Chapter 8 — The Seven-Day Clock
The bells hesitated before the first note, as if they were aware that sound can startle a city into making the wrong decision. Three measured tones followed, spaced like commas. I stretched on the mattress until my back made the soft complaint of wood remembering rain, then wrapped my hands because Rook notices when I don't.
We moved in the yard before the house decided it was awake. Rook's staff found mine, then my forearm, then the place at the wrist where confidence pretends to live. "Narrow," he said, touching my elbow. "You let pride widen the joint."
"I'm not proud," I said, which is one of pride's favorite alibis.
He shifted my hip an inch and the cut traveled clean. "Your body still lies better than your mouth," he said without heat. "Good. Teach it to tell truths slowly."
He set the staff aside and brought his hands up empty. "Now, if someone thinks they have something to prove." We boxed without malice. He never hit harder than the thought required, and never softer than the lesson deserved. When I began to anticipate—my old sin—he tapped the side of my head with two fingers.
"You know what's coming. That's not the same as being ready."
"I am ready."
"You're twelve," he said.
"Almost thirteen."
"A city will still call that twelve when it needs an excuse," he said, and released me toward the day.
Inside, Mother had colonized the long table with ledgers and a stack of slate-blue sheets. The seal press waited like a heavy idea at her elbow. "Clause Seventeen," she said when I came in, as if the words were greeting enough. "Proposal yesterday. Ratification within seven days, else the original bond resumes."
"Seven days," I repeated, tasting the number to see if it hid secrets. Numbers often do.
"They will try to make us miss it," she said. "Not with a law. With a cough. With a missing pen. With the exact wrong clerk being at lunch when you require him. You will be polite to the cough and ruthless to the clock."
Father came in with his sleeves rolled and a list folded twice. He set it down so the crease lined with the table's edge. "We need three signatures on the pilot to make it an irritation worth respecting—boatwright steward, watch captain, and the scriptorium's clerk above journeyman."
"Oren?" I asked.
"Oren's cousin," Mother said. "A man named Jast. Cheerfully obstructive. He likes to be needed."
"Then don't need him," Father said. "Carry the form to him after the others have already put ink where the law can see it."
"What's the order?" I asked.
"Long," Father said. "Boatwright, parapet, scriptorium. Walk it. Don't run. Learn how the city breathes between each place. If the Indenture Office notices you, it will want to discuss the philosophy of minors. I don't want a philosophy today. I want three names that smudge only if the river takes them."
"I love you when you're poetic," Mother murmured.
"I am only poetic when I'm frightened," Father replied, and handed me the folded sheet.
I carried the forms like something alive. On the way down Keeler Street, the stone underfoot wore last night's fog in a sheen that made pride dangerous. A beastkin porter with rabbit ears pinned under a scarf trotted by with three crates of dyed wool like dignity strapped to his back. He nodded. We had never spoken, but the nod accounted for four days of us not colliding in narrow lanes and called it friendship.
At the boatwright's, the chair was already up to her elbows in pitch. "The substitution? Good," she said. "Your little ones learned to listen yesterday. I'll reward them by giving them a thing that requires it again." She wiped a hand on a rag, then took the form with her clean one. "Steward Tamas," she called, and the foreman looked up the way men look up when they've learned to expect their name only when something difficult wants doing. He signed without fuss.
"Three more tomorrow," the chair said. "Not because I like your forms but because I liked my crew at the end of yesterday. They stood straighter. Pride is useless in men; it's perfect in planks."
"Is Marr here?" I asked before the thought had time to decide if it wanted to be language.
Tamas jerked his chin toward the south shed. Marr's hands were wrapped, fingers inked with pitch, mouth set. He saw me and did not wave. Good. Work had taught him not to look up for approval the first time he felt steady.
On the way to the parapet, I took the longer lane not because it is scenic—it isn't—but because it avoids the Indenture Office's front door. If a clerk waylaid me with a speech about city obligations, I would be polite for too long and lose the hour Mother told me not to lose. A pair of elves were mending wire chimes by the dye row, their hands moving with the bored speed of competence. One had painted a tiny blue circle on her thumb; it flashed like a private joke every time she turned a knot.
