“What’s in those? You throw them as though they were—”
“—paper,” she finished. “The very best Ibraric mulberry paper. Light as lambswool. You probably have a bunch of this stuff in that folio of yours.”
Kit thought of the vellum he used for his plans, and the paper he used for everything else: made of cotton from the south, its surface buffed until it felt hard and smooth as enamelwork. Ibraric paper was only useful for certain kinds of printing. He said, “All the time.”
Rasali piled on bales and more bales until the ferry was stacked three high. He added, “Is there going to be room for me in there?”
“Pilar Runner and Valo aren’t coming with us,” she said. “You’ll have to sit on top of the bales, but there’s room as long as you sit still and don’t wobble.”
As Rasali pushed away from the dock Kit asked, “Why isn’t the trader coming with her paper?”
“Why would she? Pilar has a broker on the other side.” Her hands busy, she tipped her head to one side in a gesture that somehow conveyed a shrug. “Mist is dangerous.” Somewhere along the River a ferry was lost every few months: horses, people, cartage, all lost. Fishers stayed closer to shore and died less often. It was harder to calculate the impact to trade and communications of this barrier splitting Empire in half.
This journey—in daylight, alone with Rasali—was very different from Kit’s earlier crossing: less frightening but somehow wilder, stranger. The cold wind down the river was cutting and brought bits of dried foam to rest on his skin, but they blew off quickly without pain and left no mark. The wind fell to a breeze and then to nothing as they navigated into the mist.
They moved through what looked like a layered maze of cirrus clouds. He watched the mist along the Crossing’s side until they passed over a small hole like a pockmark, straight down and no more than a foot across. For an instant he glimpsed open space below them. They were floating on a layer of mist above an air pocket deep enough to swallow the boat. He rolled onto his back to stare up at the sky until he stopped shaking; when he looked again, they were out of the maze, it seemed. The boat eased along a gently curving channel. He relaxed a little and moved to watch Rasali.
“How fares your bridge?” Rasali said at last, her voice muted in the muffled air. This had to be a courtesy—everyone in town seemed to know everything about the bridge’s progress—but Kit was used to answering questions to which people already knew the answers. He had found patience to be a highly effective tool.
“Farside foundations are doing well. We have maybe six more months before the anchorage is done, but pilings for the pillar’s foundation are in place and we can start building. Six weeks early,” Kit said a little smugly, though this was a victory no one else would appreciate and in any case the weather was as much to be credited as any action on his part. “On Nearside, we’ve run into basalt that’s too hard to drill easily so we sent for a specialist. The signal flags say she’s arrived, and that’s why I’m crossing.”
She said nothing, seemingly intent on moving the great scull. He watched her for a time, content to see her shoulders flex, hear her breath forcing itself out in smooth waves. Over the faint yeast scent of the mist, he smelled her sweat, or thought he did. She frowned slightly but he could not tell whether it was due to her labor or something in the mist, or something else. Who was she, really? “May I ask a question, Rasali Ferry of Farside?”
Rasali nodded, eyes on the mist in front of the boat.
Actually, he had several things he wished to know: about her, about the river, about the people here. He picked one almost at random. “What is bothering Valo?”
“He’s transparent, isn’t he? He thinks you take something away from him,” Rasali said. “He is too young to know what you take is unimportant.”
Kit thought about it. “His work?”
“His work is unimportant?” She laughed, a sudden puff of an exhale as she pulled. “We have a lot of money, Ferrys. We own land and rent it out—The Deer’s Hart belongs to my family; did you know that? But he’s young and he wants what we all want at his age, a chance to test himself against the world and see if he measures up. And because he’s a Ferry he wants be tested against adventures. Danger. The mist. Valo thinks you take that away from him.”
“But he’s not immortal,” Kit said, “whatever he thinks. The river can kill him. It will, sooner or later. It—”
—will kill you. Kit caught himself, rolled onto his back again to look up at the sky.
In The Bitch’s taproom one night, a local man had told him about Rasali’s family: a history of deaths, of boats lost in a silent hissing of mist, or the rending of wood, or screams that might be human and might be a horse. “So everyone wears ash-color for a month or two, and then the next Ferry takes up the business. Rasali’s still new, two years maybe. When she goes, it’ll be Valo, then Valo’s sister. Unless Rasali or Valo have kids by then.
“They’re always beautiful,” the man had added after some more porter, “the Ferrys. I suppose that’s to make up for having such short lives.”
Kit looked down from the paper bales at Rasali. “But you’re different. You don’t feel you’re losing anything.”
“You don’t know what I feel, Kit Meinem of Atyar.” Cool light moved along the muscles of her arms. Her voice came again, softer. “I am not young; I don’t need to prove myself. But I will lose this. The mist, the silence.”
Then tell me, he did not say. Show me.
She was silent for the rest of the trip. Kit thought perhaps she was angry, but when he invited her, she accompanied him to the building site.
The quiet pasture was gone. All that remained of the tall grass was struggling tufts and dirty straw. The air smelled of sweat and meat and the bitter scent of hot metal. There were more blocks here now, a lot more. The pits for the anchorage and the pillar were excavated to bedrock, overshadowed by mountains of dirt. One sheep remained, skinned and spitted, and greasy smoke rose as a boy turned it over a fire beside the temporary forge. Kit had considered the pasture a nuisance, but looking at the skewered sheep he felt a twinge of guilt.
The rest of the flock had been replaced by sturdy-looking women and men who were using rollers to shift stones down a dugout ramp into the hole for the anchorage foundation. Dust dulled their skin and muted the bright colors of their short kilts and breastbands. In spite of the cold, sweat had cleared tracks along their muscles.
One of the workers waved to Rasali and she waved back. Kit recalled his name: Mik Rounder, very strong but he needed direction. Had they been lovers? Relationships out here were tangled in ways Kit didn’t understand. In the capital such things were more formal and often involved contracts.
Jenner and a small woman knelt conferring on the exposed stone floor of the larger pit. When Kit slid down the ladder to join them, the small woman bowed slightly. Her eyes and short hair and skin all seemed to be turning the same iron gray. “I am Liu Breaker of Hoic. Your specialist.”
“Kit Meinem of Atyar. How shall we address this?”
“Your Jenner says you need some of this basalt cleared away, yes?”
Kit nodded.
Liu knelt to run her hand along the pit’s floor. “See where the color and texture change along this line? Your Jenner was right: this upthrust of basalt is a problem. Here where the shale is, you can carve out most of the foundation the usual way with drills, picks. But the basalt is too hard to drill.” She straightened and brushed dust from her knees. “Have you ever seen explosives used?”