Catalogue
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- Where I’m reading
- The Other Way OutChapter 1
- Find a Way ThroughChapter 2
- The Far LandingChapter 3
- A Road for Going UnderChapter 4
- Where the Road Came OutChapter 5
- The Door Above the GardensChapter 6
- What They Brought BackChapter 7
- The Answering LightChapter 8
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Items
Duke Albrekt’s armour
Item
The armour of Duke Albrekt, dark steel resting on shaped supports under the work lamps, with one plate sitting crooked. Matching wear joins its breastplate and backplate, while another plate with similar decoration has a different curve. Its collection card counts three verified working pieces, incomplete and dormant, with no total shown. Ch. 1
transport trolley
Item
A folding steel transport trolley of the kind used to move display cases, on four wheels with a padded bumper at one end; a loose crossbar locks the frame rigid, and a black restraint strap goes with it. It is jammed in the gap under the Arsenal’s loading-bay shutter, strapped to the iron ring there, and labelled out of service. Ch. 1
dinghy
Item
Owen’s cream rowing boat with blue round the edge, kept on the slip beside the terminal, with two buoyancy aids in the cupboard with the oars. Owen lends it to Vic only if it proves sound and the water stays quiet, with the coast kept in sight and a return ashore if it turns rough; Vic holds its key. Ch. 2
exercise book
Item
Owen’s exercise book, kept as the household’s record, with where they are on one page and the people they want to reach on another. It holds Helen’s and Martin’s entries, Gordon’s message and Kate’s drawing of the island facing the names, and is to carry the neighbours’ enquiries as well as their own; nothing in it has been sent. Ch. 2
lamp
Item
A bronze lamp with a black bail, green at the corners of its casing and with a dented sliding hood, taken from a shelf in the roofed recess above the shore. A small control lights it and the hood angles the beam; thrown back to its stop, the full beam drives off the scarred shore animal. Its owner is unknown, and it now lights the bakery table. Ch. 2
route sketch
Item
A sketch drawn by Kate on the back of a ferry leaflet taken from the terminal rack. It marks a way between the bakery court and the terminal that keeps off the shore, one Gordon has walked both ways on his own. Ch. 2
bronze folio
Item
A heavy bronze route book with worked metal leaves and a stepped spine, its corner worn by many hands. Its leaves show the known shore approach, a roofed underwater passage and a road rising to a town, beside writing nobody has yet read. It travels in a padded canvas wrapper, taken from the station with the other finds. Ch. 3
canvas sleeve
Item
A canvas sleeve from the island station’s equipment bay, holding a round pane of smoke-grey glass in a bronze rim that Vic calls the station glass. The pane is carried in it, packed with the cartridges and the folio, and has not been bound. Ch. 3
Harbour Hanger
Item
A short sheathed hanger with a plain shell guard and shallow pitting near its tip, named the Harbour Hanger in Vic’s notes. It came from a bay beneath a panel in the island station, with a removal note left in its place, and Vic wears it; who owns it is not established. Ch. 3
lamp cartridge
Item
Two full cartridges that fit the lamp, found in the island station’s equipment bay beside a sheathed hanger and a sleeved smoke-grey pane. They are packed and carried separately as spares, and the cartridge already in the lamp has not been changed. Ch. 3
Sounding Glass
Item
A round pane of smoke-grey glass in a bronze rim, kept in a canvas sleeve; looking through it only makes a room darker. It came from the island station’s equipment bay, where a signed drawing was left in its place, and Vic calls it the station glass. What it is for is unknown. Ch. 3
station bridge
Item
A short folding bridge on the island landing, spanning a water-filled cut before the station door, lowered by hand and locked by two hinge pins. A handline is fitted across the span, and the second pin has a notch beside its worn track for putting the bridge away. It stands open with both pins home, giving passage between the station door and the dinghy. Ch. 3
Sounding Collar
Item
A pair of hinged bronze neck bands with inward white ceramic contacts, kept in fitted wraps in a changing recess with spare cartridges. Bound since a night’s sleep, the larger to Vic and the smaller to Kate, they allow breathing underwater to four metres at a cost in charge, but give no warmth or relief from fear. Binding confers no ownership. Ch. 4
coach
Item
