By nine the next morning, Mara had carried four messages for Mrs. Pell and eaten half a cold potato standing up. The fourth answer came back on the wrapper. She flattened it against the ferry office door while Pell inspected the writing. Behind them, Berris’s cart stood with one wheel in a puddle. He had begun mentioning noon at intervals that were getting shorter.
“She agrees to the trunks going upstairs,” Pell said. “She doesn’t agree to you opening them.”
“Neither do my wages.”
“You brought my acknowledgment back last time. Most people consider delivery finished when they’ve put something down.” Pell unlocked the office. “You can supervise. I’ll count.” The other owners had agreed to indoor storage too. Mara laid their answers beside the collection list. No one had given permission to put workshop stock in the forecourt. They shifted the trunks first. One smelled of camphor; another had a loose handle that Berris identified by nearly falling down the stairs. Pell made Mara write that the handle had been loose before removal. When the last trunk was upstairs, Pell walked the empty forecourt with her keys hooked over one finger.
“Now tell me how she gets here Friday.”
Mara showed her Dain’s drawing. “That’s what I need checked. Whether the side entrance can stay an ordinary entrance while this strip takes the water.”
“And if it can’t?”
“You still say no.”
Pell looked at the cleared paving. “I can answer for a flooded yard. I won’t answer for a door that disappears.”
Orrin arrived carrying a dispatch ledger under his coat. Its brass corners had worn pale patches into the lining. Vesper followed him through the office, then stopped when he placed it on the public counter.
“That contains protected routing records,” she said.
“Hence my attendance.” He set down a second sheet. “I’ve surrendered my confidential dispatch standing. The release declaration identifies the entries I’m giving you. My countersignature will no longer clear restricted consignments.”
“Your deputy will have to carry them to district office.”
“She has already described the walk.”
Mara pulled a chair toward him. Orrin remained standing.
He opened the ledger to a delivery plan showing the ferry office’s side entrance and the forecourt boundary. Attached acknowledgments recorded collections through the side door after the forecourt had closed to carts. Pell recognized two signatures and disputed a date.
“Tuesday,” she said. “He always collected Tuesday.”
Orrin consulted the facing page. “Delivery entered Wednesday. Collection Tuesday. For once we are both right.”
The plan bore a register reference. Vesper sent her clerk to check it against the district copy. Orrin left the ledger on the counter.
“Where’s your carbon roll?” Mara asked quietly.
“In my drawer. These are access records, Mara. They won’t open your brother’s door.”
“I know.”
“I thought I ought to say what a paper does before handing it over.” He finally sat.
By the time the clerk returned, Berris had taken his cart away. His final load had been workshop stock bound uphill. The remaining casting moulds were too heavy for the hand lane; Ines had chalked their replacement cost on the workshop slate.
The clerk laid the district plan beside Orrin’s. The boundaries matched. Vesper traced the side entrance with her pencil, checking its separate access line. Dain, fetched from the gate, examined the levels before answering Pell.
“The forecourt can receive water without taking that entrance. The office floor is above the proposed incursion. That depends on the gate passing its trial.”
“And the yard?”
“Its low timber stores will flood. Anything left there goes at its owner’s risk.”
Pell rubbed a flake of green paint off her thumb. “Those stores are mine. Empty since spring. The boards won’t stand another soaking.”
“No,” Dain said.
They used the office counter because the table upstairs was now behind six trunks. Ines came in smelling of hot metal, drank the water Mara had meant for herself, and read the proposed terms.
“Remaining section?” Mara asked.
“Within the estimate. The crew’s fitting the listed parts. Testing still gets its own vote.”
Vesper wrote the new proposal in full. Conditional on a satisfactory gate trial and Dain’s revised assessment, the exchange would divert the remaining mapped incursion from the lower ferry approach into the bounded forecourt. No address would lose recognition. The office, its side entrance and Bell Foundry Street were expressly excluded from any withdrawal of access.
“Duration,” Pell said.
“This evening’s forecast high water only. No authority for a later tide.”
“And tomorrow you dry my boards by proclamation?”
“The damage remains. This doesn’t reverse it.” Vesper added that sentence.
Pell read it, then asked her to write timber stores instead of property. She wanted the object named.
Mara leaned across the counter. “Tomas.”
Vesper took another sheet. “A linked witnessed entry restoring fourteen Wren Passage and Tomas Vale’s residency. It must include the omitted rear access. We cannot certify the room vacant.”
“We still don’t know who used it,” Mara said.
“That stays on the record. Restoring access won’t answer where she is.”
Mara read both sheets twice. There was no confidentiality clause. She made Vesper add that the restoration would not expire with the tide.
Pell fetched her spectacles. “Read the wet part aloud.”
Mara did. Pell interrupted at the boundary description and took everyone outside to stand at its corners. A fish porter stopped to listen; Pell asked him to move his barrow off the line she was pointing at.
“I’ll witness these terms after the trial,” she said when they returned. “Here, at this threshold. If the boundary grows, you ask again.” Vesper recorded her conditional agreement. Nobody signed an exchange authorization.
They posted copies beside Mara’s corrected notice at the workshop and on the ferry office door. Orrin’s released records remained on the counter for examination. Ines read the notice beneath the lamp, then went back to the gate without crossing out the moulds’ replacement cost.
Late that afternoon, Mara carried Tomas his copy. Both pieces of receipt 6418 remained in their tin in her buttoned satchel compartment. She opened her route book at the old carbon and stepped into fourteen.
Tomas had come downstairs. He sat on the bottom step with his bad knee straight, a clean shirt folded beside him.
“You’re early,” he said.
“I’ve discovered waiting. Apparently other people do it constantly.”
He read the terms while she held the book. At the timber stores he stopped.
“She knows?”
“She made us name them.”
He finished reading. “And if the trial fails?”
“No exchange tonight under this agreement. No Bell Foundry substitute slipped underneath.”
From outside, Len called that he would wait at twelve until they needed him. Mara answered without lending him the book.
“You needn’t stay standing,” Tomas said.
“Someone has to receive the test result. I’m witnessing your entry if we proceed. Pell takes the ferry end.”
“Could be an hour.”
“Then you have time to put the shirt on.”
Mara tucked the agreed terms beneath the open cover of her route book and settled against the doorpost at fourteen. She kept the old carbon clear of the damp wood. From there she could hear Tomas moving carefully on the stairs and see the lane where Dain’s messenger would come.