Bryony
Twenty-nine days to the weld. Night.
I put my hand flat on the plate, and the plate was cold, which they always are.
Iron. A hand's width square, sweating with the harbour damp, Hollin's mark cut small in one corner where nobody but a lockwright would think to look. That's all a deep door shows you. No keyhole. No hasp. Nothing to pick and nothing to file. A deep door takes the dearest thing you carry and opens for it, and that's the whole of the lock. The plate's just where you put your hand.
Two candle-ends on the bottom step behind me. The stair going up into black, coal-black, steep as a ladder. Above that, an empty counting-house that smelled of mice and old ink. Above that, Hook Street, asleep.
"Go on, then," I said to the door. "Have a look."
You don't push a deep door. Hollin said it a hundred times, mostly with his mouth full. You let it have a look at you.
So I let it. Palm flat. Feet planted. I thought about nothing, hard. A clean bench. A blank. Nothing.
The plate was cold, and then it wasn't, which they never are. The teeth came up under my palm like a cat's tongue. Rough. Interested. They went across the heel of my hand and into the creases of my fingers, slow, the way a good key feels for the wards. I hadn't had that under my hand for six years.
Nothing, I told it. You're getting nothing.
It went straight past nothing like I was a gap in a fence.
It found the workshop.
I was talking before I knew my mouth was open. Everybody does. You can't stop it any more than a sneeze. I had my teeth shut and it came out round them anyway.
"Hot brass," I said, out loud, to an iron door. "The big vice. He's got the paper on the bench and the wax going soft in the spoon over the candle, and he's not looking at me, he's looking at the wax, and he says, don't you dare cry on my bench, girl, it'll rust—"
Overhead, the street door banged back against the wall.
"—and he puts his thumb in it. Right in the hot wax. He's showing off. He grunts. And the paper comes into my hands with the wax still soft and his thumb in it for always—"
Boots on the boards up there. Heavy ones, crossing the counting-house to the head of the stair. And my mouth still going. Telling the door about the smell of the wax, and the bench, and the light through the shutter, and him saying journeyman like it tasted of something.
Then it was gone.
Not gone like forgetting. Forgetting's a lock you can pick in the end. Gone like a tooth. My tongue went looking for the place.
The door went in an inch on its hinges.
An inch is plenty. I had my boot in the gap before it could think better of it.
Rot it, but he could hang a door. Two foot of iron on three pin hinges you could have balanced on a fingertip, and it swung in so sweet and so heavy that the whole weight of it came round onto the toe of my boot and leaned there, patient, wanting to shut, the way a spring wants to go back to the shape it was quenched in.
Boots on the stair now. The third tread down was cracked. I'd marked it coming in. It cracked a good deal louder for him than it had for me.
The notice had gone up on the Guild yard gate at noon, and I'd read it three times with a fishwife's elbow in my ribs. The notice said: By writ of the Chief Auditor, the nine deep doors of Hollin Vane, lockwright, deceased, to be opened, counted and welded by the thirtieth day. Opener appointed, Ivo Dace. Door seven: the Weigh House, water-gate.
A writ's the Guild's order. Open, count, weld. Thirty days, and then Hollin's nine doors are lumps of iron for ever, with whatever's behind them sealed in.
My mother paid door seven the morning she died.
And Ivo Dace wouldn't put his hand on a deep door if you held his head in a vice. So they'd need somebody who would. They'd need somebody who already had.
Light came down the stair ahead of him, yellow, swinging. Then boots. Then the rest.
He was big. Tall, but that wasn't it. Big all over, like a capstan, built to have things wound round it. He had to take the last steps sideways with the lantern out in front, and his shoulders wiped the coal-dust off both walls. Guild coat, let out at the seams and still losing. A badge on it, crooked. Hair that might have been red. In that light everything was the colour of the lantern.
Patrol. They take the big ones off the dockyard gangs, give them a badge and a stick, and set them walking. Slow, the big ones. They hit first, because asking takes too long. I'd met plenty.
He stopped on the bottom step. He looked at the candles, and the door, and my boot in it, and me.
"Evening," he said. "I'm to ask what you're doing, and I'm sworn to tell true whatever I'm asked after, so make it a good one."
I didn't move my boot. "You're what?"
"Sworn. It's a long story and it's not a good one. Yours'll be better." He lifted the lantern a little. "Go on."
"I'm opening it," I said.
"Well, it's open," he said. "A bit. Is it meant to be?"
"It's Hollin Vane's door. I'm Hollin Vane's journeyman. I'm opening it before Ivo Dace can stand in front of it for a month not opening it."
He thought about that. You could watch him do it. Slow as a barge coming about.
"That's true," he said. "Or you think it is, which is near enough for tonight. It's on the writ, this one?"
"Door one."
"And you've paid it."
That wasn't a question, so I didn't answer it. My foot was going dead. The door leaned and leaned. Hollin never made a door that couldn't wait longer than you.
"Hold the door," I said. "If it shuts it'll charge me again."
He looked at me a while longer. Then he set the lantern down on the step, careful, like it might spill, and came across, and turned round, and sat down in it.
Just sat. His back against the edge of the door and one shoulder in the gap, his boots up against the jamb on the far side and his knees nearly at his ears. The door took his weight, thought about it, and stopped leaning on me.
I pulled my foot out. The toes came back one at a time, each with its own opinion.
"Like that?" he said.
"Like that."
"It's pushing."
"It wants to shut. Don't let it."
"I'll not." He shifted his shoulders about until he was comfortable, which I wouldn't have thought a man could manage folded into two foot of iron. "Colm Gannet," he said. "Sergeant. Writ sergeant, they call it. I think it means I walk about. You?"
