Mira lifted the lid. Steam clouded her face. "You caught a potato?"

"Dragged it from the darkest part of the harbor. Cost me a good hook."

Celia took the bowl Brenda offered. The fish had been cooked with vinegar, which covered most of its age, and there was enough of it. That counted for more than Celia had expected when Brenda had invited them aboard. She had expected a price.

The twenty-first salt page lay at the far end of the table, clear of the bowls on a dry cloth. Its edges had begun to turn pale and hard. Celia had copied the visible lines before supper, but one part still troubled her: a row of wheels and pipes drawn beneath a street that had no place on any approved chart. The marks beside it were too close to the page's damp center to copy safely. She kept her spoon well away.

Brenda followed her glance. "It won't climb into your soup."

"That isn't the direction that concerns me," Celia said.

"Fair."

Outside, the hull knocked against its mooring. Brenda had tied a careful knot with a short, frayed rope. Celia had checked it when she came aboard. The boat carried more patched gear than sound gear, yet nothing loose had shifted when the tide turned.

Mira broke a potato with her spoon. "How much did you get for the last page you sold?"

Brenda reached for the bread. "Good evening to you too."

"It was. I'm asking."

Celia kept her eyes on her bowl. Mira's voice had gone quiet, which on the docks seemed to make people listen harder.

Brenda tore the bread in half and gave Mira the larger piece. "Depends on the page. A clean one pays better than fish. A damaged one might buy a week of oil."

"Who buys them?"

"People who can afford a hobby. People who cannot afford to forget. All kinds."

"And the crystals?"

Brenda set down her bread. "You came to eat, or to count my sins?"

"Can I do both?"

"Only if you finish that potato."

Mira ate it. Brenda watched her chew, then looked away first.

Celia had seen memory crystals in a locked harbor cabinet, each marked with a donor number. Brenda's stock had no such marks that Celia knew of. She could ask where Brenda got it. She could also pretend she needed the boat more than the answer. There was a familiar comfort in making a practical choice sound like the only one available.

Mira said, "A man at the south quay paid to taste a stranger's wedding. He told his friends the bride had cold hands. He laughed about it."

Brenda rubbed a spot on the table with her thumb. "I didn't sell to him."

"Someone did."

"Yes."

"Did she know they'd laugh?"

Brenda's thumb stopped. From the deck came the soft slap of water against a crate. Celia put down her spoon.

"No," Brenda said. "Most donors don't know where anything goes once the lighthouse has had its share. Some don't get asked much at all."

"Then why put more of it on the market?"

"Because a person can sell the same catch once, and the harbor takes its fee before the fish is cold. A page buys a new net." Brenda tipped her bowl to gather the last broth. "I could make a fine speech about taking trade from Vey. I'd still be taking my cut."

Mira held the bread without eating it. "You could stop."

"I could." Brenda looked at the patches on the cabin roof. "And if the net gives way next week, you'll lend me yours?"

"That's not what I said."

"No. It was the short version, where I take all the trouble and you get to be right."

Mira pushed back from the table. The bench scraped the floor, but she stayed seated. "I have had someone else's childhood in my mouth so strong I couldn't taste my own dinner. People pay for that?"

Brenda's face lost its quick, ready look. "Some do."

"They don't know what they're holding."

"Some do," Brenda said again, more sharply. "Some know just enough to be worse."

Celia turned the page's dry corner with the cloth, keeping her fingers off the salt. The drawing beneath the street showed a narrow shaft joining two wider channels. An inked line on her tracing ended at the shaft. No arrow showed which way anything moved. Calling it a pump would be guesswork, and after the figure beneath the market, guesswork had become expensive.

"Brenda," she said, "this is below the exposed basement, if these marks give depth rather than distance."

Brenda leaned over, close enough for Celia to smell tar on her sleeve. She did not touch the page. "Depth. That bend is a service channel."

"You recognize it?"

"I recognize where it starts. Never went all the way through." She straightened. "Not for lack of charm."

Mira looked from Brenda to the drawing. "Could it lead to what held that person in place?"

"Could. Could lead to a wall full of old valves." Brenda tapped the empty part of Celia's tracing, not the page. "This opening floods early. You'd need someone who knows when the water quits pulling across it."

"You," Celia said.

"Look how nicely she asks."

Celia folded the tracing shut. "Will you show us the machinery pictured here?"

Brenda glanced at Mira. "If I say yes, does supper get to end as supper?"

Mira laid down the bread. "Show us. That's all I'm asking tonight. I'm not saying what you sold is all right."

"Didn't take it for that." Brenda picked up the pot and held it toward her. "More?"

After a pause, Mira held out her bowl.

Brenda scraped in the last potato, then pointed her spoon at Celia. "We go when that channel drains. I guide you as far as the machinery on the page. If the stone starts moving under us, we turn back. No arguing over a measurement while the sea fills your boots."

"I reserve the right to measure it afterward," Celia said.

"On dry land, you can measure my boots."

Mira drew her bowl close. Brenda put the pot down beside the forbidden page, with a strip of bare table between them, and shifted it farther away before anyone had to ask.