The east parapet made its case for early winter with a wind that tasted like iron but not hurry. The watch captain took the form from me and read the header aloud as if the wind required it. "Public Works Substitution Pilot," she said, and the chimes behind her laughed faintly at the idea of public works being anything other than fear carried steadily.
"Ratification within seven days," I prompted, because being useful is a habit that gets itself fed.
"I like this child," she said to the warden at her shoulder, who arranged his face into a neutrality that said I will neither confirm nor deny my captain's sentimental streak. She signed, blotted, then put her thumbprint beside the script as if daring the river to eat it. "Two whisper-blooms last night," she added in the tone of someone telling you a cat had passed by. "Your chalk on the board helped. People prefer wages to rumors."
"I'll keep paying them," I said.
"Out of whose purse?" she asked.
"I don't know yet."
"Then you'll learn that a purse is a mouth," she said. "Feed it facts. It will lie less."
On the lower steps, a River-born courier waited, gill-lines pale, shirt patched neat. "Message for the mayor's boy," he said.
I arqued an eyebrow at the gall of the city to produce a message for me while I was already holding its lifeline in triplicate. He handed me a folded scrap. Inside: Storage Court, Ward Four. Veil thin. No crowd yet. — K. No signature, but I knew the hand; the watch captain trained her wardens to write like they meant it.
"Don't go," Mother would say.
"Go," Father would say, which is worse.
I went.
Ward Four's storage court had learned discretion after the last affair; a chalked No Spectacles Today someone had added to the archway proved more effective than I would have wagered yesterday. Inside, the air wrinkled at waist height and then unwrinkled as if the city had breathed wrong and was embarrassed to be caught. No one stood close. Two wardens with their hands in their belts watched the non-event with calm contempt.
"Lunar veil," one said, seeing me see it. "Never more than a breath. They learn the city's new habit. If we get bored of them, they leave."
"I brought boredom," I said, and shook the paper so the ink could smell it. They grinned. I didn't linger; boredom requires discipline.
At the scriptorium, Jast engineered a cough that started with cordiality and intended to end with delay. "Ah," he said, seeing the slate-blue. "These are very promising forms. I applaud the initiative. Unfortunately the registry book is…"
"Busy?" I offered.
"… that," he said, grateful to have been given his inconvenience pre-labeled. "If you could return at second bell—"
I unfolded the form slowly so each signature had time to become a citizen. "The steward has signed," I said, tapping Tamas' name. "The captain has signed. Their copies are en route to the council and the watch will keep theirs regardless. I require a registry number so their ink believes in itself. If you prefer not to be seen as the man who let Clause Seventeen lapse," I said gently, "you may give me a number and keep your day."
He recoiled at seen. People will do difficult things to avoid it. Then he leaned conspiratorially. "A number alone cannot satisfy procedure."
"Of course," I said, and placed the mayoral seal press on the counter like a promise. "Nor can procedure survive scrutiny without a number."
He gave me a look reserved for children who have learned to be annoying on purpose. "You need a witness," he said.
"I brought two," I lied, and pointed at the two scholars in the corner copying hymnals. I gave them the thinnest smile I own. They stood and came forward out of that fragile professional instinct to agree with whatever will end a meeting faster. One signed as a witness to nothing; the other blew on the ink with the tenderness of a man cooling porridge for a child.
Jast had two choices: be part of the efficiency or be its enemy in front of men who write for a living. He chose the former, which made him look reasonable rather than brave. He stamped the page, murmured a registry number, and slid the carbon copy toward me.
"Seven days," he said stiffly.
"Six," I replied, folding the form. "We don't need all of them."
In the lane outside, I exhaled so hard my ribs creaked. A brassbound boy hawked meat pies at the corner and shouted the news that didn't matter as if it did; I bought one to pay for the noise. On the way back through the cathedral square, I saw the Chain Sigil girl from two days ago on the steps, not with parents this time but with a woman who had the patient fury of coil spring. They were reading the public slate.
Substitutions: four yesterday, eight today I had chalked. Apprentice sign-ups at dawn. Indenture signatures reconsidered at the hall before first bell. Bring witnesses with hands, not opinions.
The woman caught my eye. "Mayor's boy," she said, not unkindly.
"Yes," I said, because arguing with titles makes allies tired.
"You promised on that wall," she said, chin indicating the chalk. "We have a day left on ours."
"Name?" I asked.
