Chapter 1019: A Berth For The Street

The cook reached for the table leg just as Nessa put her boot on it. The stove still stood above the hole in Asti’s kitchen. He wanted the leg for fuel, and without it the iron lip would drop across the opening.

"Choose something that isn’t keeping your stove off our heads," Nessa told him. "I have only one hand for getting it back up."

"Then find me something I can burn before these children eat dry grain again," he said. "We lost the mill sacks and most of our split wood with them."

Asti turned from the window at the mention of children. The cook pointed his empty pan toward the rear roofs. She pressed the back of her cut hand against the sill. Nessa followed her gaze out to where Solla’s kitchen and her children had disappeared, then bent to find a better prop for the stove.

The carrier’s city lights were gone. Ahead, another row of lights stayed in place while the street turned beneath it. They belonged to houses set on a stone ledge, with drying frames along its outer edge. A lamp beside the nearest frame swung, but the house behind it never moved. Someone there had come outside with a coil of rope.

Nessa had tried to keep the exposed market in view until the kitchen window turned away. She still wanted to tell someone at Rillhold about the cut, and ask whether the lower walls had held. The lamp on the ledge was close enough for its keeper to see her raised arm. She gave the cook his board and asked Asti about the lights.

"That’s a repair ledge. We passed its frames before the men with the bell found us," Asti said. "There should be room for a street alongside it, unless they’ve filled their tow bays."

"Then call them from here before someone throws a line," Nessa said. "Tell them how many roofs still have people on them."

Asti called the cook’s last count toward the ledge. A woman answered from beside the drying frames. She put a hand around her mouth and shouted for them to keep the front house clear of the posts. Two workers were already moving a stack of boards behind her. They had seen the street coming and were clearing their own goods before asking what had happened.

When the rear roofs answered, one mother shouted over the cook’s count. He had marked her boy on the carrier’s side. Nessa called back that a mill worker had caught him and carried him past the yellow boards. The mother demanded that he stay on her mark until someone brought him home. Beside her roof’s number, the cook scratched another space and left it open.

At the ledge, the tow woman held up a wooden block with a hook through it.

"I can bring your front beam alongside the bay," she called. "Leave the house straps fastened, but let the street ropes slip through their guides. If you lock them now, your whole street turns around one house."

Asti went to the brake wheel beside her window. Her hand was on it before Nessa reached her. She checked the gap beneath the ledge and shifted her feet as though she meant to lean her weight into the rim.

Nessa stopped beside her. "You heard her say to keep the ropes slipping. Show me which ones that wheel locks before you lean on it."

"All the street ropes below this beam. I know what my wheel does."

"Your uncle’s mill isn’t hanging at the back anymore," Nessa replied. "We don’t know which house takes its pull now. Let her see what this load does before you close it."

Asti took her hand off the wheel. She kept it close enough to reach again. The cook hauled his stove farther from the opening and complained that neither woman had found him wood. Nessa asked him to put a water cup beside each roof’s mark so he could tell the ledge who needed a kettle before they needed a bed.

The tow woman threw a light cord across. It landed on the service beam beyond the kitchen window, too far away for Nessa to reach from inside. Behind the woman, her workers fed a thick tow rope through the wooden block. Nessa climbed onto the sill with her right forearm pinned against her coat. The cage strap pressed into the swollen wrist. Her glove had turned toward the rope below, but the hand could not give her a reliable grip.

Asti caught the belt at her back.

"I can hold you while you reach, if you’ll stop fighting my hand," she said. "There isn’t room for both of us to go outside."

Nessa nearly told her to let go. Her boot scraped the sill, and she let Asti pull her belt back against the frame. With the knife set on the kitchen floor, her left hand could reach the throwing cord. She gathered it over the sill, drawing the block and its tow rope across. Asti lifted the block inside. Nessa brought the knife back within reach before she left the sill.

Nessa ran her thumb beneath the block, looking for a socket or a hidden plate. The hook was plain iron. She wanted to check the ledge’s drum as well, but Asti tugged at her belt and the rear roofs were still swinging. Nessa called to ask where the hook belonged.

The tow woman called, "Don’t put that on the window frame. I sent it for the beam beneath your floor. The frame tears out before my line takes weight."

Nessa lowered the block to the floor. To see the underside beam from the sill, she would have to hang outside with her wrist against the frame. She pointed to the hole behind the stove. Grumbling about his fire, the cook helped her drag the iron onto intact floor beside the table. With Asti bracing it there, Nessa crouched by the opening.

Beside the black street rope lay the cut Rillhold tie, its loose end caught across the beam they needed. Nessa pushed it clear with the knife handle. When her right wrist tried to follow, she trapped the forearm between her knees. The cage edge pressed against her swollen hand until she could straighten her elbow. Asti was still waiting with the block. Nessa asked her to seat it before the street turned again.

