The east fen track still had six miles on it at four in the afternoon, and the light had about an hour and a half left before it went copper. The Outer Fen Desk's new map called the distance four miles and the footing firm. It had been nailed over an older sheet. The older sheet showed a ditch on the left. The new sheet had a blue oval labeled Scenic Retention Pond 4.
Sable Nightshade met them at the cutbank where the trees give out. She lives in the last sod house on the track and knows which boards sink. The oval on the map was, in the ground, a redug ditch with a skin that moved when the wind did not.
"They rise when the light goes," she said. "A new word on a map does not move the hour."
The broadsheet had come from the Crystal Empire that morning. Glass Liver Ward was announcing a draught called Stillgilt, and the headline put a cure on the horizon. The fourth paragraph held the count: of thirty-six ponies dosed, nine had kept a quiet blood-mark for two seasons, eleven had gone quiet and then loud, and sixteen stayed loud. The runner's satchel also held a wheel of road cheese and the sample vial. Any vial four hours above cellar-cool was to be discarded. This one had ridden two days and was warm. The sketch artist drew it beaded beneath a card lettered HORIZON and kept the cheese out of the frame.
Gilt-bile sits in the liver, yellows the eye, and leaves a drag on the work. Ponies who have it usually keep the job. The draught can quiet the mark in the blood and leave the copy in the organ. Copper Gauge, who totaled the chart, stood for the sketch. "You stand close enough to a chart and a small number is a road," he said. He took the spare seat back to the city while the light still held.
The mark comes off the silt-gnats. They are small. At dusk they lift from still water in a low sheet, drift to warmth, and feed behind the ear or in the crease of a fetlock. They leave an itch and a speck of blood. The yellow shows a season or two later and then stays. The bounty card sells a net sized for a beast with shoulders. The gnats go through the mesh.
Wick Pell came up the track favoring the near fore. He is a ditch pony. Three seasons back a gnat took him behind the ear while he closed a culvert, and the yellow stayed. Glass Liver Ward had kept him off the Stillgilt list. His mark was loud. The weekly draw sits in the Crystal Empire, four days out and four back, on a morning the list treats as easy. His knee had gone that morning in the pond the map graded firm. Bramble Stitch, the crew's needle, wrapped it with a strip cut from a feed sack. The sterile packets the ward names are sold at the city gate. The crew has one left, dated from the thaw before last.
"I can work until the knee locks," Pell said. "I cannot work until the yellow leaves. It does not leave."
The Fen Desk had posted four hundred bits for amber abatement. Perrin Vale came on the second day with two retainers and the new map in a sleeve. He stood on the dry bank and told the crew the fen had been reclassified as a recovery opportunity. His retainer was already scratching behind the ear. Vale called the itch a local reaction to the damp and asked for a pose with the broadsheet. The crew stayed on the culvert. It was still open, and the sheet would lift when the light went.
Nightshade watched the water. A contract crew had dug the ditch deeper in the spring, paid to improve the drainage. Deeper water sat still, and the still water bred. She left the oval alone. The hour was leaving.
The gnats came off Scenic Retention Pond 4 in a low skin, ordinary as steam, and went to the warmth on the bank. Vale's retainer swore and slapped. Pell pulled the sack-cloth tighter and turned toward the culvert. Six miles remained on a map that said four. The day ended on an hour the desk's map had left blank.
