The knocking came again before they reached the quarry bend.
Three blows from somewhere below the road. Not loud. Deliberate.
Iva stopped with one hand against the cliff wall. Cael did not look back. He tightened the strap of the bundle he had made from his torn coat, then crouched to retie the cord around her ankles. The woman had lost one shoe in the headland house. Her stocking was black with seawater, and the skin beneath it had gone the color of candle wax.
"Keep moving," he said.
"It came from the house."
"The house is behind us."
"Sound travels through wet stone."
He pulled the knot flat with his teeth. "Then it is travelling in the right direction."
Mara watched his hands. The fingers were split across the knuckles, and one nail had filled with blood. He did not seem to notice. When he stood, he put his shoulder beneath Iva's arm without asking whether she wanted help. Iva leaned into him because the road tilted toward the sea.
Mara stepped ahead.
The water lying across the quarry road reached only to her ankles now. It withdrew in long threads from the cracks between the stones, leaving behind a gray skin of silt. The tide had turned. By the time they reached the lower stairs, the registered seawater would be running back through every drain that recognized Tavia Venn's name.
She counted the steps. Forty-two to the first landing. Thirty-seven to the broken bridge. Eleven more to the switchback where the old boundary marker leaned out of the cliff.
At the marker, Cael stopped.
Mara looked over her shoulder. "What?"
He had taken Iva's wet stocking off. He was wrapping her foot in a strip cut from his shirt.
"She will not reach town on that," he said.
"We have no time for—"
"She has a foot. It is bleeding."
He tied the cloth, tested the pressure with his thumb, and loosened it by one turn. Iva watched him with her mouth held tight. Mara knew that look. It was the expression of someone trying not to become an additional problem.
Cael pulled off his remaining boot and held it out to her.
Iva shook her head.
"Put it on."
"You need it."
"I have two feet."
"You have one boot."
"Then I will walk carefully."
He set the boot on the road between them. "Put it on."
There was nothing gentle in his voice, but he did not leave room for refusal. Iva sat on the boundary stone and pushed her foot into it. Cael took the loose strap from his own pack, cut it with his knife, and made a fastening around the heel.
Mara had seen him repair a rescue pulley in sleet with a dislocated thumb. She had seen him knot a line one-handed while shouting instructions to men who could not hear him over the wind. She had not seen him give away the thing that would make the road harder for himself.
She looked toward the town.
The roofed stairs descended through the cliff in a black succession, their lamps still unlit. Beyond them, Rooktide's terraces showed pale roofs and chimney smoke. No bell sounded. That was worse than the knocking.
"The first bell should have rung," she said.
Cael rose. "For what?"
"Low tide."
"The sea does not wait for bells."
"The office does."
He gave her a sideways glance. "Then the office is about to be late."
They went down.
At the last stair, Nessa Brine was waiting beside the public washhouse with a lantern in one hand and a basin in the other. Her gray hair was braided close to her scalp. She had come without a coat, as if cold were an instruction other people needed.
Her gaze went first to Iva's foot, then to Cael's missing boot, and finally to Mara's ring.
"Put her in the basin," Nessa said.
"We need the tide mill," Mara answered.
"Put her in the basin before she drops in the street."
Iva's knees gave way. Cael caught her under the ribs and lowered her onto the washhouse step. Nessa set the lantern between them and poured steaming water into the basin. The smell of rosemary and old iron rose into the air.
"Not too hot," Mara said.
Nessa looked at her. "I know where feet end."
Cael removed the borrowed boot. Nessa took Iva's ankle in both hands and lowered it into the water. Iva sucked air through her teeth.
"There," Nessa said. "Breathe down. Do not curl your toes. You are not a fish."
Mara turned toward the harbor. The tide mill stood three terraces below, its wheelhouse windows dark. She could see the archive chimney, but no smoke came from it.
"Orren will be looking for me."
"Orren is always looking for the person who can be blamed cleanly," Nessa said. "You have made yourself very visible."
"I have not made anything."
Nessa scrubbed silt from Iva's heel with a linen cloth. "Then hold the basin."
Mara took it. The rim pressed cold into her palms. Iva's foot trembled in the water. Cael stood nearby with one bare foot on the stone, his torn coat hanging open over his shirt.
Nessa spoke without lifting her head. "What is her name?"
"Iva Sarn."
The cloth stopped.
Nessa looked at Mara now. Not at Iva. Not at Cael. At Mara's face, measuring the space between the answer and the truth.
"That name has no winter shelter," Mara said.
"Most useful names do not, at first."
"I cannot assign a threshold without an entry."
"Then make an entry."
"The Ledger has to accept it."
Nessa wrung out the cloth. Water ran red into the basin. "The Ledger accepts what it is fed. You taught it that."
Mara's grip tightened on the basin. The water rippled around Iva's foot.
Cael bent to retrieve the boot. He did not look at Mara, but he had heard. He put the boot back on Iva's foot and tied the cut strap with careful, even pulls.
"The office," Mara said. "Now."
Nessa slapped the cloth against Iva's ankle. "Take her with you. If the Watch asks, she is under my care."
"That is not a lawful category."
"Neither is being left in a flooded house. Walk."
The archive door was barred from within. Mara struck it twice with her ring.
Fen Arlo opened it on the chain. His hair stood up on one side, and ink had dried along his jaw.
