The AssayOwen turned the sword so that the rolled part of the edge faced away from his coat. He held it by the cross with his good hand, waiting for Vic to finish reading.
Vic dismissed the price. The class offer remained, obscuring a square of plaster beside Owen's head. There were two other names above it. He made himself go back to the first.
There were his arms and feet, accounted for. He looked at the hilt in Owen's hand. Three Strength for each level, without having to choose it. Two Agility. He had been too slow getting away from the case; that was a fact with blood on its sleeve, standing in front of him.
"The first one's for using this," he said.
"Sounds useful."
"Muster Swordsman. Strength and Agility."
"Does it teach you?"
Vic read the card again. It promised a skill offer at five. He was two. He tried attending to the word Swordsman, hoping for something as plain as the little explanation of Vitality. The description stayed where it was.
"No skill until five. It might make me better at what I already know."
"Which one gives you something now?"
He checked the others. All Common. All Raw. All three had the same wait for a skill. The middle offer, Arsenal Custodian, put two points each into Vitality, Perception and Will. It kept a store of arms fit for use. No fixed Strength or Agility there either.
He could have had that printed on his current job description, between environmental monitoring and such other duties as might reasonably be required. Until tonight, the latter had mostly meant moving chairs.
A scrape came from outside. Owen raised his head. They listened while it travelled a short way across the plaza and stopped. Vic wanted to look out, but Owen was already at the side window, his body turned to keep the torch off the glass.
"Loose sign," Owen said. "By the café. Wind's got up."
Vic closed the Custodian offer. He could see why it had been offered. An hour ago he had been photographing armour; before that he had spent years putting small, expensive things into fitted drawers. The sword class made sense too. He disliked how much easier it was to accept a description of himself when it came with better numbers.
Collector took a point from Custodian's Vitality and put it into Perception. That was the whole numerical difference he could see. It also said completes. He had checked that word twice already.
"I want the Collector," he said.
Owen looked away from the window. "Then take it."
"You think I should take the sword one."
"I think we've been standing here long enough."
Vic rubbed his right wrist. The ache ran up into his forearm, where he had dragged at the blade with a dead animal hanging from it. He could choose more Strength. He could choose it every time, if he had to, though that would use points the swordsman got to spend somewhere else.
The armour was upstairs. Taking this class would not fetch it, mend it or make it fit him. It would certainly not make Owen interested in it again. But the Assay had counted the pieces, including the missing ones, and offered him a way of making that work part of what he became. He wanted it with a force that embarrassed him, here beside the injured man holding his sword.
He let the other two offers go and attended to Collector of Arms.
Yes. That one.
The hiss of Owen's sleeve against the wood became distinct from the wind. Vic heard water running through a downpipe on the far side of the doors. He had not heard either before, or had not separated them from the larger noises. He looked at the skirting beside the Exchange. Its chipped paint was still chipped paint; no new writing explained where the slab had come from.
His wrist hurt. He rolled his shoulder and the familiar knot under the blade of it hurt too.
"Done?"
"It's given me the points it held back. For level two."
"And the three?"
"Still here."
Vic selected Strength. He tried thinking two, with a ridiculous sense that somebody might hear him ordering at a bar. The number changed. He stopped, checked the remaining point, and put it into Agility.
He flexed his fingers. The motion felt like his own. He had been braced for pain, perhaps, or a sudden heat under the skin. There was no useful way to tell whether the hand was faster without something to compare it with. He asked for the whole sheet.
He read it from top to bottom. Perception twenty looked an indecent distance ahead of the rest. His name had acquired a job beneath it, and his body had acquired numbers he had chosen. He would have liked to sit down and write out what had changed, with the old figures beside the new ones.
Owen shifted the sword in his hand.
Vic took it back. He held the point off the floor, waiting for the difference. The hilt settled comfortably enough into his palm; then the tremor came back into his forearm. He could still feel the fight in it. Whatever a hundred and forty Stamina allowed when full, he had not been filled up along with the figure.
"How is it?" Owen asked.
"I'll tell you after the stairs."
"We're going down."
"Then I may sound better than I am."
Owen picked up the spear with his right hand. He rested the shaft against his shoulder while he inspected his left sleeve. A little blood had come through the bandage, a dark oval near the inside of the wrist. Vic leaned closer.