"Rell," she said. "The clerk made my line long because my husband is a fisherman who left and didn't take his debts. I have a girl whose hands work and a boy whose legs don't. Do your forms know how to count that?"
"Yes," I said. I almost added if a clerk will let them, but her face did not need my realism. "Be at the healing hall at second bell. Bring two neighbors who will say you exist. We'll propose, and then I will escort the form from desk to desk like a mother hawk."
"Thank you," she said, and I tried to bear the weight of it without dropping it.
Back at the estate, Mother had the seal press waiting and a column titled ratified that was both hopeful and accusatory. "Two?" she asked.
"Three," I said, and set the forms down like saved bread.
"We still need to carry Rell," she said, reading the square off my face.
"Second bell," I said. "We'll make it boring."
Boring requires choreography. I borrowed a beastkin runner from the quay and sent him to the Indenture Office with a question about the ratio of youth bonds to adult ones by ward—tedium that a clerk cannot resist being pedantic about. I stopped by the chandler's to ask for a short queue at the back door to keep their line from drifting toward the hall—crowd attracts crowd. I paid a street-sweeper eleven copper to scrub the hall's steps so the letters would keep their footing. I bribed a bellman to announce the wrong time in Ward Two and the right time in Ward Four. None of the gestures were noble. All of them were necessary. Cities prefer a hand on the small of their back when they're walking into goodness; otherwise they forget where they intended to go and argue with bread.
At second bell—third, if you listened to the bellman I bribed—Rell arrived with the Chain Sigil girl and a neighbor whose hands were dyed blue from the basin and another whose apron bore the priest's ash. They signed. The hall clerk tried to explain the forms to himself and failed; Mother explained them to him gently and then set her seal on the line like a weight.
"Jast?" she asked me.
"Wants to be needed," I said. "We will let him—after we make sure he is merely decorative."
We walked the form across the square together because even a city that doesn't enjoy parades respects two people who walk with purpose. At the scriptorium, Jast coughed again and then remembered he had already played that part today. He stamped Rell's form without false theatrics and wrote the registry number in a hand that forgot to be superior.
"Seven days," he said.
"Four," Mother said. "We release her from the bond this afternoon so there is a margin for weather."
"Procedure—" he began.
"Began as mercy," Mother said, and her voice was the soft a knife uses when it is not necessary to raise it. "You are its clerk, not its king."
We delivered the last copy to the watch captain. She read it, then stared out at the river as if checking whether it objected. "You pushed sand at the right hour," she said without shifting focus. "No incident since seventh bell. Tell your father it will be violent tomorrow out of spite."
"Do tides keep grudges?" I asked.
"Everything does," she said. "Everything that thinks it is not being properly admired."
By late afternoon the wind had turned capricious and made a decision about flags that could not be supported by math. I took two children from the healing hall—Hale, who carried sand like it had offended him personally yesterday, and a quieter boy whose name I had to hear twice—down to the dock with a list of lanterns that preferred to be at wrong heights to prevent the river from falling in love with a rhythm. We moved ladders. We interrupted romance. We made the quay ugly. The watch captain patted one lamp like a dog that had finally stopped biting and said, "Good."
We were halfway home when the bells pulsed once, the single-note warning for come look if you know you should be there. The sound arriving from the north made the hairs at my wrist wake: not iron taste, not wrong light—cold applause. A whisper-bloom looking for attention.
"Don't," Mother would say.
"Go and then regret it in writing," Father would say.
I took Hale with me because he runs like an agreement.
Ward Three's market square had grown a crowd the way bread grows a crust. People stood at a distance, arms folded, pretending they had errands in the exact place the air shivered. The bloom hung like a hanging mirror someone had covered and then uncovered indecisively. It breathed when the crowd did; the crowd inhaled when it pulsed, and that was the trouble.
I did not shout. Shouting belongs to men who want to be quoted later. I moved. I borrowed a fishmonger's pan, a smith's water bucket, and three cheap hand-mirrors from a peddler who had no idea why I wanted his junk and didn't care once I pressed coin into his palm. I tilted the pan so the bloom could see the market as a broken thing. I set the bucket to catch a sliver of sky. I directed two children—not mine this time—to carry the mirrors at shoulder height around the edges.
