The Price Brenda Named

Celia laid a sheet of thin paper over the salt page and pressed its corners flat with four brass weights. The page beneath was dry. Even so, she kept her bare fingers on the paper, not the crystal. A route rose under the side of her pencil, faint at first, then sharp where two streets met.

Across the table, Brenda set down a canvas bag. It struck the wood with the flat sound of coins.

“That line going anywhere useful?” Brenda asked.

“It reaches the east conduit. Beyond that, the page gives me a wall.” Celia lifted the paper to check the mark. “Or a fold. I will know when I have the adjoining impression.”

Brenda looked toward the rack of drying pages. “How many more do you need?”

“However many the sea chooses to give us.”

“Generous answer.”

Celia was fitting the impression into the Dry Impression Atlas when footsteps climbed the loft stairs. A clinic orderly appeared at the open door, breathing hard. He held out a folded note.

“Dr. Sable asked that you read this now, Miss Marrow. He said not to put it with the other post.”

The note bore Sable’s cramped writing. Celia read the first sentence, then moved closer to the window for light.

A man named Orin Pell had been admitted to the ward that morning. He had handled a wet salt page. He was answering to a name that did not appear in his own records and could not tell Sable where he had spent the previous night. The note ended with a request for Celia to bring any information she had about the page’s source. Sable had underlined any.

“Is he awake?” she asked the orderly.

“He was when I left. Doctor had him resting away from the lamps.”

“Tell Dr. Sable I am coming.”

The orderly went down. Brenda reached for her bag, then stopped. Celia folded the note along its old crease. There had not been one.

“You know the name,” Celia said.

Brenda kept her hand on the bag. “Yes.”

“How?”

“I sold him the page.”

The pencil rolled off the atlas and hit the floor. Neither of them picked it up.

“Which page?”

“A duplicate. Same text as one we kept.”

“That does not answer which.”

“The one from the west quay, eight nights back. I checked it against your copy.”

Celia looked at the rack. The sheet was there, held in its place by two wooden clips. She had trusted the count of pages, not asked how many versions Brenda had carried aboard her boat. The copy under the clips gave up its route without a dream. Pell had been given the same choice they had once had, before they knew what contact could do.

“Was it wet when you sold it?”

“It was wrapped. Dry when it left my hands.”

“Then you did not warn him not to wet it.”

“I told him not to touch the crystal bare.”

Brenda tugged the bag open. Coins showed through a gap in the canvas lining. “I told him plainly. He’s bought memory salt before. He knew what sort of thing it was.”

“He had not read this sort of thing before.”

“No. I didn’t know he’d sit down with it himself.”

Celia put Sable’s note on the table, well clear of the salt. “An untrained reader is in his ward.”

“I heard.”

“From whom?”

“From the man who carried the sale.” Brenda closed the bag again. “I was coming to tell you.”

“The clinic sent a runner here ahead of you.”

“I didn’t know Sable had sent one.”

For a moment Celia wanted to set out every time Brenda had brought a page safely through the flooded stairs, every warning she had given Mira about slick stone and bad air. Those facts sat beside this one. They did not cover it.

“How much?” Celia asked.

Brenda’s mouth tightened. “You want the sum before you go see whether he knows his own hands?”

“I want to know what he paid for.”

“Seventy pounds.”

The figure was enough to buy gear and clear debts Celia had never been asked to reckon. Brenda pushed the bag toward her with two fingers.

“Part of it bought line and seals for the boat. Part paid the men who’ve been hauling at night instead of taking harbor work. The rest kept a creditor from taking my engine. There. All properly entered?”

“You could have told us what the work cost.”

“And then what? Wait while you measure whether I deserve to eat?”

“I had money.”

“You had some money. You lost your commission, in case it slipped past you.” Brenda gave the rack a sharp glance. “Those pages didn’t walk up here in clean shoes.”

Celia picked up the fallen pencil. Its point had broken. “No more sales.”

“That’s a fine order from a woman standing in a loft she doesn’t pay for.”

“It is a condition for keeping the pages here. I will not make impressions for your buyers.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“You used the work we did together to decide which page was a duplicate.”

“Yes, I did.” Brenda’s voice rose. “I sold one I reckoned we could spare. I was wrong about what he would do with it. I’m not going to stand here and pretend the money fell out of the tide.”

Celia set the broken pencil on the table. “I need Pell’s records. Your sale, the carrier’s name, any other pages he has bought. Sable may need to know what he has been exposed to.”

“The carrier won’t thank me.”

“Pell cannot tell the doctor where he was last night.”

“I heard you the first time.”

Brenda gripped the top of the bag. Salt had dried in the seams of her coat, white against the dark wool. Her thumb worked one seam until a stitch gave way.

“You get to say no sale,” she said. “You don’t get to say there was no bill. Someone had to pay for the gear. Someone had to pay men to go below after Ash put guards on the stairs.”

“I am saying the bill has reached someone who never agreed to pay it.”

“He bought the bloody page.”

“He bought what you offered. Did he know a wet page could leave him unable to give his own name?”

“I warned him about bare hands.”

“That is not the same warning.”

Brenda let go of the bag. “No. It isn’t.”

The gap in the stitching stayed open. Celia could see the dull edge of a coin inside. She had asked Brenda to bring up dangerous things, then kept her accounts on paper while Brenda settled hers in cash. The omission deserved an answer. It did not belong in Pell’s bed.

“I’ll go to Sable,” Celia said. “You can come and tell him which page it was.”

“I’ll come.”

“And bring your records.”

Brenda looked at her for a long beat. “I keep buyers’ names because buyers have a way of denying they ever met me. Give that book to a doctor and Ash could get it by supper.”

“Then let Sable copy the entries he needs while you stay with it. I will not ask him to take your word about Pell’s other purchases.”

“Still drawing the line for everyone.”

“This one, yes.”

Brenda lifted the bag. She did not offer Celia the money, and Celia did not ask for it. Down on the quay, the harbor lamps were still burning in daylight, pale behind the window glass. Celia shut the atlas before they left. Her new impression lay inside, a careful route ending at a wall she had not yet measured.

At the stair, Brenda waited for Celia to pass. It was the first courtesy she had offered since the note arrived, and it made the space between them harder to cross.