Chapter 1018: The Second Meal Queue

Jade tried to slide the bean sack beneath the counter and caught her right fingers between the cloth and a bowl groove. The fingers closed after the sack had stopped. She had to lift it with her left hand before she could free them, spilling a handful of beans across Solla’s clean floor.

The father who had brought the sack crouched beside her, gathering each bean into his palm while his wife kept their baby away from the stove. He held up what he had recovered. "I brought these here because our room was turning. If they’re kitchen beans now, what do I take when we leave?"

Jade left the sack on the floor. She had seen Solla checking the bread shelf and assumed the beans belonged with the rest. Behind her, someone shifted the folding chair from the lamp house to make room for a child. Its owner immediately pulled it back beneath his wife.

"I should have asked before moving what you saved," Jade said. "Where do you want it while you decide?"

He put the sack against his wife’s knees. Solla stepped around them with a tray of empty cups. At the pantry rail, Dey had begun using the same bowls again because there were more people waiting than bowls to give them. A lamp worker wanted water first. One of Holl’s brace crew stood at the hatch holding his dinner cloth.

"My people have been working since the first turn," the worker told Solla. "They sent me for the meal you promised before the outer rooms went."

"Then put your cloth down and tell me who needs carrying food," Solla said. "The people here need supper too, and they aren’t all walking out to find it."

The worker looked at the stove. The dinner pot was still in its bar. Solla had reheated it after the turn, but the bottom had caught while she was helping people across the balcony. He asked whether he could take it. She scraped the scorched layer into the ladle and let him smell it. He folded his cloth while she put the lid back.

Jade kept leaving a space beside the hatch for Ty. When the brace worker stepped into it, she moved her own foot before remembering he had every right to stand there. Beyond him lay the damaged market edge and empty sky where the west lamp house had been. She turned back to the sack. At least its owner was close enough to tell her what he needed.

Mira stood beside the grain door with her house keys in her hand. She had tied them through a strip of cloth because her pockets were full of glass dust. Two lamp workers had offered to take families inland, but the families were waiting to hear where they would sleep.

"I can put those cups by the door and give you this floor back," Jade offered Solla. "Anyone who can walk could eat on the market side."

The mother from room four lifted her infant higher against her chest.

"My sister lives inland, and I’d rather feed them there," she said. "But your market has a hole where that house stood. Show me the boards before you ask my youngest to cross."

The man with the folding chair pulled it closer to the stove. The splinted lamp worker asked for someone to help him leave before his knee stiffened. Mira wanted to know who would keep watch if she went inland with the families. Jade still had the cups in her hand. She set them down beside Solla’s tray, leaving the chair where it was.

Solla set her tray down hard enough to stop Dey’s sorting. "Find out whether Holl has boards down before you send anyone through that door. I’ll keep this lot beside the stove, and Mira can keep her eyes on the approach."

Jade went to the hatch. Holl was below the service landing with two crew members, fitting a timber under its edge. The landing had come back alongside the market after the pull stopped, but a broken stone corner kept the boards from sitting flat. He waved her away from the outer rail until he had tested the timber.

She waited with her good hand around the hatch frame. Pressure gathered behind her covered eye while Holl set a boot on the board. She wanted to hurry him. She could hear a child asking for water behind her and knew how she would sound. Holl loaded the first board himself, then had the market worker check its far end. An empty hand cart crossed before either called to the kitchen.

"You can send one person beside a helper," Holl told her. "Keep them off the broken corner. My crew need that cart lane for the braces, so your cups cannot live there."

"I only want people to see the boards before choosing," Jade said. "Will you let Mira stand at the far end while they do?"

He wanted the meal sent out before his crew returned beneath the landing. She told him she could carry bread, not the pot. Holl scraped dried stew from the edge of his dinner cloth with a thumb and agreed to wait for bread.

Mira crossed to inspect the market end and returned with a woman from the nearest open stall. Behind the woman’s shutter, her family was sleeping beside stock she would need to sell in the morning.

She looked past Jade into the kitchen. "Two households can sit beneath my shutter while they wait for relatives. I need somebody watching that cart lane, because the drivers will come through whether your children are sitting there or not."

Jade brought her back to the room-four mother rather than accepting on the woman’s behalf. The mother asked about her sister’s lane. The stall woman knew it and could send her own boy with a message once his father returned. They settled on waiting beneath the shutter while the children ate. Mira would stay at the landing, where she could watch the broken market edge and direct the families to the stall without leaving the approach unwatched.

The father with the beans stayed on the floor, watching his wife rock their baby. He told Solla he would lend a small potful if he could keep enough dry grain to move inland afterward. Solla fetched a cup and measured in front of him. Jade held the pot steady with her left hand while he poured.

