Before the Weather

By sunset, there were people working in every tower.

Not enough people. Not always the right people. A baker at Salt Court had an excellent ear and no idea how to judge the release of a rope. Two fishermen at Netters’ Reach disagreed about every instruction until Kes told them she would put them on different watches or marry them to each other, whichever caused less arguing.

The bells were beginning to become local problems again.

At Ninth Quay, Iona tested the new housing while her mother supervised the fitting of the clapper. The old fittings had survived better than anyone had expected. The wall beneath them had not.

They had emptied the buildings over the overflow passage. Some households had gone to relatives. Others were in the Glass Hill schoolroom, complaining about the journey and the lack of proper tea. Nobody had been told their houses would be safe.

Iona went home once, to carry her notebooks and her father’s pencil cup up to the tower’s dry room. There was time for more. She found herself unable to choose.

A chest of clothes. Her good vice. The measurements pencilled into the doorframe. A tray of cheap brass clasps her father had sorted by size and then refused to label because, he said, a person ought to be able to see.

Tarin found her standing in the middle of the workshop.

“I can carry something,” he said.

“I don’t know what.”

He waited.

She picked up the little cup of pencils and handed it to him. Her notebooks went under her coat. They left the other things where they were.

At the corner, a runner from the Gate Office caught up with them. One of the new central plates had cracked. The senior menders were refusing to fit another without opening the six sealed channels.

“Magistrate’s authorised an emergency restoration,” the runner said, breathless. “She wants the connection drawing.”

“She has it,” Iona said. “Tarin delivered it yesterday.”

The runner looked from one to the other.

“Then she wants you to show the menders.”

Tarin’s face hardened. Iona touched his sleeve.

“Let her call it what she likes tonight.”

They went to the central tower. There, under the magistrate’s newly cautious orders, Iona helped fit the seven-way housing she had prepared from the old design. It would let the district hearts answer the harbour heart again. The Office menders checked every connection, argued over one interval and finally agreed on a correction none of them could have made alone.

Iona was too tired to enjoy how much this vindicated her proposal.

Vey stood at the lower door, speaking to officers. She did not approach the bench. Tarin stayed to help prepare the central watch, no longer in command but knowing where the tools were.

When Iona left, he walked her to the outer steps.

The harbour was almost black. Only the upper edges of waves showed where light struck them. Across the water, the district towers were lit one by one. Ordinary lamps, carried by people who had been asked to come and had come.

“Will you stay here?” she asked.

“Until the central watch is ready. Then I’ll bring spare vessels to Ninth Quay.”

“There’s room for you there.”

He looked at her. The words had arrived with more meaning than she had intended to reveal.

“In the workroom,” she added.

“I understood.”

“No, you didn’t.”

His smile appeared, brief and tired.

“No.”

A coil of wet rope lay between them. Someone had left a lantern on the steps. Iona could smell the oil and the harbour and, beneath them, the soap Tarin had used to wash his hands.

“I don’t know what happens after tonight,” he said.

“Neither do I.”

“I don’t mean only the bells.”

She felt her pulse in the places her coat touched her throat.

He did not move closer.

“I like you,” he said, as if the plain words required more courage than a better speech would have. “I would like to know you when you’re not trying to stop a city drowning.”

“I complain more when I’m less occupied.”

“I’d like to hear what about.”

She looked at the scar beside his mouth. He saw her looking.

“May I?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He touched her cheek with the back of two fingers first, giving her time to move. She stayed. His mouth was warm despite the cold air. The scar was barely a difference at all. She caught the front of his shirt, not to draw him nearer so much as to have something certain beneath her hand.

The kiss lasted only a few breaths. Someone called from inside the tower, and they separated with the startled expressions of people who had momentarily forgotten they lived among others.

Iona rested her forehead against his for a moment.

“Come to Ninth Quay,” she said.

“I said I would.”

“Yes. You did.”

Walking back through the narrow streets, she took out her notebook beneath a dry arch and wrote a few sentences. Not because she expected to lose the kiss. Because for years she had written things down only after somebody threatened to take them, and she wanted one page to begin differently.

When she reached her own tower, her mother looked at her face and wisely said nothing.