"Has that got bigger?"
"Since you wrapped it, yes. In the last few minutes, I don't think so."
"We could put another pad over it."
"Outside. Away from the door."
Vic looked at him.
"I can walk," Owen said. "Get your phone."
The phone was still on the Exchange, throwing a white patch onto the ceiling. Vic almost put the sword down on the slate to free both hands, then used the donations box instead. The iron helmet rang when the cross touched it. Both men went still.
No answer came from the stair.
He peeled the tape off the back of the phone with his thumbnail. Fluff had gathered along the edges. He pressed the same strip across his breast pocket, tested it and added the second loose end at an angle. He did not have the roll; it was back on the packing bench. The torch would have to last on what he had.
His battery showed sixty-one per cent. There was still no signal. He locked the screen with the torch on and pulled his jacket flat beneath it. When he stooped, the light went onto the floor rather than into the room. He would have to remember that.
The canvas bag stood at the foot of the stair where they had put it down on reaching the hall. He drew its long handles up over his left shoulder. The bottles clinked against one another. He rearranged the packets between them, then retrieved the sword with his right hand.
"Can you get both hands on it?"
Vic brought his left hand to the lower grip. The bag slid towards his elbow. He shortened the handles with an overhand knot and tried again. It rode high under his arm now, awkward but clear of the hilt.
Owen pressed the tape down around his own phone in the radio loop. He watched Vic take a step and turn. "Keep the point down until we're clear."
They lowered the night bar together, Owen using his right hand, Vic with the sword propped beside his foot. It was an ordinary length of steel, painted so often that it had become round at the corners. Vic had never moved it before. Owen made him keep hold until they had laid it against the wall; dropped, it would have been heard all the way down the plaza.
The outside lock still needed Owen's key. He turned it, opened the right-hand leaf a few centimetres and waited with his boot against the bottom. Cold air came over the threshold. It smelt of smoke and the harbour at low water.
"Down the wall to the steps," he said. "Stay on my right."
Vic gathered up the sword. Through the narrow opening he could see the lower half of the café opposite and the fallen sign moving in its chain. The paving beyond it was dark. He could hear something at a distance, a short scraping trot, but could not put it on a particular side of the square.
Owen went through. Vic followed close enough to brush his coat. They pulled the leaf shut behind them. Owen worked the key while Vic faced out, holding the sword in both hands at waist height.
The key stuck on its way out. Owen pushed the door with his shoulder, turned it back a little, and freed it. Then he pulled the handle twice.
"Bar?" Vic whispered.
"Can't put it back from here. Lock will hold the doors together."
It seemed an inadequate thing to leave between the workshop and the plaza. Vic looked up. He could not distinguish his own window from the others. For a moment he pictured the lamp still on over the gorget, though he had carried his only working light downstairs himself.
Owen had started towards the steps. Vic moved with him.
The staircase descended along the Arsenal's retaining wall, screened from most of the square by a stone parapet. It was broad enough for them to walk side by side. At the first landing Owen stopped and looked back over Vic's shoulder. Vic turned. Nothing followed them into the narrow reach of their torches.
"Here," Owen said, and sat on the low wall.
Vic put the bag down between Owen's feet and rested the sword within reach against the stone. He took out a wrapped pad. The one already on the arm had a stain the size of a coin; blood had not reached the bandage's edges. He placed the fresh pad over it and used a strip of dressing tape from the pouch to hold it. Owen kept his elbow close to his side while Vic worked.
"Fingers?"
Owen opened his hand, then closed it. "They work."
"You said if it started again you'd try the points."
"It hasn't started. It's seeping." Owen kept his eyes on the pad. "I'm not reading lists on a staircase. When we're behind a door."
Vic gave him one of the water bottles. Owen drank, held it while Vic took a mouthful, and screwed the cap back on. About a third gone. Vic tucked it into the bag beside the full one and checked the sword had not slid down the wall.
"I'm sorry about the scabbard," he said.
Owen was looking at the fresh pad.
"I saw it falling. I just—"
"I know what you saw."
Vic stopped.
Owen eased the sleeve down around the dressing without covering it. "Tell me if you're going to stop. Don't let me find out when I need you."
"All right."
"That means now as well. If your legs are going, say so."
