A Footbridge in the Rain

The rain returned before dawn.

By breakfast it had become the sort that changed how a city sounded: wheels soft in the mud, gutters roaring, voices raised beneath eaves. News came from the lower river landing that the outer bank had slipped again.

Ren went at once. Ada went with her, carrying a waxed cover and the newest ground descriptions. Cal followed with two officers and a surveyor whose boots were too polished for the assignment.

The river approach marker stood six feet closer to the water than the paper allowed. Or rather, the marker had not moved. The bank had.

A stretch of cart track ended in a jagged brown edge. Water lapped beneath roots that had held a tree upright the day before. The small footbridge upstream remained sound, but the bound arrival line used an anchor beyond the lost section.

“We reported this on the way in,” Ren said.

The local route officer produced the report. It bore two receipt marks and an instruction to inspect when the weather improved.

“The weather hasn't improved,” he said, apparently in defence of the instruction.

Ren looked at him for a moment, then turned to the men waiting with the survey poles.

“No loaded arrivals. Put the stop at the receiving side first. Empty the approach before anyone touches the transfer.”

The order ran ahead faster than the men carrying it. At the upper gate a carter protested that his load had already been weighed and paid. At the lower gate a woman insisted her mother was expecting her. Necessary journeys did not cease being necessary because the ground beneath them had become unsafe.

Ada checked the old footpath. It made a longer turn through a yard owned by a cooper, crossed the sound bridge and joined the embankment beyond the slide. The cooper had blocked part of it with timber.

“That's my stock,” he said when asked to move it.

“It's also the old path.”

“Old doesn't mean open.”

He was right. A line on a former map would not clear his yard. Tovan's officer negotiated use for the afternoon, recorded compensation for moving the timber and found six people to help. By the time they had a physical way through, everyone was wet and Ada's fingers had begun to ache.

She unrolled the temporary plan under the waxed cover.

Cal held one corner. Rain ran down his sleeve.

“The hand route can take pedestrians once the far side is clear,” she said. “No carts. No receiving debt added from the grain line.”

“Who witnesses?” Ren asked.

The cooper, a woman who crossed daily to the washing steps and the footbridge keeper. Each described the actual path in their own words. The keeper corrected the near anchor: the old alder had been cut after rot entered the trunk. A stone boundary post now marked the same accessible line, but only if the preparation was altered to name it.

Ada made the correction. She repeated it aloud. Then her pen slipped.

Not far. Only enough to put a dot where the return edge should have remained clean.

She stared at it. Rain struck the cover above them in a hard, continuous sound.

“Fresh sheet,” Ren said.

“I can lift it.”

“Fresh sheet.”

Ada's thumb had become nearly insensible. She could force the grip by bending another finger over it. She knew exactly how. She had done it at the quarry while people waited behind a barred gate.

There were people waiting here too.

Iven arrived from the east ward with his tools wrapped in oilcloth. Ren had sent for him before leaving the customs house.

Ada looked from him to the page.

“You have the ground account?” he asked.

She held it out.

He did not take it away from her. He opened a new sheet beside it.

“Read it to me.”

So she read. She named the sound bridge, the cleared yard, the corrected boundary post. He prepared the line. The three witnesses repeated their parts. Cal carried the receiving-side stop notice back, bearing the keeper's countersignature that the old approach was empty.

Only then did Iven bind the temporary pedestrian route.

The first person across was the woman whose mother was waiting. She stopped at the far side, looked back and raised a hand. It was not applause. It was confirmation that she had arrived where the line said she would.

Ada recorded the time.

By evening, the old cart transfer was suspended. Its load could not simply be placed on the new footbridge. Grain went to another landing; the waiting carts were counted and reassigned. One merchant shouted until he realised Ren intended to write his exact request beneath the unsafe bank report.

Back at the customs house, Mara took off Ada's wet coat and put a dry blanket around her shoulders without asking whether she had earned it.

Ada watched water gather beneath the hanging sleeves.

“I couldn't finish the binding.”

“You brought back a finished route.”

“Iven did it.”

“Then thank Iven.”

Ada laughed weakly.

Later she did. He was eating soup beside the kitchen fire, looking no more remarkable than a tired man with wet socks.

“Your witness account was clear,” he said. “That helped.”

She sat down with her own bowl. For the rest of supper, no one required either of them to prove the work had belonged to them alone.