Ammonite (39 page)

Thenike said nothing to defend her. Marghe knew this was up to her. “You’re staying at the inn? Then come and hear it. It’s even stranger than you think.”

“No doubt. No doubt. There’s room at the inn?”

“You know Zabett,” Marghe said, “if you’ll pay double the price she’ll find you a floor to sleep on, and make you feel grateful.”

Roth laughed. “No doubt.” She touched the disks at her wrist. There were more, Marghe saw, around her neck and under her tunic. “But we’ve done well this voyage, and the last two or three. It won’t be hard to part with a few of these in exchange for Scathac’s cooking.” She nodded. “We’ll see you at the inn.” She walked away, a strong-looking woman with legs bare from the knee, a roll of clothes hanging crosswise across her chest and bumping at her hip.

“By the time she gets to the inn, half of North Haven will know what you’ve just said.” Marghe just nodded. “Roth reminds me of Vine: with those eyes that look more easily into the distance, and those strong bare legs.” Thenike laughed. “Like all sailors.” She was rubbing at the scar on her hand again. “Come. Let me show you the
Nid-Nod
.”

The
Nid-Nod
was tied fore and aft to one of the double wharves at the south of the seafront. She was a small craft with a stepped mast of about thirteen feet, and one sail, rieatly furled. A silhouette of a long-legged bird was painted in dark green on both bows. Marghe pointed to what looked like a tiny handprint next to the port symbol.

“What’s that?”

“Gerrel’s mark. The summer the boat was finished, Huellis and Leifin came to North Haven to see me off and to trade some of Leifin’s carvings. They brought Gerrel. She was about four. I was still painting on the name. Gerrel decided she wanted to help. I left the mark on.”

When they got back to the inn they found Roth and her thirteen sailors standing in the northern courtyard, with Zabett pointing an accusing finger at a pile of clay dust in her outstretched hand, shouting.

“See, it’s not there. No fish tooth. It’s a fake. One of you gave me a false credit, and until I find out who, none of you stay here. None.”

Thenike leaned toward Marghe and spoke quietly. “They may ask us to judge this matter.”

“Us?”

“We’re viajeras.”

Roth untied the string around her neck, unthreaded one of the clay tokens.

“Here’s another. Genuine. I know it’s genuine because these are the ones I had from you two years ago when we brought in that cargo of keoshell.” She held it out.

“Oh, no, it’s not as easy as all that, Roth. One of your number tried to pass me a false credit, and that’s robbery.” She folded her arms.

Roth looked irritated. “Well, you tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

“Find out who the dishonest one is among you. I’d think that that’s what you’d be after doing anyhow, for your own peace of mind. But I’m not having a thief stay in my house.”

The injured parties glared angrily at each other. Then one of the sailors saw Thenike and Marghe. “Let the viajeras sort it out,” she said.

Roth looked over at the two women, hesitating a moment over Marghe. “Well,”

she said to Zabett, “that’s agreeable to me. You?”

Zabett nodded shortly. “But you’ll pay the fee, as it’s your people who caused the trouble.”

They spat on their hands, and shook.

Marghe whispered to Thenike. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea if they agreed now, while they still don’t know who it is, what the punishment would be?” She had seen too many negotiations, on Earth and off, fall to nothing because not enough was agreed at the start.

“Tell them,” Thenike said, and gestured.

Marjhe took a deep breath.
Pretend it’s just like negotiating something for SEC
.

“Shake, too, on the reparation price and the punishment you’ll mete,” she said, stepping forward. While Roth and Zabett prepared to haggle over that, she turned to Thenike. “Any ideas on how to settle this thing?”

“One or two, but they’re not perfect.”

Marghe thought fast. “These tokens. Zabett has to smash them to see if they contain a fish tooth, otherwise they’re not genuine. So… Zabett makes them? Yes.

And someone’s given her a dud. But…” They were one-time use only. “That’s the central difficulty of the matter, then: once the credit’s smashed, it’s invalid. So how do we check?”

Roth and Zabett were still talking. Some of the sailors appeared resigned to a long discussion and had sat down in the dusty courtyard, Marghe thought hard. There was no perfect solution. “The only thing I can think of is that we ask each sailor to take off all her tokens, and empty her pockets, too, just in case, and put them on the ground in front of her. Then we choose one from each pile and smash it. We keep doing that until we smash a dud.”