Vic stood up. The muscles above his knees felt loose after crouching, but they held. He lifted the bag onto his shoulder and took the sword.
"They aren't."
Owen rose using his right hand on the parapet. At the bottom of the steps the shore road lay between them and the water, its far lane blocked by stationary cars. One set of headlights shone up the next turning. Another pair lit the rear of a van so brightly that Vic could see the dirt left by each sweep of its wiper.
"We stay this side until the crossing," Owen said. "Then along the quay."
The little green walking man was dark. Vic followed Owen towards it anyway.
A bus had stopped across the crossing. Its front wheels were turned towards the harbour, one on the kerb. The doors stood open. A man's coat lay on the step, with a paper ticket caught in the wet under its sleeve.
Owen waited behind the near-side rear corner while Vic looked along the pavement. A woman in an upstairs window was calling to somebody beyond the bus. Vic could hear the urgency of it, but the wind took the words. He wanted to ask what she could see. Owen touched his elbow and pointed to the gap behind the vehicle.
They crossed there. Vic had to turn sideways between the bus and a small car. The sword went through first, kept low, and the bag caught on the car's wing mirror. He eased it free before the handle could tear. The mirror folded with a click that seemed much too loud.
On the far pavement he turned to give Owen light. Owen came through with the spear upright, lifting it above the roofs before bringing it down again. His left hand barely closed around the shaft.
"Don't walk backwards," Owen said.
Vic turned and nearly put his foot over the quay edge.
There was a metre of pavement in front of him, then a low granite coping and black water below. The car had cut out the sight of it until he was through. He took a quick step inland. His heel struck Owen's boot.
"Sorry."
"Stop saying it. Look where you're putting yourself."
They stood for a moment between the car and the coping. Vic made himself follow the edge of the stone with his light. A rusted mooring ring. A ladder descending out of sight. Beyond the ladder, a gap where a slab had been lifted for work and covered with a board.
The old harbour path was familiar on his bicycle. He rode it on bright mornings, looking at the water instead of the surface. In darkness the things he had ridden around without noticing were holes with no bottom he could see.
He kept the coping at his left shoulder and left enough room for Owen beside him.
Across the road a shop alarm began with three weak cries and stopped. Further along, somebody was trying to start a motor. It turned over reluctantly, caught for a second, then failed. That small, ordinary complaint carried farther than the shouting.
There were people in some of the cars. A man behind a closed window held up a phone as they passed, asking without opening the glass. Vic shook his head and pointed to his own. The man lowered it. In the passenger seat an older woman was folding a scarf around her hand, winding it carefully between finger and thumb.
"Can you see the hospital?" she called through the glass.
Vic stopped. Owen stopped with him.
"No," Vic said. "We're going to the terminal."
The driver lowered the window a crack. "Bridge is shut. Lorry sideways. People are coming back."
The hospital was beyond the bridge, inland from the ferry flats. Vic knew that much. He looked at the scarf again. There was a broken section of windscreen on her side, glittering round a hole.
"Have you got anything for that hand?"
"In the boot," the man said. "First-aid box."
"Use it," Owen said. "And turn the headlights off if you're staying here. You'll want the battery."
"We were told to keep the road lit."
Owen looked towards the line of light beyond them. Vic expected him to insist. Instead he asked who had told them.
"Ferry people. They came along from the east, checking cars. Gone back for more of them."
"When?"
"Ten minutes, they said. More, maybe."
Owen looked east, then back at the woman. "All right. Keep the doors locked. If you have to get out, look underneath first."
The driver began raising the window. "Don't go between the cold store and the bus. Something's down there."
Owen bent to the narrowing gap. "Which cold store?"
"Fishmarket. Where the road bends. It ran under the bus."
They walked on. At the next patch of light Owen brought the spear across his body and examined the bare socket where the crossbar had been. He had used it as a walking staff for the last few paces. Now he slid his good hand back towards the butt.
"If something gets on this again, I'm letting it go," he said.
"I can come in from the side."
"If there's room. If there isn't, we get behind something."
Vic nodded. The road ahead was narrowed by another bus, this one parked properly at a stop beneath the fishmarket sign. Its headlights were off. Beyond it, the pavement disappeared under a line of temporary fencing, each mesh panel standing in a black rubber foot. A roadworks board had fallen across two of the feet.