Asti knelt beside the hole. She knew where the beam was not split. Nessa showed her the hook’s mouth, then let Asti reach beneath the floor and seat it. A worker on the ledge wound the thick rope over a drum until the slack lifted from their wall. The thin throwing cord hung loose beside it.

The first pull brought the front kitchen closer. A rear house swung outward instead of following. A man in its doorway lifted a chopping board over his head and shouted that his water barrel was moving. Asti reached for the brake wheel. Nessa caught the rim with her left hand and made herself let go again when the wheel began to turn against her grip.

"Wait for the rear roof before you close anything," she told Asti. "Tell the ledge the barrel is loose inside that house."

Asti called it. The tow woman ordered her worker to ease the drum, then pointed toward a second post farther down the ledge. A younger woman took another throwing cord there but stopped beside a stack of drying skins.

She called across the bay, "Move these before you ask me to wrap that rope around the post. I’ve spent the whole shift keeping them off the wet stone."

The older woman moved the skins herself while the drum worker held the street where it was. Nessa kept her left hand off the wheel and watched the rear roof. The water barrel had struck something inside it; she could hear the family arguing over whose foot was nearest the door.

The younger woman threw toward the rear roof. Its resident caught the cord against his chopping board and hauled a second block and tow rope across. He shouted that he could put the hook around a room beam. The tow woman refused that fastening. She made him look beneath his door instead. His wife came out long enough to point at the cross beam that joined the roof to the street. They could reach it from the short balcony together.

Nessa watched them work. The drum eased as they fed the block downward. Their barrel rolled against the inner wall and stayed there. When the wife called that the hook was seated, the younger woman took the rear line around her post. The first worker wound again. This time the roof followed the kitchen.

They came alongside a bay wide enough for the front landing but too narrow for every house behind it. Asti’s kitchen bumped a hanging pad of folded rope. The second line kept the rear roofs out of the drying frames. Nessa could hear the residents inside them, moving jars off shelves and asking whether they would have to leave their doors.

The tow woman laid a board across to the service sill. She crossed herself before allowing anyone from the street to step onto it. In the kitchen she inspected the hooked beam through the floor opening, then took Asti outside to show her both posts. Nessa stayed beside the stove. Her bad wrist had swollen against the strap, and she wanted the knife secured before another pull knocked it into the hole.

The cook offered her a folded cloth to put beneath the strap. She could loosen the cage enough to fit it but could not do the tightening alone. He braced her forearm on the table while she fed the cloth under the sore edge with her left hand. When she asked him to stop, he kept both hands still until she told him where to pull.

The cook shifted his grip when she winced. "Tell me before I pull the wrong part again. I need this table for breakfast, and I haven’t got clean cloth to spare."

"Leave it under the strap; I still need the padding," Nessa said. "I won’t be hauling your wood with this hand tonight."

He went outside to ask for fuel. Asti returned with the tow woman. Both lines were secured, and the woman had put a third rope around their front beam so the drum could be unloaded. She would not let them close every house rope under that new pull. Asti could take up the worst slack a little at a time while the rear residents watched their floors.

"I’ve got a shed for anyone who wants to sleep ashore," the woman said. "The drying frames stay clear, and your stove smoke goes away from them. I’m feeding my own shift before I lend you wood."

The cook came back carrying two offcuts she had allowed him from the cleared stack. He put them on the hearth and asked Asti to keep the children out while he chopped them. From a rear roof, the mother whose boy had crossed to the carrier called that she was staying in her room. If he came back for her, she wanted him to find their door. Another family asked for the shed because their floor still leaned. Asti let them choose, then asked for a path toward Rillhold. The tow woman pointed along the stone shelf to steps beyond the last drying frame.

Nessa could see the steps, but not where they ended beyond the ledge. Several boards were missing from the path before them. She asked who had crossed it most recently. The woman said her husband had brought water along it before the street arrived. The path joined other shelves in this district; he would need to ask at the next settlement which way still reached Rillhold. He would not lead strangers over the missing boards in darkness.

Asti turned toward Nessa as though she expected an argument about leaving. Nessa picked up the count board. There were still houses whose doors faced away from the bay, still people who had heard the drum stop without seeing where it had stopped. She asked the cook to come with her to those doors while Asti stayed at the brake wheel.

The rear mother called her roof’s count again, including the boy who had crossed to the carrier. Nessa answered with his separate mark and asked how many cups needed filling here. Behind the woman’s feet, the barrel had lodged against a cupboard and had to be lifted before the door would close. Nessa fetched the ledge’s younger worker rather than putting her injured wrist beneath it. Together the family and the worker set it upright. Then the woman opened her door wide enough for the cook’s water cup.