A vehicle with a windscreen and a number plate, standing between two low stone buildings on a square beyond the three arches. Its wipers are left halfway up the glass, as though the engine stopped in the rain; nothing further about its make, its route or who left it there is yet known. Ch. 4
garden door
Item
A heavy timber door between Sava’s workyard stair and the gardens, with a low loop by which she can hook it. Its outer corner catches on the sill, and though her hook lifts it clear it catches again as soon as it is let down; she needs it to open while she has a basket in hand. Ch. 5
Sava’s hook
Item
Sava’s long working hook has two bands of older polish beneath a fresh scrape from the cart. Those worn contacts fit the garden door’s low loop, letting her lift the dragging corner clear of its sill. It is a working tool for moving and supporting loads. Ch. 5Item
A second bronze route book from a sea-crusted rack beneath the island station, its leaves sized like the first folio’s but darker and stained along one edge. Vic is sure the notched tongue on its spine fits the slot of the handleless cabinet by the archive hatch. Its road climbs past the arches to a line of station squares, the last above the sea. Ch. 8Skills
Read the Wear
Skill
A skill of Vic’s, paid for in effort, that tells long-repeated wear from later damage and shows which way, how often and how hard a part has been pushed. It reads the track a fitting has worn but leaves the work to his hands and names no former worker; he took it at the station bridge. Ch. 3
Brace
Skill
A skill of Vic’s that, for a few seconds bought with effort, makes an assembly twice as firm against a single sudden shove, within its material’s strength. It needs an assembly he holds, has set or wears as a guard, and cannot mend a broken member, move it or strike. He has not yet used it. Ch. 5
Mark the Way
Skill
A Waymaker’s skill costing one effort and five seconds of contact to place a private mark. While awake, Kate senses its direction and rough distance within five hundred metres; she can keep three marks until her next sleep. A mark carries no message and says nothing about the ground between. Ch. 6
Ring True
Skill
Vic’s contact-testing skill: for one effort and ten seconds it compares how a single joint he can touch, within a hand’s span, answers his own tap, whole or dull and doubled. It says nothing about the rest of a structure, and Vic holds it alongside Read the Wear and Brace. Ch. 8Classes
Collector of Arms
Class
Vic’s Vocation, which helps him compare how parts he has inspected work together. Its comparison takes a minute of deliberate examination and one effort unit, and distinguishes matching wear from shared decoration. It neither identifies unseen missing pieces nor moves the armour. Ch. 1
Waymaker
Class
A Vocation the Assay offers to people who draw routes that others can follow from the drawing alone; most route-drawers come to it in time. It counts the journeys other people make by what the maker has drawn. Ch. 5
Conservator
Class
A Calling, narrower than a Vocation and standing beside it: the Vocation is the field, the Calling the hands. It holds a tested alignment as an exact guide for the hands, drawing on effort rather than a binding slot, but does no lifting and suggests no changes. Vic holds it beside Collector of Arms and has not yet used it. Ch. 6People
Helen
Person
Vic’s sister, with an unfinished repair to their father’s tool chest and an unanswered invitation to eat. Her last message asks whether he wants the chest left out; her present whereabouts and safety are unknown. Ch. 1
Kate
Person
Vic’s friend of eight years and Martin’s sister, practical under pressure, who wants a supper with Vic that work does not interrupt. Hallmarked without asking to be, she can attend to her own personal record but not Vic’s. She is making for the lit ferry terminal with Vic and the injured Owen, hoping for people and a working phone. Ch. 1
Martin
Person
Kate’s brother, who she expects will be trying to ring her. Her call to him does not connect, and where he is remains unknown. Ch. 1
Owen
Person
A security guard at the Arsenal who holds the building’s keys, quiet and dry-humoured. His left arm was crushed between the trolley’s push handle and the door frame and is supported in a triangular bandage, fingers left visible. He has a Measured record of his own and is making for the lit ferry terminal with Kate and Vic. Ch. 1
Vic
Person
Vic Doyle works on the armour at the Arsenal conservation bench in Portsmouth, content to spend an hour following an etched border to where another hand took over. He has put off repairing his father’s tool chest and left his sister Helen’s invitation unanswered. Measured at Level 1, he has accepted the Vocation Collector of Arms, whose comparisons cost effort. Ch. 1
Gordon
Person
