What Could Still Be Lifted

Dr. Sable laid a narrow strip of wood along Brenda’s left wrist and wound the bandage over it. Brenda watched his hands with the fixed attention she usually gave a bad knot.

“Too tight?” he asked.

“Not yet. You could make a living at this.”

“I did.” He tucked the end of the bandage flat. “No climbing. No lifting anything heavy. No pulling on a rope to prove that pulling on a rope is easy.”

“I was going to ask whether I could eat supper.”

“With your right hand.”

Brenda tried to turn the splinted wrist. Her mouth tightened before the wood had moved an inch. Sable caught her forearm and eased it back onto the table.

Celia stood beside the loft’s long workbench, where the recovered brake parts sat wrapped in cloth. They had brought those back. The boat was still behind Ash’s chain at the impound quay, with the original salt pages hidden inside it. On the wall, Celia’s dry impressions kept their routes and lettering, but no rubbing could replace a page if the wardens found the originals.

“Can the pages be taken out without moving the boat?” she asked.

Brenda looked at her. “You’ve waited almost four minutes to ask. That’s restraint, Miss Marrow.”

“I counted three.”

“That’s worse.” Brenda held her good hand out for the pencil lying near Celia’s elbow. Sable gave it to her, but left the splinted arm on the table.

On the back of a scrap drawing, Brenda made a short, crooked line. “Ash can search the deck until his boots wear through. He won’t find them there.”

“Where, then?” Mira asked.

“False hull. Starboard side, below the rear seat.” Brenda marked a square. “The seat lifts, but don’t lift it. There’s a gap under its right edge, wide enough for your fingers. Push the catch toward the stern.”

Mira leaned over the paper. “Then?”

“A board drops inside the hull. Not into the water,” Brenda added when Celia reached for the pencil. “It’s a dry pocket. I built it above the waterline.”

Sable pressed two fingers lightly against Brenda’s bandage. “You could have given these instructions without demonstrating the force required.”

“There’s no force required. That’s the trick.”

Mira traced the marked edge without touching Brenda’s hand. “If the board sticks?”

“Leave it. Come back. I’d sooner lose paper than have you caught with an arm wedged in my boat.”

Brenda said it briskly, but she kept her eyes on Mira until Mira nodded.

They waited for the harbor lamps to be lit. From the loft window, Celia checked the distances between the quay posts and the impound gate. She had once drawn that stretch as a line of public access. Ash’s chain now cut across it. A measured line could mark where a person was allowed to stand, or where someone in charge had decided she must not.

Sable permitted Brenda to walk to the shore if she kept her arm still and came straight back. He told her this twice. Brenda answered only the second time, with a salute from her right hand.

At the quay, Celia stayed with her behind a stack of empty fish crates. The crates smelled of old scales and wet wood. Beyond them, Brenda’s boat rocked between two larger impounded vessels. A single watchman sat by the gate, his face bent over a folded newspaper. Mira waited until a cart rattled past him on the street, then slipped between the mooring posts and stepped aboard.

The boat dipped. Brenda’s good hand closed around the top crate.

“Right edge,” she murmured.

Mira knelt by the rear seat. For a moment her shoulders hid what she was doing. Then she shifted left, feeling along the underside.

“No,” Brenda said under her breath. “Not that peg. That holds the seat.”

Mira stopped. Celia could not call out without drawing the watchman’s eye. She took Brenda’s pencil from her coat pocket and sketched the two fittings on her palm, holding it where Mira might look if she turned. Mira did not turn.

Brenda found a loose bit of shell on the crate and tapped it once against the wood. Mira glanced toward shore. Brenda pointed with her good hand, low and close to her body, toward the stern.

Mira moved her fingers back. The watchman turned a page.

A dull click came from the boat. Mira held still, then reached down into the opened pocket. She drew out a flat parcel wrapped in oilcloth, followed by another. The pages had been divided so neither bundle would be thick enough to jam the catch. Brenda counted against the marks on her drawing, her lips moving without sound.

Mira closed the board. She eased the seat edge back into place and crossed to the quay while the watchman shook out his newspaper. Her shoes landed beside Celia without a splash.

“That’s all of them?” Celia whispered.

“Both parcels,” Mira said. “I checked the pocket with my hand. Empty.”

Brenda let go of the crate. A fish scale clung to her palm. “Good. Now we can go somewhere Sable hasn’t ordered me not to stand.”

She did not try to take either parcel.

Back at the loft, Celia cleared the workbench while Mira laid the oilcloth down. The outer folds were damp from the boat, but the inner wraps were dry. Celia opened each one with paper between her fingers and the salt crystal. Brenda sat in Sable’s chair, wrist propped on a rolled towel, and named the batches as Celia counted. Two sheets had settled together at one corner; Celia separated them with a dry slip and counted again.

The total matched their record.

She set the last original beside its dry impression. The rubbing held the shape of a passage and the script along its edge. The crystal held more than either of them ought to read by accident. She covered it before moving to the next, then closed the storage box and fastened its lid.

“All returned,” she said.

Brenda reached for the pencil with her right hand and struck the boat from Celia’s sketch. “Then I’ll take supper now, Doctor. Unless chewing counts as heavy work.”

Sable drew a bowl toward her. “Only if you insist on doing it with the injured hand.”

Mira sat beside Brenda and pushed the spoon to the bowl’s right side. Brenda looked at it, then at her splint. After a pause, she picked up the spoon and began to eat.