"What are we doing?" the fishmonger asked after he stopped laughing long enough to become brave again.
"Making the world ugly," I said. "The bloom likes symmetry and applause. Give it angles and other business."
It worked, if worked includes the category of did not get worse. The shimmer lost its tidy ovular preference and took on the jitter of sobriety. The watch arrived five minutes later and shooed the square slowly, gently, as if easing a cat off a warm lap. The bloom unbothered itself and left.
The captain's lieutenant gave me a look that said we will be discussing this later in the tone of compliment that hopes to become a reprimand. I accepted the future. We returned pans and mirrors and a fish I had apparently bought when I borrowed the pan.
At the estate, the front room held the post of a day's labor: forms with drying edges, the seal press faintly warm, a small heap of copper I owed to the peddler, the list of lanterns adjusting to their ugly spacing. Father took it in with one sweep of the eyes and did not say the thing I wanted him to say.
"Sit," he said instead, tone filing us toward the table.
We did.
"You avoided the Indenture Office," he began.
"Yes."
"You told a clerk he could keep his day and still give you what you wanted."
"Yes."
"You staged boredom at a storage court."
"Yes."
"You ignored a woman at the cathedral steps."
I flinched. I had not. I had delayed. The difference matters in my head and almost nowhere else. "I told her second bell," I said. "I did the pilot first because we can save four with one form and one with another."
"And if the clerk had coughed at us until evening?" he asked, not to be cruel but to stretch the idea until it snapped or proved elastic.
"Mother was with me," I said. "We would have stood there until he ran out of breath."
Mother slid a plate of bread toward me. "He knows the order," she said. "We wrote it on his bones. He's testing if they're still hollow."
Father's face softened. He is not generous with approval; it makes the days you earn it taste like fruit. "Good," he said, which is the only blessing he gives.
"And the market," he added without looking up from the ledger. "If you intend to improvise optics, ask the watch to witness it. Your ice bucket bought us five minutes today. Tomorrow someone will try it with a tub and drown a child."
"Yes," I said. "I'll write down exactly what we did that worked and why, and what to refuse. The watch can decide if the cat likes the trick."
He smiled then—small, a weather change. "Write it dull," he said. "Dull survives."
After supper, I carried the wax ends from the chandler to the healing hall. The air in the dormitory smelled of mint and fatigue. Miri's knots had held. Suf's blisters had split and then been taught to mind themselves. Marr sat on a bench with his hands in his lap, not to display them but to keep from using them when no one had asked. He looked up when I came in.
"You made my mother cry," he said.
I froze.
"Happy," he added. "She brought home bread we didn't have to borrow."
I made a noise that might have been apology and might have been relief. He spared me and held out the cup he'd been drinking from. "Want?"
"I'm not thirsty," I said.
"It's not water," he said, and grinned like a boy again. I sipped. Broth. Salt and the pride of kitchens.
Outside, the moon had the flat, dry look it gets when it plans to cause mischief and will deny it later. The watch captain passed the end of the lane without stopping. She lifted two fingers—one for the dock, one for the lantern I had hooded yesterday. Both are fine, the sign said. Don't do it again without telling me.
At my desk, I opened the first notebook and wrote:
— Three signatures. One clerk pacified. Two whisper-blooms denied their vanity.
— Rell. Registry number 14-7-336. Her girl's hands suitable for knots. Her boy—cushions and tallying if he wants.
— A fish bought by accident.
Beneath that:
— The city is not a person. It will not be grateful. It will, however, remember who makes it easier to breathe.
I put the pen down and let my hand find the Codex on the shelf. The cover met my palm like cool stone. No light. No word. No hunger, which might be the most merciful thing it has done to me so far.
Downstairs, Mother closed a ledger with the satisfying sound of something temporarily decided. Father's tread paused outside my door and then continued past; his courtesy is to let me fail alone until I ask not to.
I lay on my back and counted the new ugly spaces between the quay lamps in my head until they became a rhythm I might one day recognize as safety. The seven-day clock had started on the first forms; we had stolen two days from it by walking fast. Tomorrow, we would try to teach the river boredom again. Tomorrow, someone would call it a waste of money. Tomorrow, I would have to choose one errand over another and someone would see me walking away and decide I had chosen what to love. They would be right. You always choose what to love, even when you call it a route.