Chapter 45 - The Window Where She Couldn't Pay

Tamasin came back on market day with one wagon. The other two under her green awning belonged to a carrier whose name had been painted over an older name on the sideboards. I noticed because she counted the hire payment before anything came off. Her clerk checked it. The driver counted it again. Then work started, in the first cool morning of the year, with everyone at the stalls keeping their coats on.

She greeted Dain. Inspected her stall. Asked whether the new water channel was holding. Asked after Halwen's cupboard. Asked Gerren whether the small hinges were done. For half an hour she moved through the market without looking at me. Not pointedly. I just wasn't a person she needed anymore.

I'd been helping Pell check weights. When the queue cleared I left him the balance and crossed the yard.

"Tamasin."

"Solvane."

"May I speak to you?"

"After I've measured this."

Her customer was buying enough cloth for two children. One of them stood by the stall holding a wooden horse with a leg missing. Tamasin measured, cut, wrapped, took the money. Then came round the table.

"All right."

We stood by the hired wagon. I hadn't prepared anything.

"I broke the agreement you made with me. I told myself the confidentiality terms protected the information. I understood that you had not authorized it. I asked for a recess. Corvane refused to keep the decision open. I treated losing the route agreement as though it were the worst outcome available."

"It wasn't."

"No."

A kid ran past chasing a hoop. I waited till he'd gone.

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

"I would like to make restitution."

"With what?"

Plain question. I had a little pay. A deferred balance. No warehouse, no river lease, no replacement for contracts she'd spent years building.

"Money, as I earn it. Work you consider useful. Neither would purchase access to your affairs."

"Not work. And I won't have you borrowing against a village that didn't make this decision. If you want to pay something, put it aside. When the losses are finally settled, we can discuss a figure. Do not promise me the whole of an amount you haven't seen."

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I nodded. She took the apology like something that could be received and set down. Nothing else moved.

"The compensation," I said. "Has it been validated?"

"It is being validated."

"When it is, the customs--"

"No."

She took a narrow certificate out of her case. Trade standing. *Suspended pending settlement of a registered default.*

I knew the wording. I'd helped put it on a board for four bidders to read. A customs-tendered claim required a holder in good standing.

"The grain was taken. Then I failed the delivery. Then the creditor registered the default. By the time the compensation could be accepted at customs, I no longer qualified to use it."

My clever arrangement had depended on the paper being in the right hands. Here were the hands it couldn't help.

"You could assign it."

"To someone whose standing is intact. Who knows exactly why I have to sell. At a substantial discount." The hired driver called from the far side of the wagon; she raised a finger. "If the claim had come in coin the day the grain left, I could have bought replacements. If it had been validated before the default, I might have arranged an exchange. Instead I received a promise that became useful after I lost the thing I needed it to preserve."

I gave the certificate back.

"I should have understood the timing."

"You should have asked me."

There was no improving that sentence. She put the paper away.

"I accept that you're sorry. I also still need to pay that driver."

"Of course."

She went back to the market. I went back to the scales. Pell moved over without asking where I'd been.

---

Aoi found me after the last weighing, holding a letter and looking impatient enough to be herself again.

"Ilyen answered Kaito. He found a real discrepancy."

Two old return experiments had listed what looked like the same mineral under different names. Kaito had asked whether a later trial used the right material. Ilyen had checked the workshop accounts: the first material was naturally formed and unheated; the substitute was kiln-fired. The later researcher had treated the workshop name as a synonym and logged the failed result as a repeat.

Not evidence that the original experiment had opened anything. It did mean one claimed replication had never actually replicated the procedure. For once a distinction widened a possibility instead of closing one.

"She's testing it?"

"Small samples. Inert assembly first."

Ilyen needed a fragment from a dismantled pressure marker at Bracken Relay. The old survey catalogue described it as the same natural material, and the relay was being cleared in the military withdrawal. If the marker survived, somebody had to get to it before its fittings were sold and its stone dumped.

"Bracken."

"Yes." Aoi handed me a second letter. The donor office had finally traced the twenty-fourth person from her summoning. A discharged signal orderly named Dalis, last known living with his sister near Bracken Relay. She'd underlined the address.

"I'm going."

I looked at the market. Tamasin was helping her clerk fasten the wagon cover. The village could trade without me. It was already doing so.

"I'd like to come."

"For the sample?"

"And to hear him, if he wishes to speak in front of me."

"You're not interviewing him for the inquiry unless he agrees."

"All right."

She looked at me as if she'd expected an argument and was deciding whether to be relieved there wasn't one.

"Pack for three days," she said. "Nessa says the western road is crowded."

I was grateful for that.

I notified Ressa. Not requested authorization. Personal travel, paid from my own remaining wages; the research request didn't concern the village's commission. The distinction needed to be clear anyway.

Ressa read Ilyen's letter and handed it back. "When do you return?"

"Third evening if the relay records are accurate."

"And if they aren't?"

"I send word."

"Do."

She went back to the household roll. I stood a moment. She looked up. "What?"

"Nothing."

It turns out a day is really long when nobody needs you to decide anything in it.