Chapter 121: Better Than Carrying Dirt

The carrier’s first passenger was a lump of rubble from the back of Pell’s yard. It fell out of its support the first time Alden tilted the tray.

Silas had built the thing on Pell’s trestle that morning, under the shop’s striped awning, with Alden holding boards and Dagna reading the measurements back to him in a voice that suggested she’d be checking them later. It was simple: a shallow seed tray, longer than his arm, with low slatted sides for air. Inside it sat a row of four wooden supports he’d shaped from offcuts, each one a pair of upright pegs set to pinch a slab gently along its top edge so nothing pressed on the fragile backing. A second tray, identical, was meant to stack on top. Each had a slatted lid, with a strip of cloth that slid across the gaps to open or close them.

It had looked very sensible on paper.

“Tilt it,” he said.

Alden lifted one end of the tray to about the angle of a man stepping down off a cart. The rough stone offcut in the first support stayed pinched at the top for half a heartbeat. Then its bottom edge, sitting on bare smooth board, slid sideways, swung out from between the pegs like a door off its hinge, and thumped into the corner of the tray.

The three of them looked at it.

“Well,” Dagna said. “The top’s very secure.”

Pell, sorting seed packets at the counter inside, laughed without looking up.

Silas crouched by the trestle to examine the pegs, hoping his face wasn’t as red as it felt. He’d explained the design to Dagna twice. At least he’d had the sense to test it with rubble.

It steadies the top, he thought. The weight’s at the bottom. The bottom’s on a polished board. Of course it slides.

“It needs a bed,” Silas said. “And a stop. Something to take the weight.”

He asked Pell for a strip of old sacking and a scoop of the cheapest grit, and Pell sold him both for less than lunch. Silas pulled the pegs from the first support, cut them shorter, and nailed a low wooden stop across the downhill end of the space, a lip the stone couldn’t slide past. Then he laid a fold of damp sacking in the bottom and spread a thin layer of wet grit over it, so that a slab would settle into it instead of sitting on top. The short pegs went back in, lower down, to keep the piece upright without squeezing it.

He bedded the offcut in, pressed it down, and stepped back. “Tilt it again.”

Alden tilted it. The offcut leaned into the stop and stayed. Alden tilted the other way, more steeply, and it stayed. Dagna reached over and gave the tray a short sharp jolt, like a cart wheel dropping into a rut, and the offcut shifted a finger’s width in its grit bed and settled.

“Better,” Dagna said.

“Much better,” Alden said.

Silas rebuilt the other seven supports across both trays to match, each one sized to a different irregular offcut, because nothing they’d find at Harrowglass would come in neat squares. When they closed the lids and slid the cloths half across, the inside of each tray stayed cool and faintly damp, with air moving through the slats.

Pell’s collection crates, stacked on the shelves behind them, could carry four times as much. Silas eyed one, then tried lifting their two trays together. He could manage those on foot, and the supports would keep their few fragile pieces apart. He put them down beside Alden’s pack.

“How much has that cost?” Dagna asked.

He’d been adding it up all morning. “For four people, with the timber, cloth, return coach fares, collectors’ fees, and a night in the bunkhouse, two hundred and forty credits. Sixty each.”

Dagna looked up. “Four?”

“If Elyra comes,” Silas said.

Alden looked up from the tray. Dagna’s eyebrows went up a fraction.

“I’m going to ask her,” Silas said. “About the thing in the vent. If she comes, she pays in the same and takes the same. Sixty each, and anything left over after we’ve paid ourselves back gets split four ways. If we bring back enough pads, I’d like to keep two to grow.”

“That’s fair,” Dagna said.

Alden only grinned at him, which was worse.

***

He found Elyra on the steps of the seminar hall after her lecture, eating an apple with the thoughtful air of someone deciding where to bite next. He sat beside her and handed her Pell’s notice without explaining it.

She read it twice, lingering over the line about draining the conduit.

“The little thing under the hood,” she said.

“It didn’t like anyone near the middle of the moss,” Silas said. “It didn’t seem to mind the edges. That’s all I know.” He hesitated. “If they drain the conduit, does it die? Does it leave? Does it need the damp, or the stone, or the moss?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Elyra said gently. “Not from three things you felt under a stone hood. If I guessed, you’d believe me, and I might be wrong.” She looked at the notice again, and something in her face sharpened with interest. “But I’d like to see where it lives. Very much.”

“Then come,” Silas said. “All the academy students who registered as collectors are eligible. You’d only need to sign the same form.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then she turned the apple in her fingers and asked, without looking at him, “Do you want me there because I understand spirits?”

He opened his mouth to say yes, obviously, and realized that wasn’t the whole of it, and that she would know.

“That’s part of it,” he said. Then he made himself keep going. “I’d also just—like you to come. I’d like it if you were there.”

It came out clumsier than anything he’d said to her in weeks. Elyra looked at him then, properly. Whatever she saw made her smile slowly, and she bit into the apple.

“Then I’ll come,” she said, with her mouth full.

She signed the collectors’ form that afternoon, paid her sixty credits into the trip fund, and that was that.

***

That evening, she came to his room to help pack, and they disagreed immediately about bread.

“Four people,” Silas said. “Two loaves.”

“Alden,” Elyra reminded him.

Silas considered Alden. “Three loaves.”

“Four,” Elyra said. “And the cheese. And something that isn’t bread.”

On the bed, Nim had spent the last quarter of an hour watching the carrier with deep interest. Now he jumped down, padded to it, and set his bell, very precisely, into one of the empty supports.

“No,” Silas said.

“It fits,” Nim said.

“It’s for moss,” Silas told him.

“The moss doesn’t have a bell.” Nim sat back. “It needs a place where it won’t roll.”

“You’ve got your own storage for that,” Silas said.

Elyra, kneeling by the carrier, looked at the bell in its little grit-lined bed, then at Nim, then up at Silas. “It does fit very nicely,” she said.

“You’re not supposed to take his side,” Silas said.

“I’m not taking a side. I’m observing.” Elyra lifted the bell out and handed it back to Nim, who put it away with an air of injured dignity. “There. Observed.”

Later, folding a spare shirt into his pack, she said, “Our evening. The one we agreed. I’ve got a Star Class night practical that evening. I only found out today.” She looked at him. “I’m telling you early. Can it be the day after?”

“The day after works,” Silas said.

Elyra smiled and tucked the last shirt into his pack. He liked that she’d come to him with another day already in mind.

When she’d gone, Silas checked the eight supports and adjusted the cloths over the lids. Tomorrow they’d be working among people who did this for a living. He hoped he wouldn’t have to rebuild anything with professional collectors watching.

He caught himself worrying about strangers he hadn’t even met and put the carrier by the door.

He went to sleep looking forward to it, and he knew perfectly well it wasn’t only the money.