Gordon, Owen’s neighbour across the court, who comes into the Arsenal twice a week to take Owen to lunch and argue about films. He wears a brown cardigan over a wrongly buttoned shirt, and his bad knee leaves him wanting a way out he can manage alone. His sister is among the names set down for enquiry, with word that he is at home. Ch. 2
Priya
Person
The baker on the court behind which Owen lives; Vic knows her from buying his rolls, and she closes on Sundays. She laughs readily and is practical under strain, and her downstairs floor and table now shelter and feed Vic and Kate. Her shed, wedged with a brick, has lost a sack of flour to one of the animals. Ch. 2
Tess
Person
A paramedic treating people at the ferry terminal, unhurried in examination and careful not to claim more than she can tell without equipment. She judges Owen’s left forearm broken and has splinted it with the fingers left visible. She has cleaned the cut on Vic’s hand and wants to see it again if it reddens. Ch. 2
basin resident
Person
A woman in a faded blue wrap who lives by a garden gate above the three arches; her name is not yet understood. Her house has a lean-to with baskets of yellow fruit, and she offers visitors a hot drink, blankets and a lamp. She recognises the collar cartridge and indicates a workyard beyond the arches. Ch. 4
Mara
Person
Mara Varga, a grey-haired English–Vennic interpreter and Measured-tier Weigher who works from a table at the Three Arches weighing-house, ledger to hand. She has been here since November 2007, nearly nineteen years, with letters from this side but none from home. She holds a checked copy of the enquiry for Helen Doyle and Martin Mercer and will keep any replies at her table. Ch. 5
Nadia
Person
An English-speaking coach driver, displaced on the same Sunday evening as Vic and Kate while taking eleven passengers towards a hotel. Sharper than patient, she coordinates loads in the workyard by board and list, knows some forty words of the local language and leaves interpreting to Mara. Neither Helen Doyle nor Martin Mercer was on her coach. Ch. 5
Sava
Person
Sava, an orchardist in Three Arches who knows its gardens and culvert: a woman in an ochre shirt with two low black plaits, mud-marked boots and a long working hook. She speaks Vennic, leaving anything complicated to Mara, and keeps her head when an animal attacks. Her orchard tallies go to Mara’s receiving bench on the upper lane, and her garden door sticks. Ch. 5Places
Arsenal
Place
The building in Portsmouth where Vic works at a conservation bench, with galleries, a loading bay and a front corridor; the armour he is studying rests there on shaped supports. Its work lamps failed when the floor shifted, and water and unfamiliar rock now lie where its road and service lane should be, though the front entrance is still usable. Ch. 1
ferry terminal
Place
The low ferry terminal beyond the harbour apron in Portsmouth, its windows lit by emergency lamps, with a smaller light moving from pane to pane inside. An alarm has sounded from its direction, and who is inside, or what help it holds, is not yet known. Ch. 1
Portsmouth
Place
The city in which the Arsenal stands, with a ferry terminal out beyond it. It ought to be loud even on a Sunday evening, yet it has fallen quiet, and its expected lights and streets are missing from the view outside the Arsenal. Ch. 1
bakery
Place
A bakery whose chimney, its pot missing a corner, shows above the masonry now filling the alley behind it beyond the bollards. Owen’s flat lies behind it in a court reached by hidden steps behind a buttress and a passage between the rear wall and a storage shed. Priya has offered Vic and Kate the downstairs floor. Ch. 2
rocky island
Place
A rocky island filling the gap between two stretches of coast, seen across the harbour with a long roof, windows, a square tower and steps down to the water. Owen thinks the photographed building looks like a station. No one has been seen there, and its landing has not been visited. Ch. 2
roofed recess
Place
A roofed landing on the steps from the gravel road above the shore down to the water. Its shelf, where the survey lamp stood, sits beneath incised marks Vic and Kate cannot read, and a barred service gate across the lower stair holds back a large black shore animal with a scarred nose. Ch. 2
flooded passage
Place
A roofed route below the water, engraved in the bronze folio from entrance to exit, with a recess and unread writing beside its approach. How far it runs, and whether it can be paused in or turned back from, is unknown, and Vic and Kate have not entered it. Ch. 3
island station
Place
A dry working floor under a long roof on the island, reached by a folding bridge whose second locking pin sticks. It holds timber racks of cases and low tables with hinged panels, one over a route cut into the wood, and smells of stored leather over stone damp. Nobody answers there; a signed drawing marks what was taken from it. Ch. 3
