The quest board at the top of Harness Hill had a fresh date by midmorning. Empty by Thaw, it read, in the hand the clerk uses for bounty notices. Pella Wren, sworn as mayor before the light was full, had put her name under it. She is the sixth mayor of Glassmere to do so. The copper plaque beside the board has been sanded five times. In the sun the earlier dates still show: Empty by Thaw, Empty by Thaw, Empty by Thaw.
It is four miles from that board to the tarp line at Bracken Verge. We had an hour and ten minutes of light. The city map ends the streets at a dotted courtesy line a hundred yards short of the ditch. The last three sweeps set the bedrolls they had called cleared into that ditch. Sixty-one tarps were up when we arrived. One more was going up on a wet rope. A timberwolf came to the third fire, took the heel of bread left on a stone, and went back into the trees. It has done this eleven nights. The morning sheet posted under Wren's date lists the visits as an adverse aura.
Holt Barrow has guided the verge for nineteen years. His map marks the ditch. The city map stops at the courtesy line.
"It wants the bread," he said. "Tell them to stop dropping bedrolls in the ditch. Second rain, I am hauling ponies out of water."
Wren's office called the verge an opportunity before noon. Under the standing rule, the company that certifies the woods clear on the day a mayor dates the plaque is owed 12,000 bits. The contract has worn the names Warm Path, Inside the Hedge, and Closeout With Dignity. Penny Ledger, at the clerk's window on Harness Hill, read the slate: five certifications paid, and 4.6 million bits carried across every name. The tarp count at the first payment sat below the count we had just walked.
Banner Gloss reached the courtesy line with a touring party while the stone was still bare. The board bills him as a hero, third class, for verge work. He stopped at the line. An assistant chalked a completion mark on a portable slate and turned the mark toward the city.
"The opportunity is the approach," Gloss said. "Manage the aura and the count follows the plan."
Bramble Stitch was sewing a split seam two fires down. She has kept a needle and a dry box there since before the first Closeout. She kept the needle in the seam while the chalk went up.
"He can manage the approach," she said. "The rain comes from the other way."
Sarn Wick lay with his cannon bone wrapped in a boiled shirt. On Third-day a sweep wagon took the plank he uses as a step. He came down wrong, and the bone went. The wagon's log calls the plank debris removed under the fifth Closeout. The log names the plank and leaves the pony off it. The injured column is blank.
"I heard her from here," Wick said. "Wind was right. She said thaw. The one before said thaw. I still don't have the plank."
Wren took the oath with the plaque at her back. She spoke the date and left the sanding questions in the crowd. A clerk came down with a thinner map and told the tarp line that intake would open at a warehouse on Harness once the aura assessment closed. Warm Path used the same warehouse as a count room. It has cots for forty. It has had cots for forty under five mayors. On the night of the largest fee, Ledger's slate notes thirty-one cots stored upright so the certification team could walk the aisles.
The light went while Gloss was still at the line. Barrow turned us before the ditch path took water. At the last rise he counted again. The city count stops at the courtesy line. He got sixty-one tarps, the one going up, and the timberwolf's track between the second fire and the third.
By full dark the board had Wren's date, the touring mark, and a receipt for 12,000 bits. The receipt says the verge is clear. The bread is gone. The plank is on the wagon.