I could have lied.
"Bryony Pask."
"Bryony Pask," he said, like he was putting it on a shelf where he'd find it again.
"How long do I sit here, Bryony Pask?"
"Till your Guild brings an iron wedge and a clerk to count. Morning."
"That's a fair while off."
"Then get comfortable," I said. "You've made a start."
He looked at the ceiling of the stair, which was low and black and dripping, and seemed to decide he'd seen worse. "Ivo Dace was in our yard all afternoon," he said. "Telling the captain nobody could get these open without paying, and he'd not pay, and he'd as soon see the lot welded tomorrow and save everybody the bother."
"That's Ivo."
"Is he a friend of yours?"
"He's a hinge that squeaks." I put my hand on the iron above his head, where the top pin was, and felt it take his weight. It took it fine. "He sent you."
"Nobody sent me. I walk about. I said."
He'd said. Saying doesn't make it so. Ivo knew I'd read that notice, and Ivo knew me, and a sergeant doesn't happen down a coal-black stair on Hook Street at that hour by walking about.
The cold off the flags was coming up through my soles. I pinched out one of the candle-ends and left the other. Past his shoulder the strongroom was dark and smelled of nothing much. Whatever Hollin built the door to stand in front of was in there, and it wasn't mine to look at. I'd only come to open it.
"I heard you," Gannet said. "Coming down. I'm sorry. I can't come down a stair quiet, I've never once managed it, I'm the wrong shape for it."
"Heard what?"
"Hot brass," he said. "A man with his thumb in the wax. Him telling you not to cry on his bench in case it rusted. Was that Hollin Vane?"
There was a hole in me where that went. I could put my tongue in it. A man at a bench. Wax. I knew the name Hollin like I knew my own hands, and I had nothing at all about any bench or any wax or any morning. You keep the man. You lose the morning.
"Don't," I said.
"Don't what?"
"Don't tell me it."
"You asked me."
"I said heard what. That's not asking."
"It is a bit," he said.
But he shut his mouth after that and kept it shut.
I stood there with the one candle. He sat there with his knees up. Somewhere up in Hook Street a dog was having an argument with itself.
"You've not eaten," he said.
"What?"
"Since about noon. You've not had a thing." He said it like you'd say the tide was out. "There's half a pie in my coat. It's mutton. It's been sat on."
"I don't want your pie."
"No," he said, as though that settled something, and left it in his pocket.
He was guessing. I'd been stood at the Guild gate since noon and then up a back lane till dark waiting for the street to empty, and you can't do both and dinner.
"There's two more come down Hook Street at the bell," he said. "Constables. Not sworn to anything but their supper. They'll see the Guild's wax hanging off your street door upstairs, which, I'll say this, you made a tidy job of, I'd not have known it was cut if I hadn't put my hand on it, and they'll come down here, and they'll want to know why there's a sergeant sat in an open door at midnight."
"And you'll tell them."
"If they ask." He tipped his head back against the iron. "If anyone asks me who opened it, I'll have to say."
"Will they ask?"
"Everybody asks me everything."
"You're not going to stop me going."
"I'd have to get up." He looked at the door, and his knees, and me. "And then it'd shut, and you'd have to pay it again, and I'd not want that on my book. So, no. Mind the third step. It's broken. I broke it worse."
People don't do that. People with badges least of all. I stood there with the candle going down to my fingers.
"Why'd you sit in it?"
He looked surprised. Eyebrows and everything.
"You told me to," he said.
I went up the stair.
Third step. It had a split right through the tread now, his doing, fresh wood white in the candle. I went over it. At the top the counting-house was all long desks and the smell of mice, and the street door stood open on Hook Street where he'd left it, the Guild's wax hanging off the hasp on its bit of string.
I was three desks in when the boots came up the street. Two pair, steady. Then two lanterns in the doorway, and two Guild coats behind them, and one of them saying, "Wax is cut, look," in the voice of a man who'd sooner it wasn't.
I pinched the candle out and got down behind the long desk with the mice.
They went past close enough to tread on my hand. Down the stair. The third tread went off under the first of them like a pistol, and he swore at it, and the other one laughed.
"Sergeant?" said the one who'd sworn.
"Evening," said Gannet, from the bottom.
"What are you sat in a door for?"
"Holding it. It's been paid, and if it shuts it'll want paying again."
"Paid? Who paid it?"
I didn't stay for that. The back of the counting-house went through to a scullery, and the scullery door had a bolt on the inside, and a bolt's only a bolt. I drew it a quarter-inch at a time so it wouldn't sing.
I touched the doorframe going out. Two fingers. My mother did it every door she ever went through, and I've never managed to stop.
The lane behind was empty and wet, and the moon was on the slates. Somewhere over the roofs the bell for the watch was still going. I didn't run. Running's what they look for.
I was humming. Wrong tune, the one that goes with the other song. I always do that.
At the corner, by the cooper's, I stopped under the moon and put my hand inside my coat.
The paper was where it always was, against my ribs, folded in four. The folds had gone soft as cloth. I opened it out.
Hollin's writing, leaning backwards like it was trying to get away from the pen. My name. Journeyman lockwright. His name at the bottom, and under that a blob of brown wax with a thumbprint pressed in it, the whorls so plain you could have picked a lock with them.
I read it twice.
I'd carried it in that pocket for years. I turned it over and there was nothing on the back, and I turned it again, and it was the same paper.
I folded it along the old folds and put it back against my ribs.
It was a piece of paper with my name on it.