Anna Smaill - The Chimes

‘All’s well?’ Lucien asks.

‘All’s well. All’s well,’ Harry mutters, clears his throat, looks up. ‘Wandle on the move between Mill Wall and Five Rover yesternoch, I hear,’ he says. He grins at us. ‘Trust you met them?’ He comes forward for the baccy, only the flame of the sputtering blue sterno between him and us. There is a handful of white and orangey pebbles tinkered in his mettle cup and he shakes it. Holds it up to his ear as if it’s speaking to him.

‘Yes,’ says Lucien. His voice is impatient. ‘Harry, will you read the weather for us?’ he asks. ‘Drum for a forecast?’ He points at the pouch.

There is a hesitation in my throat. Why is he asking Harry to read the weather? How can we learn anything from the old weatherman?

But Harry is happy enough to oblige. He goes down on his haunches. He takes the cup and jangles it with his left hand while the old fingers of his right clear away a smooth place in the sand in front of us. He pushes away pebbles and branches and the few shells until there’s a space that’s sanded flat. In his mouth he mutters, then scatters the pebble runes.

Runes land on the cleared sand. Harry cries out. Then before we can move, he sweeps a hand through the pattern of pebbles.

‘What is it?’ asks Lucien, presto and sharp. ‘What do you see there?’

Harry on his arse. Fallen backward as if pushed in the chest. He scrabbles crabwise in the sand on his palms away from Lucien. Something incanted under his breath over and over. A fragment of Onestory, the refrain we repeat each morning.

‘ The Order gives us harmony. The Order gives us the Carillon .’ Harry says it over and over like a child consoling itself.

Lucien takes a few steps so he’s again close to Harry, who sits blankfaced and breathing presto so his chest pants up and down.

‘What did you see, Harry?’ asks Lucien with his quiet voice, the one you can’t refuse to answer. His hand on Harry’s shoulder white at the knuckles.

The fear on Harry’s face weakens. He plucks at Lucien’s ragged jeans and looks pained. His voice takes on a whine, like a warped reed. ‘I can’t say it. Blasphony . Dischord. I can’t say it, Lucien.’

Lucien leans in closer. He has a question at the ready. Lucien the questioner, I think. I lean in too.

Harry shakes his head quick again. A mutter. A rune. A half-answer.

‘There’s a girl. Not of the city. Not of the city, you know. And she’s waiting.’

Harry rights himself from his fallen crouch and goes to sit in front of his kettle, unfolds the drum and sticks a wad in his mouth. Chews for a while, then spits.

Lucien looks at me and I can’t read his eyes. He straightens up from his crouch and pulls me too. I look back at Clare. A girl not of the city. The words say something and nothing. And I see that even now, in the newly opened room of what I remember, there are closed doors and hidden things.

‘Thanks, Harry,’ says Lucien.

We clear the bridge, and Lucien blinks in the light, and we’re all walking two abreast again. In my uncertainty, what I feel is distaste for the old weatherman with his filthy jacket and stranded hair and his smell of salt and piss and mud. ‘Why thank Harry?’ I ask. ‘Harry ruins more runes than he tells.’

And Lucien shakes his head and hits his hands once, twice against his legs to rid them of dirt.

It’s not much further to Barrow. We walk triangled in the city for strength, unlike the two-file along the river or under, which is for longhear and narrowness, cooee and length. Lucien takes the lead. He can’t see much in the city light, even with paraspecs, but he’s cocksure and jaunty anyway. His sharp shoulderblades back like wings, and his head seems to rise on his neck. His curls are clear in the light. My heart goes up at that moment — a lift as I follow.

As we near South Walk Bridge, I grab the chance to take my place again next to him. The others fall into pairs behind. He ignores me as we run, but we pull ahead of the others a little. I say to him, piano as I can, ‘You can’t go in the market, Lucien. They’re going to be there to take you. If Wandle know, others will too.’

Nothing to show he has heard. The grey light flints off his dark paraspecs. He is listening for the footfalls around him, the distances from buildings, the plumbline of the river, myriad other infrasounds I can’t fathom.

‘I know,’ he says. ‘But we need the money. You can do the trade for me. It isn’t hard.’

He hears my protest before it emerges from my throat and he cuts it off with a gesture of his lifted hand. He lifts the pouch of Pale from round his neck and puts it over my head. Silence stops my argument.

‘Find a low-level dealer. Ellis, or the girl who fences for the Fleet runners. Umelia. Someone without brass. Not connected.’ He sings me their tradesongs. ‘We’ve got five debased nuggets between six and three ounces each and two smaller pieces of pure. Worth about thirty tokens together. Don’t get rid of it for more than twenty-five, but no less than twenty either. Try not to draw attention to yourself. I’ll meet you at the storehouse after Chimes.’

There is no discussion. Lucien pulls away so we are in single file for the bridge. He weaves us round a group of threshers who come along the bridge with bundles of rye on their backs. Their grey clothes blend them with the streets, and they’re chatting among themselves in their odd farm speech, not interested in us.

There’s a glimmer of gold in the whiteclouded sky and we enter the first of the market streets. Lucien disappears into the crowds of tinkers, threshers, vendors and buyers. None of the others notice. Or if they do, they do not say.

The noise hits as we enter. The frenzied din that is the opposite of the calm order of Chimes. A cloth seller sings, ‘ Finecloth, roughcloth, wool, silk, linen ,’ a flowing warp and weft of notes. Behind him, the potter sings of ochre and saltglaze, of platters and pots and beermugs. Twisting between is the drawn-out, coaxing whistle of a vendor who crafts memories, good-quality, purpose-made, built to last.

We walk past the butchery stall in the dark caverns under the railbridge, with its warped steel and few remaining planks of soapy wood. He sells whole rabbit and pig. Neat red parcels of smallgoods drip on his clean white paper. Tails of shining sausages hang in their casings like a strange curtain behind, and he sings their provenance in a florid patter. Cow and deer is a laugh. More like dogs scrounging around the workshop sawdust, and a presto despatch into sausage heaven.

‘No one here yet,’ says Clare. She is bouncing on the balls of her feet, tense and fast. Her sharp teeth bare in her face, and riverwet hair tangled down her back so she looks like a small fierce animal.

We each of us listen for signs of another pact, or some other clue that will lead us to the dealers. I whistle the comeallye as Lucien would. A subtle announcement of our presence to the soundfabric of the market, a signal to the pact to focus. They gather round me, their expressions open. I hand out our last tokens and split them off to scout bargains.

I walk by myself into the heart of the market. There is the smell of chestnuts, and the weird, dark scent of fresh-dyed wool. Under the arches, cooking smoke clouds the exit, and people are standing half in, half out on the street. The smells hit me hard today and are not quite pleasant. The noise is strange too. As well as the din of the guildtunes and vending songs, there are all sorts of odd echoes, clatters and hums. I take the north arcade, towards the artefact vendors.

Pacts are conspicuous. We are ragged and skinny, and we smell of the river. I catch the scent — mud and tea and green and dark — among the chestnut smoke and it makes a keening feel rise in me that helps me move faster. I walk past arches where families group around their livelihood. Bunches of woody asparagus, pig pickle, knitted blankets. They draw back a little. It’s fear of the unknown. Pactrunners are not easy to pigeonhole like prentisses, who have their guildsigns stitched on their chests and their clear place in the order.