"You can have this much without asking my wife twice," he said. "If more people come, come back to both of us."

Solla accepted the cupfuls and pointed him toward the water kettle. He washed the beans himself. His wife watched the first handful go in, then asked whether there would be enough bread for their older child. Solla laid one piece beside her before putting the rest on Holl’s cloth.

Jade took the cloth through the hatch. The brace worker met her on the landing and took it to his crew. One man beneath the timber broke off his share while keeping a shoulder against the prop. He ate with his cheek almost touching the stone. Jade left him the heel that would have been easiest to carry back and went for the cups.

Dey caught her dividing them into two piles.

"If you put those outside, I can’t wash them here," he said. "The people at the shutter can bring them back themselves."

"They can bring them back if Mira tells them where," Jade said. "Will you keep the empties separate while I take these?"

He picked a bowl out of her pile. Its chipped edge had been turned toward the rail.

"That one stays for me because I know where the bad part is," he said. "Everyone else keeps cutting their lip and blaming our dinner."

She left it with him. The splinted worker chose to cross with Mira. The older couple stayed beside their chair. Room four’s mother asked Jade to walk behind her children, and she did, carrying four cups in a cloth sling from her left shoulder. Solla sent another cook with bread. The mother stopped once to let her youngest stare through the place where the lamp house had stood, then brought him beneath the stall shutter without covering his eyes.

The market smelled of spilled signal oil and hot grain. Mira’s workers had left the oil jars against an inland wall, away from the meal queue. At a delivery bay beyond them, a woman was loading those jars into a narrow provision boat while arguing with a merchant over two sacks. The boat rested in a hauling cradle, waiting to be loaded onto a small cargo roadback moored beyond the bay. Its deck had strapped chests, a covered water barrel, and a row of empty sacks hung to dry.

Mira noticed Jade looking. She called to the woman by name.

"Velka, you can take our jars only if you leave them whole," she said. "I may have lost my lamps, but I still need something to light their replacements."

Velka checked the padding around a jar. "Your glass dealer needs the necks to fit those new lamps. He gets these whole, and you can argue with him about what he sends back."

Jade set the cups on the stall bench. The mother thanked the cook for the bread and asked him to leave the heel for her youngest. Across the bay, Velka shut the chest over the jars. Jade caught Mira’s sleeve and asked where the provision boat went.

"Mera on this load, if the crossing stays open," Mira said. "Our glass comes through its carrier harbor. She brings grain back for the market and doesn’t wait for a lamp keeper to finish worrying."

Jade had never heard Ty name Mera. She looked past the boat toward the roadback waiting to take it. A message could go with that load, even if Ty had boarded a carrier going somewhere else. She waited until Velka finished checking the chest strap before approaching.

"Did a carrier with pale belly plates pass your boat?" Jade asked. "My partner boarded it carrying an injured man, and I need to send word."

Velka pulled the chest strap tight before answering.

"A lot of carriers have pale plates underneath them," she said. "I handle provision orders at Mera, not every house on a moving back."

"Then I need somewhere crews actually ask for their supplies," Jade said. "I can give them his name and the place I stayed."

Velka looked at the sling on Jade’s shoulder and the cups she had carried. One of the empty meal sacks lay beside her foot with its lower seam open. She kicked it out of the cart lane.

"You can leave a folded sheet at the grain counter," she said. "I charge for taking it, and I charge again if you ask me to hunt a man through the harbor. Those are different jobs."

Jade put her hand on the torn sack to keep it from sliding under a cart. "Ask the crews at your counter and leave them my name. I can’t pay you to search every house, and I don’t know which house to send you to."

Velka handed her the torn sack to inspect. She said she would need it mended before she took a grain load at Mera. She had two more on the boat and no spare worker. Jade could see the needle stuck in the rolled mouth of the first sack. Her right hand closed slowly against her coat when she thought of pulling thread. She asked to take this one back to the kitchen and try the seam; Velka agreed, provided she returned it before the loading crew came.

She asked how long Velka would remain in the bay. The courier pointed to the merchant’s scale. Once the two sacks had been weighed and her water barrel filled, she meant to take the next outward crossing. Jade could return before that with a sheet and an offer for the seam work.

Back at the kitchen, Solla was lifting the bean pot from its first boil. Dey wanted the cups Jade had promised to bring home. She told him exactly which bench held them and took a seat where Solla could see her working. Then she spread the torn provision sack across her knees, set its needle within reach of her left hand, and asked Solla for a piece of paper that had a clean side.