Chapter 1: River Vaults

Before we could rob the customs vault, Harl's boy had to teach us how to sit in a boat.

"Middle bench for him," he said, pointing at Bralen. "The other two at the front. Keep the bags off that board."

I looked at the board. Water welled through a split beside the nailhead.

"Does your father know about that?"

"That's why I'm telling you."

He took my satchel before I could object and stowed it beneath the forward bench, clear of the leak. Then he held the skiff against the steps with one bare foot while Bralen lowered himself aboard. The hull dipped. Bralen stopped, shifted his weight where the boy pointed, and sat without a word.

I followed less carefully and put a boot through somebody's breakfast.

The boy looked down at the crushed parcel of paper.

"Sorry," I said.

He picked it up, inspected the damage and ate the broken corner of an oatcake. The rest went inside his coat. I found a copper and offered it to him. He bit it before putting it away.

"Copper," I said. "You needn't test it."

"Last one was wood."

Behind us Harl gave a short laugh and pushed away from the landing.

The boy climbed in as the gap opened beneath him, already reaching for the spare pole. I watched him set its iron shoe against the steps and give us a last shove. He had Harl's narrow wrists and the same way of looking at the water just ahead of the boat. I had hired them an hour before, for the crossing and a wait below the old customs quay. Harl had asked whether we were likely to come back running. I had told him possibly.

He had charged us for certainly.

We slipped beneath the first bridge with the lamps shut. Above the arch, someone was sweeping a doorstep. A baker's window stood open to let out the heat, and for a little way the smell of warm rye followed us over the water.

Aldric raised his head.

"On the way back," he said.

"What?"

He nodded towards the window. "They put salt on the crust."

I hadn't known he liked anything enough to remember where it was sold.

"If they're still open."

"They will be."

He settled against the prow, keeping his boots out of the bilge. Beyond him the last stars lay in the Black Silt, broken wherever the pole touched. Another hour would show the warehouses, the rubbish and the ribs of boats no one could afford to mend along the low banks. For now, even the tannery wall had a silver edge.

I liked Leth Quay at this hour. You could hear a kettle being set on a stove three houses away. People left windows open without having decided what they thought of the day.

I had been sleeping in a cooper's loft for six weeks, since the last high water took my room and the workbench with it. Most of my tools I had saved. The bench was probably halfway to the sea. I missed its little drawer, which stuck in wet weather, and the square of afternoon sun where I used to spread a lock in pieces.

Soren's fee would rent me a place above the ropewalk, with a bench of my own and a door I could close. There would be money left after that. Enough to refuse him the next time he came looking.

I had inspected the room already. That was a mistake. Once you've decided where to put your bed, a sum of money becomes difficult to think about sensibly.

"Leaf."

They call me Leaf. Not Edlan. Not bastard. Leaf.

In Leth Quay a name is near enough a profession. This one hadn't been given for love. It was a thief's name, a beggar's name, a street name. A name for someone meant to live in cracks. Tonight that name had brought me here.

Bralen was watching me across the bench.

"Tell me the job again."

"Old revenue vault. Records, seal boxes, whatever survived the water. Soren's buyer wants the contents brought out intact."

"Under a customs house."

"A closed customs house."

"Then who was that with the lantern?"

I turned. A light moved between the shutters above the quay. It paused at each window, dipped, and moved again.

"Watchman. He comes round the west stair after the half bell."

"You watched him?"

"Three nights."

Bralen nodded. "And the water?"

"Low enough to get in. We have until the dawn bell before the return tide."

He looked towards Harl, who held up three fingers, then pointed at the quay. Three men in. Harl and the boy would wait outside. Bralen settled back.

He had come down from Hallowrise with a scar through his brow and very little patience for a job whose risks changed after he had agreed to them. I liked working with him. He asked the awkward questions while there was still time to do something about the answers.

"Triple shares," he said. "For wet paper."

"You're welcome to take an ordinary share."

He kept looking at me until I stopped smiling.

"Soren needs it done this tide," I said. "The lower quay is being braced tomorrow. Once the workmen arrive, we lose the entrance."

That much I had checked. Timber was stacked beside the customs stairs, fresh-cut ends showing pale in the dark. A chain lay across the landing to keep other boats clear. The watchman would be there to mind the timber as much as the empty building.

I had checked the tide, the guard and the work order. Soren had seemed quite pleased by my thoroughness.

