The people of Oncalion were not genial. Hard work made for hard men and women. There was a grim, desperate edge to their willingness to labor on the bridge, because their livelihood and their lives were dependent on the mine. They had to be stopped at the end of each day or, dangerous as it was, they would work through moonlit nights.
But it was lonely work, even for Kit who did not mind solitude, and when the snows of the first winter brought a halt to construction, he returned with some relief to Atyar to stay with his father. Davell Meinem was old now. His memory was weakening though still strong enough. He spent his days overseeing construction of a vast and fabulous public maze of dry-laid stones brought from all over Empire: his final project, he said to Kit, an accurate prophecy. Skossa Timt had died during the Wolf Winter, but many of Kit’s classmates were still in the capital. Kit spent evenings with them, attended lectures and concerts, entered for the season into a casual relationship with an architect who specialized in waterworks.
Kit returned to the site at Oncalion as soon as the roads cleared. In his absence, through the snows and melt-off, the people of Oncalion had continued to work in the bitter cold, laying course after course of stone. The work had to be redone.
The second summer, they worked every day and moonlit nights and Kit worked beside them.
Kit counted the bridge as a failure although it was coming in barely over budget and only a couple of months late, and no one had died. It was an ugly design; the people of Oncalion had worked hard but joylessly; and there was all his dissatisfaction and guilt about the work that had to be done anew.
Perhaps there was something in the tone of his letters to his father, for there came a day in early autumn that Davell Meinem arrived in Oncalion, riding a sturdy mountain horse and accompanied by a journeyman who vanished immediately into one of the village’s three taverns. It was the middle of the afternoon.
“I want to see this bridge of yours,” Davell said. He looked weary but straight-backed as ever. “Show it to me.”
“We’ll go tomorrow,” Kit said. “You must be tired.”
“Now,” Davell said.
They walked up from the village together. It was a cool day and bright, though the road was overshadowed with pines and fir trees. Basalt outcroppings were stained dark green and black with lichens. His father moved slowly, pausing often for breath. They met a steady trickle of local people leading heavy-laden ponies. The roadbed across the bridge wasn’t quite complete and could not take carts yet, but ponies could cross carrying ore in baskets. Oncalion was already smelting these first small loads.
At the bridge, Davell asked the same questions he had asked when Kit was a child playing on his work sites. Kit found himself responding as he had so many years before, eager to explain—or excuse—each decision; and always, always the ponies passing.
They walked down to the older site. The pillar had been gutted for stones so all that was left was rubble, but it gave them a good view of the new bridge: the boxy pillars, the curve of the main chains, the thick vertical suspender chains, the slight sprung arch of the bulky roadbed. It looked as clumsy as a suspension bridge could. Yet another pony crossed, led by a woman singing something in the local dialect.
“It’s a good bridge,” Davell said.
Kit shook his head. His father, who had been known for his sharp tongue on the work sites though never to his son, said, “A bridge is a means to an end. It only matters because of what it does. Leads from here to there. If you do your work right they won’t notice it, any more than you notice where quicksilver comes from, most times. It’s a good bridge because they are already using it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Kit.”
It was a big party that night. The Farsiders (and, Kit knew, the Nearsiders) drank and danced under the shadow of their bridge-to-be. Torchlight and firelight touched the stones of the tower base and anchorage, giving them mass and meaning, but above their light the tower was a black outline, the absence of stars. Torches ringed the tower’s parapet; they seemed no more than gold stars among the colder ones.
Kit walked among them. Everyone smiled or waved and offered to stand him drinks but no one spoke much with him. It was as though the lifting of the cable had separated him from them. The immense towers had not done this; he had still been one of them to some degree at least—the instigator of great labors but still, one of them. But now, for tonight anyway, he was the man who bridged the mist. He had not felt so lonely since his first day here. Even Loreh Tanner’s death had not severed him so completely from their world.
On every project, there was a day like this. It was possible that the distance came from him, he realized suddenly. He came to a place and built something, passing through the lives of people for a few months or years. And then he left. A road through dangerous terrain or a bridge across mist saved lives and increased trade, but it changed the world as well. It was his job to make a thing and then leave to make the next one—but it was also his preference, not to remain and see what he had done. What would Nearside and Farside look like in ten years, in fifty? He had never returned to a previous site.
It was harder this time or perhaps just different. Perhaps he was different. He was staying longer this time because of the size of the project, and he had allowed himself to love the country on either side of the bridge. To have more was to have more to miss when he eventually left.
Rasali—what would her life look like?
Valo danced by, his arm around a woman half a head taller than he—Rica Bridger—and Kit caught his arm. “Where is Rasali?” he shouted, then knowing he could not be heard over the noise of drums and pipes, he mouthed Rasali. He didn’t hear what Valo said but followed his pointing hand.
Rasali was alone, flat on her back on the river side of the levee, looking up. There were no moons, so the Sky Mist hung close overhead, a river of stars that poured east to west. Kit knelt a few feet away. “Rasali Ferry of Farside.”
Her teeth flashed in the dark. “Kit Meinem of Atyar.”
He lay beside her. The grass was like bad straw, coarse against his back and neck. Without looking at him she passed a jar of something. Its taste was strong as tar and Kit gasped for a moment.
“I did not mean… .” he started but trailed off, unsure how to continue.
“Yes,” she said and he knew she had heard the words he didn’t say. Her voice contained a shrug. “Many people born into a Ferry family never cross the mist.”
“But you—” He stopped, felt carefully for his words. “Maybe others don’t but you do. And I think maybe you must do so.”
“Just as you must build,” she said softly. “That’s clever of you to realize that.”
“And there will be no need after this, will there? Not on boats anyway. We’ll still need fishskin, so the fishers will still go out, but they—”
“—stay close to shore,” she said.
“And you?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Kit. Days come, days go. I go onto the mist or I don’t. I live or I don’t. There is no certainty but there never is.”