There was no route along the water. The fence enclosed the whole outer strip, down to the quay edge. Vic shone his torch through it and caught a trench, wet clay and the end of a pipe big enough to crawl into. The bridge diversion at the top of the board pointed back the way they had come. Beyond the trench the road swung inland, away from the water, and the long shed of the fishmarket took the shore instead. The bus stood at its wall.
Owen checked the road. They could go round the rear of the second bus and along its inland side, in the open road. The only other way was the gap between it and the cold store wall.
Something scraped beneath the bus. Vic brought the point up.
"Back to the light," Owen said.
They retreated to the last car with its headlights on. The beam caught Vic's face as he turned, making the road beyond it vanish. He looked down until he could see the kerb again.
A white light moved at shoulder height ahead of them, past the front of the bus. Someone had lifted a lantern behind the fishmarket's yard gate.
"You two," a woman called. "Come straight across to me. Don't go by that bus."
She shone the lantern through the bars. Below it Vic saw orange waterproof trousers, one leg caught up over a rubber boot. The gate was open about half a metre. A second person stood behind her, holding a long dark tool.
Owen watched both ends of the bus before crossing. Vic went beside him. As they reached the gate, a low shape moved in the space beneath the vehicle, then withdrew. He saw feathers along its shoulder and the pale length of a foreleg. The darkness took the rest before he could get a read.
"In," the woman said. "One at a time. Mind the foot."
Owen turned the spear upright and went through. Vic followed, lifting the bag clear of a black wheel projecting from the bottom of the gate. The woman put her shoulder to the bars as soon as he was inside. The man beside her pushed too. The opening narrowed by a hand's width, and the gate stopped with a grinding noise.
"That's where it sticks," she said.
The fishmarket yard smelt of salt, old ice and diesel. Empty plastic boxes were stacked beneath the loading canopy. A strip of pale light showed around a covered window above it; the rest of the building was dark. Across the yard, perhaps thirty metres away, Vic could see a smaller gate in the eastern fence and a lamppost beyond it.
The woman hung the lantern on a projecting bolt in the fixed gatepost. It ran from a broad battery clipped underneath, the sort used on a cordless drill. Her colleague had a short crowbar in his hands. He wore a wool cap under his hood and had pulled one glove off with his teeth; it was still hanging from his mouth.
"Does that go through to the terminal?" Owen asked, pointing with the spear.
"East wicket. Along the wall, round the pump house, straight ahead." She looked at his bandage. "We're shutting this first."
"What's stopping it?"
"Gravel in the bottom track. Len's had most of it out. Then it starts again." She gave the gate a shove. It rattled but did not move. "If you're passing through, give us a hand. We need to get upstairs."
"Who's upstairs?" Owen asked.
"Two more. Four of us from nights, waiting on the shift that was coming in. We've got a window on the road and a kettle we can't boil."
Len removed the glove from his mouth. "Gas ring in the locker."
"Then we've got a kettle."
Vic put the bag down against the inside of the wall. The sword he laid on top, hilt towards him. He looked through the bars at the bus. The lantern made a short bright patch of road in front of the gate, but the vehicle's underside remained black.
"It tried the gap before," the woman said. "Long nose. I hit the bars with that."
She nodded at the crowbar. There were dents in the gate's paint where fresh steel showed.
Owen positioned himself a little back from the opening, spear lowered. He tried settling the shaft under his left arm. It pressed the dressing; he moved it away with a sharp intake of breath and braced the butt against his right boot instead.
Vic crouched at the wheel. The gate slid sideways on a V-shaped track set into the paving. Crushed stone had gathered against the little flange, damp with water running down from the yard. Len had scraped a furrow through most of it. The wheel was large, perhaps the diameter of Vic's spread hand, with rust packed around its axle.
"Can we lift it past?" Vic asked.
"You're welcome to try," Len said. "Watch the edge."
Vic took hold of a horizontal rail. The square tube was cold enough to hurt the cuts he had not realised were on his fingers. He set his feet, bent his knees and lifted.
For a second he thought it had moved. Then he saw that he had only taken the looseness out of the frame. The wheel stayed on the track. He pulled harder. A sore line ran across his lower back, and the gate gave a small, contemptible creak.
"Leave it," Owen said.
