CHAPTER 88: 88: A NEW BEGINNING PART XIII

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Fizz stared into his stew as if onions might float into a map. John thanked Harb properly and paid a coin because courtesy without coin turns to a story people resent later. Harb pocketed it with the gravity of a man who would spend it on something useful like drinks and tell no one what.

At the door Harb paused, not nosy so much as human. "Who is she, that you chase old memories?"

"Someone important," John said.

Harb tipped a hat that had known many heads. "Then I hope the road gives you truth, not stories."

They stepped back into the trunks. Fizz floated in silence for three heartbeats, which for him qualified as reverence.

"You said ’Someone important’ without flinching," he said at last.

"I learned to stop flinching when people did not care," John said. "Feels wasteful to keep the habit when someone does."

"Progress," Fizz declared, then spoiled the ceremony: "Progress pancakes later."

A few days later...

East Hollow crouched under its roofs like a cat under a cart. The road bent down into it with a tired sigh. Porch-cats watched strangers with the bored competence of creatures who enjoyed judging. Moran’s canvases, poles, and ropes made their usual ordered sea. Moran himself had rolled east two days prior with a string of mules and a joke he was still telling. The yardman — tidy, square, and nicknamed Ledger for a reason — recognized their whisker-spark stamp at once, nodded the way trades nod when they hoped to meet again, and offered water with a slice of lemon that had once been a real lemon.

"Looking for a man who may not exist," Ledger said mildly after John explained the errand. "We keep those in stock."

"Rettan Vale," Fizz tried once more, pulling a face as if pronouncing the name left a grit behind.

Ledger ran a finger down a slate full of chalk gossip and cargo math. "Rettan, Retan, Ratan... nothing in captains for the last three years. Vale I know as a family name by the dyehouses — cousins, temple cousins, cousins with sticky fingers. Rellan appears twice, but he threads cloth and is allergic to authority. Bent nose? You are asking a market that has seen every angle."

"Pins," John said. "White pins that used to belong to a house."

"Men who leave houses sell pins to pawnbrokers and call it reinvention," Ledger said. "The pins go where the coin goes."

"And ferries," John pressed. "Small ones for men who do not want to answer questions."

"Old man Olt," Ledger said without checking. "Where the little red branch kisses the big black. He knows which boats carry secrets and which only carry stubborn men and fish. He charges fairly. He charges extra for names."

He drew a map that looked as if a chicken had walked through ink. Fizz pressed both paws to his cheeks. "Art," he whispered, stealing the chalk and sketching a ridiculous whisker on the corner before Ledger took it back with a sigh.

They bought better rope because better rope pays for itself the first time a river reminds you it is not a land animal. That night they slept against their stamped crate, the mule dozing with the patience of saints, and let the caravan yard snore around them like a tame tide. Night asked questions. They promised answers later.

Next day...

Old Olt’s branch of the river was the color of tea with honey. Reeds hummed. Dragonflies made gossip that had no nouns in it. The ferry was a plank lashed to a stubborn idea, and Olt looked like the tree his boat would have become if boats were allowed to retire into the earth.

"Crossing," he said when they stepped onto his bank.

"Questions first," John answered, offering a coin where the coin still carried weight, and a twist of Moran’s cardamom sugar where memory outran the coin.

Olt tasted the sugar and closed his eyes as if a door inside his head had just opened in a younger room. He tucked the coin into a pocket that knew how not to complain. "Ask."

"Five years passed," John said. "Dawn. A woman was brought to this branch. A guard with a white house pin. A captain with a bent nose. A name like a boot heel: Rettan. Ratan. Vale."

Olt’s gaze slid downriver toward the place where the big water discovered its loud voice. "I ferried dawns," he said. "Perfume sometimes. Soap sometimes. Once dyehouse air and birch smoke. Hands around the small of the back like they remembered weight. That is how people hold a place a child left."

Fizz’s ears went low.

"The man," John asked. "Pin. Nose."

"Pin, yes," Olt said. "White house pin. He took it off and pocketed it before midstream. Noses heal and break. He was straight. But his jaw was set like a hammer. Hammers leave marks."

"Name."

"Not given," Olt said. "Men pay extra to be no one. He gave me five coins for silence. I spent three. Kept two for the day the river had to talk."

He lifted a bent board near the stern and produced a little cloth bag that had adopted the boat’s smell. Inside lay two coins stamped with the Duke’s profile, edges softened by pockets and time. He set them in John’s palm with the dignity of returning a trust that had waited long enough.

"Tell her," Olt said, not blessing but instructing, "that the river kept her coins until the right hands came back."

"I will," John said, and there was nothing ceremonial in it; only a promise that sits well inside a throat.

"East bank," Olt added. "A cart that did not belong here. The man said nothing. The woman said ’thank you,’ and the word sounded as if it wanted to be a name but refused, in case someone tried to take it later."

Back on the bank, Fizz hissed the liar’s title under his breath. "Rettan. Wrong nose. Right pin. The wrongness has babies."

"Lark lied," John said.