MAREK THEBES CALLED FOR ME at crustum. Three in the morning.
“Did I wake you?” he said. It was the seventh of Boreal, three weeks since the tufuga. Winter was full upon us. He sat at a new table in the new yurt on Thebes’s roof, a stack of paperwork towering at his elbow, and an untouched tart steaming on a dish on top of that. Rug-beating north winds buffeted the yurt and twitched the flame on his lamp.
“Wake me? Are you jesting?” I said, pulling wools over my leggings. “I was polishing the silver.” I slumped on a stool in front of him. “May I?” He nodded and I reached for the tart.
“So, Odd Thebes. You know what Ship is,” he said.
“Of course. It’s a party,” I said, my mouth full. “Is this dried plum?”
He cleared his throat. “Ship—that is, Winter Shipment—is the arrival of the fleet. The river gates open on the north wall, the gate used just once every year. And then a fleet of ships sails in with a year’s worth of raw materials, food, and fuel from the north. Later that same day a year’s worth of our work leaves through the southern gate. So, in short, every export and import, all on one day.”
“Aye,” I said, swallowing. “And then a party. Huge one.”
“Our lives depend upon Ship,” he pressed on. “It is the high point of our year, our only connection to the world outside that wall.”
“And a party,” I said with a grin.
He stared at the table. “It is the work I am interested in discussing with you this morning, Odd Thebes.”
“Fine. I concede the party is secondary. Chronologically.”
He sighed, as if he’d regretted knowing me. Then he continued to carry on about how we never even know the day the ships will arrive. How the fleet never rises over the horizon earlier than the middle of Boreal, and yet it must come soon after that, for the river freezes at the beginning of Rhagfyr. How, knowing it is coming, but not when, we prepare early and remain prepared. How we must do vast amounts of paperwork—shipping forms, banking forms, cataloging the whereabouts of every item that leaves the city and every one that enters—and then must run everything where it needs to be, all on that day—
I leaned back in my chair and yawned.
Marek stopped. “Am I keeping you from something?”
“With all due respect, Marek Thebes, there are a thousand guild houses, all of which I can name for you by export, guildmaster, roof master, strata, fathoms. I speak twenty-three local tongues fluently, and the rest well enough to get myself someone to kiss. Additionally I was born in this city, like everyone else here, and I’ve been up here on the roofs two years. How could I not know what Ship is?”
“I’m never sure you’re paying attention, or that you care about the work we do here. So you know also about the export log I am charged with compiling?”
“Mm. Lot of work,” I said. Ping appeared with another tart on a dish, for Marek. I waited for him to go, then said, “Are you going to eat that?” Marek waved it away, and I took the dish.
“The log takes work, yes,” he said. And then he told me all about how in one day he visits the fifty-two roofs of guilds in our district to collect their export estimates so we can organize rooms in our storehouses and barter for space in the cargo holds of the ships. “Meeting the guildmasters in this ritual is a privilege,” he said. “This is the only time they come out. All year. And then I am up till noctis, compiling their numbers, and that is interesting as well. And of importance.” He studied me.
“Riveting,” I said, licking my fingers.
He sighed. “I was going to ask Errol Thebes to fill out the log this year.”
“Errol Thebes? Who is that? Do I know him?”
“I’ve been called to Fremantle today, to meet with the regnat concerning a missing runner. Errol. The regnat thinks I know where he is. Don’t tell me, if you do.”
“He’s in my pack, in small pieces,” I said. I had seen neither Errol nor Jamila. Jamila lived deep in the morgues of the guild. Errol—who knew? Gone? Caught? Dead? Chatty ne’er-do-well? He had been my best friend.
“Meanwhile, all of Thebes’s runners have work to do, except that I noticed”—he looked at the roof log—“that you put down here that you will be working in your tent today.”
“Accounting,” I said, putting my hands up defensively, failing to mention a private tournament of maw I had scheduled for myself with the runners on Bamako.
“Well, you’ll have to get back to that tonight. I’m having you do the export log this year. Today. Or actually—” He looked out the door of the yurt at Berfrei. “Right now.”
“Me?” I said. “Why me?”
“It’s a simple form,” Marek said, reaching for a thick envelope. “The guildmasters will”—he paused—“they’ll probably like you. You’re good with languages.”
“Am I expected to do this alone?” I said.
“Your friend Dragomir is also apparently working on accounting.” Marek turned the log around so I could see that Dragomir had made a ditto mark under my entry. “You may take him.”
“No thanks,” I said. “He slows me down.”
Marek winced. “Odd Thebes, how did you ever get called to the roofs?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. How did you become a runner?”
“Same way as everybody else,” I said. But that was a lie.