Vic let go. His face was hot. Sixteen Strength, and a gate that two ordinary dock workers had already failed to lift. He had spent his points imagining the sword. Here he could have used every point the other class offered, and he still did not know whether it would have been enough.
Len put the crowbar down beside the track. "Top rollers hold it in. You'd have to bend their bracket."
Vic looked up. A steel guide embraced the top rail. He ought to have looked there before lifting. The thought of having a larger number to test had sent him straight to the bottom.
"Right," he said. "Sorry. Can you move it back a little?"
The woman and Len pulled. The gate travelled away from its closing post, widening the opening. Owen moved the spear point into the space. The scrape from the road came again, closer now, and they stopped.
Vic lowered himself until his cheek was near the paving. Beyond the wheel, a narrow strip of bright metal curled up from the track. It disappeared underneath the rim.
"Packing band," he said. "Steel one. It's folded under."
"I got a bit out," Len said.
"There's more. Don't put your hand under there."
He had nearly done it himself. It was the sort of thin, springy strip that looked harmless until a cut opened all the way across a finger. He pointed to it instead. Len slipped the crowbar's flat end along the track from the yard side.
"Back a little more."
"How much?" the woman asked.
Vic looked through the widening gap. The hound was out from under the bus. Its head hung below the line of its shoulders. It crossed the road without hurrying, almost invisible until a car's headlight caught the folded feathers on its back.
"No more," Owen said.
Len stopped with the crowbar under the band. The woman's hands tightened on the rail. Vic rose, took the sword off the bag and came up on Owen's right.
The hound stopped beyond the lantern's pool. Its narrow muzzle moved, working the air. Vic could see the bare place below its throat where feathers gave way to close fur. He tried to hold his attention on the whole animal. Looking at the place to put a point made the feet disappear from his awareness.
Owen's right hand was white around the spear. Vic had room to thrust through the opening beside him, but scarcely room to withdraw. The gate would have to move across both weapons to close.
"Can you get it out?" he asked Len.
"Need the wheel off it."
The woman glanced between the hound and her colleague. Then she set one boot against the post behind her. "When I pull, you pull. That little bit. Then shut."
Len nodded without looking up.
The hound came forward. Owen eased his point towards its muzzle. It moved sideways, following the open space beyond the spear. Vic adjusted his own point until the two covered the gap. His body wanted to back away from the bars; he kept his feet where Owen could see them.
The woman pulled the gate. Metal shrieked along the track. Len hooked the packing band and dragged it free, a long flattened curl with grit pressed into its underside.
"Out."
The gate began to close. Owen drew his spear back. Vic withdrew the sword at the same time, bringing the hilt against his ribs.
The hound rushed the last few metres. It struck before the gate reached the post. The nose and one forefoot came through the narrowing opening. Vic drove his point towards the muzzle and hit the upright instead; the impact jarred the blade sideways. He pulled back fast enough to keep it from being trapped.
Owen shoved with the spear shaft across the opening, forcing the animal's head out while the woman and Len pushed. The hound withdrew its foot. The closing rail slammed against the post, bounced and opened a crack.
"Hold it!"
Vic put his shoulder against a crosspiece and pushed along the track towards the post. The woman was already there beside him. Len reached for a chain hanging from the upright. Owen stepped clear, still holding his spear across the bars.
The hound struck the gate again. The mesh bowed inward. Vic could smell the same hot feather smell that had filled the armoury, close enough to bring the taste of his mouth back with it. The animal's teeth scraped over wire. He gripped the rail with his free hand and kept pushing sideways.
Len threaded the chain through and snapped a padlock shut. He took up the slack around the post with another turn, then tested it with both hands.
"Got it."
Vic kept his shoulder there until the woman moved away. The hound backed from the gate. Its feet made small hard clicks on the road.
"Inside," she said. "All of us. Out of its sight."
They moved beneath the loading canopy, behind the stacked boxes. Owen took short steps with the spear tucked against his right side. Vic retrieved the bag as he passed it. The lantern stayed by the gate, lighting the wire and a narrow strip of empty road.
Behind the boxes, Owen leaned against a concrete pillar. Vic could hear the effort in his breathing.
"Arm?"
"Hurts."
"Let me see."
Owen angled it towards the light spilling between the stacks. The fresh pad was still mostly white. Vic could not tell anything more without taking the dressing off, and there was nowhere clean to do it. He left it alone.