“Some may only have three or four. Losing even one will be a great hardship to the innocents.”

“I know.”

They were silent; Roth and Zabett had finished talking, and were waiting.

“I can’t think of anything better,” Thenike said eventually, “and it may be that you won’t have to break many.”

“Me?”

“You.” Thenike deliberately stepped back. Marghe looked around her. She was Marghe Amun. A viajera. She straightened her shoulders and stepped forward.

“Roth.” She motioned for the captain to join her thirteen sailors, then stood before them. “Take off your credits and put them on the ground before you. We’ll break them one at a time until we find out who did this.”

Roth and two others looked resigned and unfastened anklets and necklaces, dropping them into the dust at their feet. The others glanced at each other.

“Why should we?” one asked, a small fair woman with a chipped front tooth.

Marghe’s heart was thumping. There was nothing to make these women do as she said. Nothing at all.

“Juomo’s right,” said a tall woman the color of rich river mud. “We’ve done nothing wrong. I don’t have enough credits to let them get smashed to pieces for nothing. We could sleep aboard.”

Several nodded in agreement, and folded their arms.

Marghe looked at Zabett. “Perhaps Zabett would agree to replace any genuine tokens that get broken?” Zabett nodded. The innkeeper was on her side, at least.

Maybe this would not be so bad after all.

The sailors still looked stubborn. Roth looked at them one by one. “I agreed with Zabett that the journeywomen should sort this dispute, Juomo, Tillis. This is the way they’re doing it. If you don’t like it, elect another captain.”

Marghe saw by Roth’s easy stance that the captain knew the sailors would not go that far; she began to enjoy herself. This might work.

The women muttered, but began to strip themselves of their wealth. Marghe set aside the urge to grin and watched carefully.

One woman placed a string with just two clay disks in the dust; Tillis, four.

Juomo, with the chipped tooth, offered a necklace of five.

Tillis looked at Juomo’s necklace and frowned. Juomo pretended not to notice.

But Marghe did.

She stepped up to Juomo, touched the necklace with one foot. “Perhaps you have more credits than this.” She watched Juomo’s carotid thump as her pulse increased. “We wish to see it all.”

“You’re seeing it.”

“I don’t think so.”

Juomo stepped back a little, tucked her thin hair behind her ears nervously.

Marghe was no longer enjoying herself. She held out her hand. “Give me the rest.”

Juomo bolted, but Tillis shot out a leg and tumbled her into the dust. The big woman hauled Juomo upright by her belt and casually wrapped one arm around her neck. Tillis yanked up Juomo’s sleeve. A string of twenty or thirty credits was wrapped around Juomo’s biceps. “Knew she had more,” Tillis said with satisfaction. She snapped the leather thong and unthreaded one of the clay disks.

She dropped it in Marghe’s outstretched hand. “Try this.”

Zabett was there now, and Roth and Thenike. And the other sailors were picking up their dusty credits.

“Leave them awhile,” Marghe said, “until we’ve tested these.”

“You can’t smash my credits!” Juomo shouted.

Tillis shook her. “Shut up. If it’s real, then you can have one of mine.” She grinned at Marghe. “Test it, journeywoman.”

Marghe was not sure she would be able to tell a dud from the real thing. She held out the disk to Zabett. “I think we should give Zabett the privilege.”

After the excitement in the courtyard, lunch was late. Marghe and Thenike ate outside. The clouds were thinning, letting afternoon sunshine heat the wood of the table, releasing a spicy, resinous scent. Their plates were almost empty; they were eating fruit.

Thenike had been explaining to Marghe the credit system. Zabett and Scathac gave board and lodgings on a barter system; if an individual or crew had a large item that was worth more than the number of nights or meals needed, then the innkeepers gave them credit, in the form of clay disks. One disk equalled one night. Because of their fixed value, and because the sailors traveled from one place to another, mixing with other travelers, the clay disks had begun to assume the status of portable wealth in those places—ports and well-frequented areas, especially around the coast.

