A New Window

Six weeks later, the city was still arguing.

Iona considered this an improvement on the years when it had been required to agree.

The six wards and the harbour watch had established a temporary council. The old rates were suspended. Each tower published what it used and kept its donation room separate from the officials who recorded the supply, so a person could leave without being followed into the street. There were rota disputes, questions about shortfalls, arguments over how much of the reconstruction money should go to the flooded lower quays.

The new system worked. It also required people to keep making it work. Nobody who had stood at a rope all night mistook that for a small condition.

Magistrate Vey had lost control of the Gate Office, not her ability to persuade people she had been right. Hearings were scheduled. So were examinations of the reports she had received and the orders she had signed. Tarin submitted a full account of his collections, including the ones that had never violated the old rules and had nevertheless done harm.

He did not regain his key.

Iona did not want him to.

She worked from a borrowed shop under the covered market while the overflow street was rebuilt. Sela had taken charge of training new ringers and complained about this responsibility whenever anyone suggested she might give it up. Kes had secured paid contracts for her crews and a reputation for being impossible to cheat, which she intended to exploit in moderation.

Above Iona’s new bench hung the pencil cup, undamaged. A few of the pencils inside it had swollen and would no longer sharpen properly. She kept them anyway, but stopped trying to write with them.

Tarin came three afternoons a week to help repair the household seals. He was paid the same work rate as the other trained hands. On the first day a man from Netters’ Reach refused to let him touch his equipment. Iona gave the work to someone else. Tarin did not ask her to speak to the man on his behalf.

There were other afternoons when they forgot, for an hour or two, the history that had brought them into the same room. They argued about a fitting. He brought bread. She discovered he hummed when he was reading a difficult drawing and that his humming was almost, but never quite, in tune.

He discovered she did not like being offered help while she was trying to find a tool. He began asking whether she wanted another pair of eyes. Usually she said yes. Sometimes she said no, and he learned not to treat the refusal as a verdict on his character.

They went to supper twice. On the first evening, he talked too much because he was nervous. On the second, she talked too much because she wanted him to know things that could not be learned from a levy record or a list of repairs.

She told him about her father. Not the man whose voice she could no longer hear, but the man who had once left an entire batch of lamp collars in a bread oven and then accused the baker of moving the sun.

Tarin laughed. She was glad she could still make someone laugh with a story the tax had not taken.

One evening, after closing the shop, they walked down to Ninth Quay.

The rebuilt street was unfinished. Some doors opened onto rooms with no floors. Her old workshop had no roof yet, but the new window frame had been fitted. She stood inside and looked out through it at the harbour.

Tarin remained on the other side, resting his hands on the sill.

“Good height?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You can see the water.”

“I could before.”

“I know.”

She looked at him. His coat was the plain one he had bought after leaving the Office. She had repaired its sleeve so neatly that the mending was visible only if a person knew where to look.

“I don’t want to make the first kiss again,” she said.

He was quiet for a moment.

“All right.”

“I keep thinking I’m supposed to ask where we stood, what you did. As though if we get it exactly right, something will come back.”

“It won’t.”

“I know.”

He placed one hand on the unfinished frame, close to hers.

“Then we don’t have to do any of that.”

She moved around the frame and came out through the empty doorway. The ground was rough with sawdust and broken mortar. Neither of them had brought a lantern. There was no wet rope at their feet.

Iona put a hand against the side of his neck. He leaned towards her.

This kiss was slower. He smiled once against her mouth, because she had caught his coat on a splinter and refused to stop long enough to free it properly. There was nothing solemn about it. Nothing arranged for the benefit of a memory she did not possess.

When the harbour bell began its evening count, she felt the familiar, old tightening in her chest. For years that sound had meant discovering what was gone.

Across the water, South Steps answered. Then Salt Court. Then the others.

Tarin waited, his forehead against hers.

Iona listened until all seven had sounded. Then she freed his coat from the wood, took his hand and led him home by a street neither of them had walked with the other before.