island landing
Place
A landing at the foot of the island building, reached by the longer sheltered approach and set behind a tongue of rock; a stone post takes the painter. A short folding bridge crosses a water-filled cut from the landing to the station door. Ch. 3
unnamed town
Place
A little town drawn at the end of the bronze folio’s rising road, its roofs behind three low arches among paths, channels and planted trees in a basin. Whether anyone lives there now, and in what condition it stands, is unknown; it is the chosen destination for enquiries. Ch. 3
changing recess
Place
A roofed recess by an inlet on the high road, far above the barred shore stair, where the folio’s road goes under. Wooden covers shelter two collar wraps under a carved neck-banded figure, beside a bench and a door to a raised sleeping floor. A fixed line runs down beneath its flooded lintel, and a second recess opens onto the far stair. Ch. 4
practice basin
Place
An open, unroofed basin where the cutting widens outside the changing recess, arranged for someone who needs to learn the collars. A line follows a submerged ledge round it beside the wall and back to the steps, with clear water above it to the surface for anyone who needs to come up. Ch. 4
Three Arches weighing-house
Place
Mara’s working place in Three Arches, where her table is the agreed point for replies to the enquiry for Helen and Martin. Its shelves hold corded bundles of letters, a chipped blue jug and a jar of buttons, and the room behind offers Vic and Kate beds and meals for two nights. Two collar cartridges are held there for the service engineer. Ch. 5
service shelf
Place
A footway along the outside of the lower garden wall, reached from the garden door by a covered entrance. Its first stretch is dry and wide enough for two, but a fallen face of wall buries it round the shoulder of the hill; beyond the fall it runs clear towards a road Vic knows. Sava has forbidden it since hounds came out below the fall. Ch. 6Place
A distant station on the high coast, a pale block above the sea with an old road below and a frame of shutter slats on its face, seen through the island tower’s tubes. Its shutters repeat one order about every forty minutes, and its reply to the island tower ended in a fast pattern nobody can yet read. Who works it is unknown. Ch. 8System
effort unit
System term
The unit spent to use an operation offered by the Assay. Collector of Arms comparison costs one effort unit for a minute’s examination. The size of Vic’s reserve has not been stated. Ch. 1
Measured
System term
The standing a personal record names when it is first established; Vic’s begins at Level 1. Each person can attend to their own record but cannot see anyone else’s, and Vic’s first accounts for bracing and restraining the trolley. What does the measuring is unknown. Ch. 1
charge unit
System term
The unit in which a collar’s breathing demand is reckoned, drawn from the cartridge fitted in the band, each of which carries a small gauge. Breathing underwater costs three units a minute, and the rule is that nobody goes under the lintel without enough charge for three crossings. Spent cartridges are replaced with fresh ones, left to settle before use. Ch. 4
Wayfinder’s Kit
System term
A registered instrument set, two of whose three pieces are qualified by Vic’s bound Glass and fitted Collar. That partial combination extends sounding to five metres. The lamp’s fouled reference seat prevents its binding while leaving ordinary light available. Ch. 4
binding slot
System term
One of the three places a person has for bound instruments; the Glass and each collar take one apiece. A binding needs a night’s sleep beside its instrument to settle, much as glue needs a night to cure, and does nothing until then. Vic has two of his filled and Kate one, and the lamp is still unbound. Ch. 4
First Crossing
System term
A title recorded in Kate's Record, granted on waking at Level 3 after she stopped beneath the roof of the flooded passage and then went on first. It adds one to her Nerve; nothing further about how such titles are earned or what else they do is yet known. Ch. 5
Forged
System term
The tier that follows Measured: Measured runs to twelve and Forged begins at thirteen, a point most people never reach. The workyard’s service engineer stands in it, and has worked there since before Mara came. Ch. 5
Vennic
System term
The language and script of Three Arches, spoken by Sava and Adela and read by most of the traders Mara works with; Vic and Kate cannot read its script. Their enquiry is written in it with the English kept alongside. In Vennic, Measured is a weigher’s word. Ch. 5