Tan put the invoice on Joss’s cart before touching his hand.
“Eight marks for what you need to leave here,” she said.
“More for the work.”
Joss looked at the rows.
Two seal flasks.
Linen.
Wire.
Two straps.
An axle pin cut to fit the cookhouse wheel.
“Eight,” he repeated.
“Yes.” Tan laid the two seal flasks beside the invoice.
He emptied his purse onto the invoice.
Eight marks lay in a crooked line.
The three small ones had worn smooth from riding in his pocket all winter.
Tan counted them without taking them.
“Who’s paying labor?”
“Krail owes me six.”
“Krail owes half this lane.”
“The dock can pay when the bridge is back.”
“The dock can promise when the bridge is back.
Different service.”
Bren stood by the doorway, embarrassed enough to examine every tool on the wall.
His injured shoulder had begun swelling.
Tan pointed him toward a stool and a bucket of cold water.
Joss moved the invoice so Latch couldn’t get its corner.
“What needs doing?”
Tan looked at him properly for the first time.
“Here?”
“I fit straps.
Rivet shoe plates.
Straighten hooks.
Carry things that don’t contain public roads.”
“Your hand’s cut.”
“My right one works.”
She considered the queue of damaged carts outside her door.
Seven owners had chalked their names on a board.
Every cart kept a household earning money.
Every repair she abandoned would cost someone a day.
“Three shoe plates.
Two hook assemblies.
You work under my eye.
That buys today’s labor on your axle.
The frame inspection goes on credit.
Eighteen marks.”
Joss made a face.
“You asked for a bridge specialist?”
“I asked for a mechanic.”
“I’ve just become an expensive mechanic.”
She turned the invoice over.
“And one paid run for my workshop, at the ordinary district rate, when I choose a reasonable date.
No delivering hot iron over a broken road to get rid of the debt.”
“Eighteen plus a run?”
“You want me to leave these people and come onto a barge with you.”
He hadn’t asked that yet.
He looked at the iron bundle moving downriver between the roof gaps.
“You heard Bren?”
“The entire street heard Bren.
He projects when frightened.”
Bren lowered his bucket.
“I was hanging by my coat.”
“And I haven’t charged for the coat.”
Joss took the pencil.
“You come to protect the frame.
I make decisions about the cargo.”
“I decide whether the frame survives them.”
“Fair.”
He signed.
Tan took the money.
Then she unwound the blood-stiff cloth from his palm.
He tried not to pull away when she washed the cut.
“How deep?” he asked.
“Deep enough that rope was a bad idea.
You’re lucky it followed the crease instead of the tendon.”
She put three stitches into the longest part.
He fixed his eyes on her workshop board and read the same customer’s name six times.
“Looser grip,” she said.
“Keep this dry.
Come back if heat or redness spreads.
Being chartered doesn’t keep dirt out.”
“Nobody included that in the ceremony.”
She glanced at the line on his wrist.
“How long?”
“Last night.”
“That explains the ceremony.”
Tan dressed his hand, inspected Bren’s shoulder, and then slid beneath the cart.
While she worked, Joss fitted shoe plates with his right hand and a clamp.
He usually held the iron with his left.
Every turn of the clamp felt like being allowed to pretend he could work.
He loosened it before the last rivet was seated.
The plate slipped and struck the bench where his fingers would have been.
He tightened the clamp and continued.
The owner of one waiting cart arrived while Joss worked.
A young man with a sack of spoiled onions stopped at the board, read Tan’s changed schedule, and came inside.
“That’s my axle on your bench,” he said.
“You promised noon.”
Tan nodded toward his axle.
“The bridge frame needs my foot brace.
Yours needs the same iron.
I can give you a wooden replacement for the afternoon and fit yours tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s no market day.”
Joss stopped riveting.
The young man carried the sack as if it weighed far more than onions.
“Which stall?” Joss asked.
“East square.
Third row.”
Joss knew the market manager.
She charged two marks if a trader arrived late without warning.
He had carried enough of her notices to hate the careful handwriting.
“Send your apprentice now,” he told Tan.
“I’ll write a warning saying the bridge broke.
Tell the manager I’ll bring the produce myself tomorrow if she keeps the stall.
Ordinary run, paid by the workshop.”
Tan looked at the credit line he’d signed.
“That uses the run you already owe me.”
“That’s why I offered it.”
The trader thought about it.
“I still lose today’s sales.”
“Yes,” Tan said.
“You do.
I won’t charge you for the temporary axle.”
He accepted reluctantly.
Joss wrote the notice with his good hand.
The trader stayed until the apprentice had left, then carried his onions back out to the waiting cart.
Latch watched from the carrier cradle.
When a length of dry wire fell within reach, it tapped it twice and waited.
“No,” Joss said.
“You liked rope.
Wire costs money.”
Tan emerged holding his bent axle pin.
“This cart’s been overloaded before today.”
“It works for Krail.”
She dropped the pin into the scrap bucket with more satisfaction than the metal deserved.
By late morning, Joss had finished the agreed work.
Tan had fixed the hub, reinforced the crosspiece, and fitted a small hinged foot under the rear.
Folded up, it cleared the road.
Down, it let the cradle rest directly against ground without relying on the wheels.
“For stationary support,” she said.
“Don’t drag it.
Don’t put it on mud and call that ground.”
They tested it on the apron.
Joss touched the lower strap.
The frame’s pressure traveled into the new foot.
Seventy-two eased to sixty-nine as Tan adjusted a black rib and used half a flask of proper seal oil.
He moved his hand away.
The wandering pressure stayed clear to him; correcting it still took his fingers on the strap.
He tested the difference twice while Tan watched.
Latch let her replace the crushed clamp with a wider one, but closed its lid when she tried to straighten the hinge itself.
“Understood,” she said, setting the hinge tool aside.
They ate cold bread standing at the bench.
Bren couldn’t accompany them; he needed a proper shoulder dressing, and someone had to warn Nera where the rail had gone.
He offered to do both tasks.
Tan wrote a few lines for the older carrier.
“Give her this.
And keep your arm against your chest.”
Joss gave Bren Krail’s shipping mark copied on a scrap.
“Tell her Tovin countersigned the move.
Don’t shout it in the lane.”
Bren tucked both papers inside his torn coat.
At the river ledge, Tan tested the stones with her hammer.
Joss placed borrowed planks across the missing section and paid for them by promising to return them before evening.
The owner, a cooper named Dema, wrote his name on each plank in white chalk.
The cart crossed with two inches to spare.
Tan walked on the inner side, supporting the handle while Joss kept the outer wheel off the drop.
Below them, the barge had tied up at the south salt quay.
Its crew were waiting for a tide change.
Men moved sacks around the iron bundle.
“Time?” Tan asked.
Joss studied the wet line on the quay posts.
“Less than an hour before they can clear the shoal.”
“Your plan?”
He looked at the unloading crane, the barge’s mooring ropes, and the two guards watching the road instead of the river.
“Collect something they aren’t expecting to deliver.”
Tan rested her hammer against the cart.
“You paid eight marks.
Try to get more than a drowned mechanic.”