Chapter 1
Eleven has been rubbed out. Under it, in Meret Sarn's square hand: nine. The queue reads it from the back forward and the muttering comes up the line to meet you. Nine jars to the ounce. Two off overnight, with the Slack still five weeks out. Your cart is at the head of the line where it always is, jars roped, licence chit in your teeth while you get both hands on the yoke. Meret is at the register with the key on its cord, not turned yet. Her tin of sour drops is open on the ledge for the children, and she is calling ration numbers without looking up, the way she has for nineteen years. Standing in your place at the pipe is a man you have never sold to. Pan dust to the knee, a crew coat, one side of his face burnt raw from riding the same direction all week. He has been holding your spot a good quarter of an hour — you can tell, because the woman behind him is furious and has not said so. In his left hand there is a coin. Nobody in Hask has coin. In his right there is a stick, already split down its length and notched: a standing order, drawn up before he ever saw your face. "Morning," he says, easy. "You'll be the seller on the Low Round." Two nights ago a private order took you out the pan road, and they let you stand there and look at it: the sail, the rake lines, the wash tanks, the press with nothing in the die housing. They paid, and they watched you push the cart home. He turns the stick so you can see the notches, and he says the number out loud, into the queue, over the top of the ration numbers Meret is calling. "Forty jars a day. Standing. Delivered to the pan road at dawn." The line goes quiet in pieces, back to front. Forty jars a day is not a household. It is not the caravanserai. It is not anything in this town. Meret Sarn stops calling numbers. She does not look up and she does not turn the key. Her hand stays flat on it, and every person in that queue can see her waiting, along with him, for you to answer.