Protocurrency. Several years ago, Hamner, the innkeeper in South Meet, had arranged with the two northern innkeepers to honor their credits if Zabett and Scathac would honor hers. They agreed, and now the disks were becoming more popular as currency.

Marghe paused, a goura half-peeled. “But if the disks are being used as currency, then much of it stays in circulation.”

“True.”

“That’s nice for Zabett and Scathac: they only have to honor part of what they receive goods for.” She cut several slices from the goura and laid them on a plate. A boatfly hummed near the glistening fruit and Marghe waved it away. “So what effect does this currency have on the trata network?”

“Not much. The clay credits are a coastal phenomenon. Besides, trata is about more than wealth. It’s about power, and favors: who is beholden to whom. It’s about friendships and enemyhood, a webwork of who is known to be trustworthy and who not. Currency is for strangers.”

They chewed on the fruit for a while.

Marghe remembered the panic on Juomo’s face as she tried to run, as she tried to get away from her, from Marghe. No one had ever run from her before. “What will happen to her?”

“Juomo? All her credits will be taken and smashed. Those that prove to be genuine will be replaced by Zabett and Scathac. But they won’t ever let her stay at their inn again. And Roth will be looking for a new hand. I doubt anyone else will take her on board, unless they’re desperate.”

“But what will she do?”

Thenike shrugged and ate another piece of fruit.

It was harsh punishment: Juomo would not be able to work from North Haven, no one would give her shelter, and even if all her other credits turned out to be genuine, she would not have enough to buy herself a boat to leave. It seemed there were no second chances when people could afford to lose so little. Marghe wondered if she would have been so quick to judge if she had known.

Afternoon turned to dusk and brought with it a warm wind from the southeast.

Marghe and Thenike ate their evening meal outside in the fountain courtyard, enjoying the warm smells of grass and blossom and forest along with several others.

More who were not eating, or who had already eaten, began to drift into the courtyard, sitting on the fountain rim, the stone flags, benches, the roots of trees.

Waiting.

Waiting, Marghe realized, for her and Thenike to tell them the news. And more than that: Roth’s story would have traveled by now. They wanted to see the viajera from another world.

Her mouth went dry and she had to control her breathing to get her heartrate down to normal.

“It was a good winter in Ollfoss,” Thenike began conversationally, “and a better spring. The crops will be early, and big. Marghe here knows about the gardens, about the soil and the seeds.” She gestured to Marghe.

Pretend you’re talking to one person
, Thenike had said,
a person who listens
hard and exclaims in all the right places, and imagine what that person would
like to hear, how you might make the news more interesting for them. If the person
is a fisher, and it’s a tale of the plains, tell her what she might need to know to
understand the story
. So Marghe looked up at the women gathered in the courtyard at the inn of North Haven and pretended she was telling her story to Holle, of Singing Pastures.

“I can tell you about the gardens on the edge of Moanwood, but my story starts a long way before that. It starts further away than Ollfoss, though that’s part of it; it starts further away than the camp of the Echraidhe, though I spent some time there.

Indeed,” she said, “it was on Tehuantepec that I nearly lost my life and my will. But my story starts beyond even Singing Pastures and Holme Valley; it goes back to that place called Port Central.” She waited just a fraction longer than necessary. “You will have heard of it.”

Nods. Some grins, some scowls. Marghe looked for Roth’s face, found it.

Addressed it directly. “That’s where I’m from. Port Central. I and all the other women from Port Central come from another world. Some of you already know this from the stories of other viajeras. You will have heard that we are stupid, with less brains than a taar or one of your own children. Taars, you might say, have more sense than to trigger burns. Children can deepsearch.”

“And you stay huddled up inside that Port like children stranded in the woods,” a woman with leathery brown skin remarked.

“True. But children learn. And we are learning. Look at me. I know better than to tread on burnstone. I deepsearched and chose a name. I carry a child in my belly, soestre to the one growing inside Thenike.” She looked around the courtyard of faces: some were skeptical, some interested, one or two cynical, but none were hostile. “Some of you will know that what I say is true: your mothers’

many-times-great-grandmothers all came from a world other than this. Probably from the same one as I did.” She paused. “How many of you have had strange dreams of falling from the sky, or have walked with your ancestors as they saw this place for the first time?”