Harl steered us past the chained landing and into the shadow below it. Here the river smelt of bilge oil and old rope. Water lapped beneath the customs wall, drawing loose lengths of weed through the rings where revenue barges had once tied up. I took the map from inside my coat and followed the final stretch with a finger.

The stair. The landing below it. A low arch partly hidden by the wall's reflection.

All where they should be.

The boy crouched beside Harl and murmured something. Harl shifted the pole. Our bow turned away from the arch and came to rest beside the lower steps.

"Why here?" I asked.

"Ledge is rotten round the corner," the boy said. "Step on the inside."

He climbed onto the lowest dry stair and looped a rope through an iron ring. The knot looked loose until he pulled it. Then it held. He tugged twice more, testing it, before he gave me a hand.

I stepped onto the stone with my shoulder against the wall, and Harl handed up my satchel. There was enough room to stand if you put one foot ahead of the other. Under the arch the ledge broadened and ran into the vault passage. A man could crawl the first few feet if the water rose, though he would have to leave his dignity and probably his coat behind.

"Stay on the steps," Harl told the boy. "You watch the light upstairs."

"I know."

"And keep that rope out from under your feet."

The boy lifted it with an exaggerated patience I remembered having at his age. Harl turned away, satisfied, and took a bent nail from his pocket. He touched it to the water, knocked it against the gunwale, and tucked it away again.

"Same nail?" the boy asked.

"Your gran's."

"You're meant to give it to them."

"She asked for it back."

The boy grinned. Harl went on checking the mooring.

I touched the iron ring as I passed. My mother used to leave nails for the River Mothers in the cracks between the flood steps. She had never made me do it. I couldn't remember when I'd started.

Bralen came after me, carrying his weight close to the wall. Aldric followed last. Halfway under the arch he stopped and laid his palm against the stone.

"Cold?" I asked.

He shook his head.

We waited. A chain clicked above us, followed by the faint scrape of the watchman's boots.

"There," Aldric said.

I felt nothing.

"What was it?"

"A knock. Through my hand."

Bralen glanced at the stacked timber above the landing. "They're unloading?"

"Perhaps."

Aldric moved his palm a little higher and waited again. I had taken him on two cellar jobs where he had felt a loaded wall shift before I heard the mortar crack. This was a worse place to discover he was right a third time.

I opened the lamp to a narrow slit and passed the light across the arch.

The mark lay just above the tide stain. Three curves, one inside another, crossed by a descending stroke. Someone had laid newer blocks around it, leaving the old surface exposed in a patch scarcely larger than my hand.

I lowered the lamp.

Bralen saw. "What?"

A mason's scratch would have been the easy answer. I took too long to give it.

"A split lock."

"On the map?"

"No."

He put a hand on my shoulder, stopping me from turning away.

"What does it change?"

I brought the light back. The outer curve was shallow and broad, the next narrower. The innermost almost disappeared beneath a crust of old river salts. At Cutter Hall we learned the common marks by tracing them blind. A wrong answer earned a tap across the knuckles. On an actual job you could lose the hand.

I had opened two-ring work. Three meant another stage in the sequence, another part I would have to understand before I touched it. There were people in the Guild I would have asked about a mark like this. None of them were standing on the ledge with me.

"It changes what we charge," I said.

Bralen's grip tightened.

I looked back towards the skiff. Harl was settling his pole across his knees. On the steps, the boy broke the surviving oatcake in half and held a piece down to him.

"We look," I said. "I find the gate. If I can't read it, we come out."

"Before you try it."

"Before."

He let go.

I put the map away and crouched to examine the threshold. The river had left a thin skin of silt across the stone. Near the wall it was scored by a boot, the heel pressed deeper than the toe, pointing into the passage. A narrow notch broke one edge of the print.

I held the lamp closer. Water had begun collecting in it, but the edges were still sharp. It had been made since the falling river uncovered the ledge.

Behind me Bralen shifted. I held up a hand to stop him putting his boot across the mark.

"Harl."

The boatman looked up.

"Anyone else use this landing tonight?"

"Not while I've been watching."

I checked the silt nearer the arch. Weed lay undisturbed against the wall. There was no matching trail coming out.

Soren had been particular about secrecy. Only the buyer, the broker and the three of us were to know what lay beneath the quay.

I measured the print against the spread of my fingers and committed the broken edge to memory. Then I shuttered the lamp and stood.

"Someone's ahead of us," I told Bralen.

He moved past me far enough to look into the passage. For a moment we listened together.

Nothing came back but water.

The skiff waited behind us. I could still have stepped into it.

I took my chalk from the satchel instead.