Len had kept the packing band. He held it out at arm's length, examining its torn end.
"Off the new freezer," he said.
The woman looked at it. "Bin. Properly this time."
He carried it to a lidded metal container beside the loading door. When he came back, he had put his glove on. His hands shook as he worked the cuff over his sleeve.
The woman asked Owen if he wanted to stay upstairs. He shook his head.
"My son's behind the terminal. We were expected."
"Then that gate's on a latch. Pull it up, push out. Close it hard when you're through. The wall goes all the way to the pump house. No turnings until then."
"The people in the car said ferry people had been along," Vic said. "Checking cars."
"They came past. Two with torches and a trolley. Took a man who'd fallen. They've gone back east." She looked towards the covered upstairs window. "If they're collecting people, tell them we're here. Four adults. We can wait. We'd like to know what's happening."
Owen nodded. "I will."
Vic looked back at the gate. The chain was taut and the opening closed. He could not see the hound now. He listened for its feet but heard only water dripping off the canopy.
The woman picked up the crowbar Len had set against the boxes. "Go while it's looking this way."
The east wicket opened outwards onto a path above the water. Owen lifted the latch with his right hand while Vic held his spear alongside the sword. Once Owen was through, Vic passed the spear back, stepped out and pulled the gate shut. He kept his fingers through the mesh long enough to lower the latch fully, then tested it.
"Shut," he said.
They followed the cold store wall. Vic's torch lit rough concrete, a rust-coloured line beneath a pipe bracket, the wet backs of the stones underfoot. Somewhere on the other side of the building the hound struck the main gate once more. Neither man stopped.
The pump house occupied a square jutting into the harbour. Its inland side left a shoulder-width gap against the market fence, too narrow for them abreast. Owen looked round its corner first. Then he motioned Vic through and followed, his spear held upright again.
Beyond it the path broadened. The ferry terminal stood ahead, low and long, its white fascia just visible above a row of parked delivery vans. There were lights at its eastern end. Three or four torches, moving independently; a warmer light stood in a window above them.
"There," Owen said.
He had stopped. Vic stood beside him, looking past the terminal towards the higher row of buildings. One had a yellow awning folded beneath its first-floor windows. He had tried to find it across the water from the workshop. Down here he could make out the folded fabric.
"That's the bakery?"
"Yes."
The awning had a scalloped edge. It was such a small, exact confirmation that Vic wanted to laugh. He did not. Owen was watching the windows above it with his mouth slightly open.
A person crossed in front of the warm light, carrying something broad enough to cover most of it. Vic could not tell who it was. Owen tried his phone again. The torch went off while he worked the screen, leaving them with only Vic's light. He waited, then put it back into the radio loop without a word. The beam came on again.
"We can walk there," Vic said.
Owen tucked the phone more securely beneath its tape. "Yes."
They went round the terminal's western end, keeping clear of the space under the vans. Vic's shoulder ached beneath the knot in the bag handles. He shifted it higher and felt the bottles knock together through the remaining packets. At the next stop he would move the dressings between them again. He told Owen he needed a moment to settle the bag, and Owen waited while he did it.
Along the front of the terminal a covered walkway led to the service entrance. Someone had drawn a wheeled steel trolley across the inner doors. Beyond it, a man in a reflective vest sat with a length of pipe laid across his knees. He stood when their torches reached the glass.
Owen raised his empty left hand a little, winced, and lowered it.
"Two of us," he called. "From the Arsenal."
The man pointed down at their weapons, then to the ground. Vic lowered the sword. Owen put the spear butt on the paving, point upright. The man approached the door without moving the trolley.
Vic glanced at his phone. 01:34. Forty-eight per cent. He locked the screen and faced his light towards his own boots so it would stop shining into the man's eyes.
Through the glass he could see a handwritten sheet taped at head height. Arrivals, knock here. Keep this door clear. Beneath it, on the floor inside, muddy footprints went in both directions.
Owen leaned close enough to be heard through the door.
"I'm looking for Dan Marsh and Ruth. Flats over the bakery. And there are four people waiting at the fishmarket."
The man lifted a hand for them to wait, turned, and called into the building. Owen stayed beside the glass. Vic stood on his right, the bag against his hip and the sword held down, while someone inside began moving the trolley.