"Deputy—Examiner. I mean, Examiner Venn. First Registrar Vale is—"
"Where?"
"In the upper copying room, but he said not to admit anyone unless they had a sealed summons, and Harbor Warden Mere is in the map vault, and the west sluice has backed up again, not fully, only to the third step, except it may be the fourth now because the mark was made before the—"
"Move."
Fen moved.
The tide mill smelled of wet paper. Water ticked behind the walls. Along the corridor, clerks stood in small knots pretending to sort files. Their eyes followed Iva's bare head and Cael's missing boot.
Mara took the stairs two at a time. Fen hurried behind her with a stack of blotting boards clutched to his chest.
"The bell did not ring," she said.
"It rang once."
"I heard nothing."
"It was inside the archive. The clapper moved, but the outer bell stayed still. I thought perhaps that was intentional. Then the ledger shelf began to shake. Not all of it. Only the winter volume. I put a weight against it, but the weight slid off, and I thought perhaps the floor was wet, except it was not wet until afterward."
"Who saw the page?"
"I did. First Registrar Vale. Warden Mere. Ilyra Dane arrived while I was—"
Mara stopped on the landing.
Fen nearly struck her with the blotting boards. "—while I was fetching the key."
"What did it write?"
He swallowed. "I made a copy."
He slid one board free. On it, in his quick narrow hand, were six lines. Mara read them once.
DISCREPANCY TWO.
SARN, IVA: SHELTER UNLAWFUL.
REQUIRED THRESHOLD: THE INN OF ILYRA DANE.
CLAIMANT: SELLA VEY.
RULING BEFORE HIGH TIDE.
The sixth line was not Fen's hand. It had been pressed into the paper from beneath, the letters raised and salt-stiff:
NAME ORDER CONFIRMED: NINETEEN, TWENTY.
Mara put one finger over the last line.
Fen watched her. "I copied that too."
"You will burn this board."
"I thought a copy was required for—"
"Burn it."
He nodded too quickly. "Yes. Of course. Immediately. Unless you mean after the ruling, because the archive copy must remain available to the—"
"Fen."
His mouth shut.
Below them, a door opened. Voices rose from the map vault. Tovan Mere's carried through the stairwell, formal and heavy.
"No unentered person shall be brought within a registered threshold. This is not a matter for compassion. It is a matter of the compact."
"Then take her back to the headland," Cael said.
His voice was flat. Mara could picture him standing with his weight balanced despite the missing boot, one hand on the stair rail, prepared to put his body between Iva and the Watch if required.
Tovan answered, "The headland house no longer stands under a lawful name."
"It stands under stone."
"Stone does not shelter."
Mara descended before the exchange could become a fight.
The map vault doors had been opened onto a room full of wet light. Tovan stood beside the central table in his dark harbor coat, his gloves tucked beneath his belt. Orren Vale sat at the table with his spectacles in one hand. Ilyra Dane occupied the only dry chair, a basket of bread at her feet and a silver key hanging from a ribbon around her neck.
She rose when Mara entered.
"You must eat," Ilyra said. "You are gray around the mouth. I had Fen bring oatcakes, but he has evidently been occupied with more exciting failures."
Mara ignored the basket. "The Ledger has named the second discrepancy."
Orren cleaned his spectacles. "We know."
"It requires Iva Sarn to be sheltered at Ilyra's inn."
"It requires a claimant named Sella Vey to be addressed at Ilyra's inn," Tovan said. "The two instructions may not be the same."
"They are written together."
"Written beside each other," Orren said patiently. "That is not the same as written for each other."
Mara placed Fen's board on the table. Orren looked at the salt-raised line. His hand stopped halfway to his spectacles.
Ilyra reached for the board. Mara caught her wrist.
The innkeeper's expression stayed warm. "My dear, if you mean to deny me access to my own records, you might at least let me keep my wrist."
Mara released her.
"How many rooms are occupied?" she asked.
"Twenty-three."
"Registered?"
"Fourteen, if we count the kitchen loft as a room, which the winter schedule does not, though it has a bed, a shutter, and a respectable view of the sea."
"Who is Sella Vey?"
Ilyra's fingers went to the silver key. She rolled it against the ribbon once, twice.
"I do not know that name."
Tovan's palm struck the table. The maps jumped. "That answer is not acceptable."
"It is the answer I have."
Mara looked at Ilyra. "Search your register."
"I will search it when you tell me whether the Ledger intends to protect a guest or confiscate a room."
"The distinction is not yours to make."
"Everything in my house becomes mine to manage when the snow closes the pass. The coal, the blankets, the beds, the mouths. You know this. You have signed the winter allotments yourself."
Orren put on his spectacles. "Mara, the sensible course is to place Iva Sarn in the lower infirmary until the discrepancy is resolved."
"The infirmary is a registered threshold."
"Then register her there."
"The Ledger has specified Ilyra's inn."
"It has specified a claimant."
Cael moved to the table. He took the board, turned it around, and read the lines without touching the salt impression. Iva remained by the door with Nessa's basin water darkening the hem of her borrowed skirt.
"If you send her anywhere else," Cael said, "the sea will follow the name."
Tovan's face hardened. "You are not an examiner."
"No. I am the person who carried her out."
Mara reached for the board. Cael held it a moment longer. He was looking at the two names, Iva Sarn and Sella Vey, as if the space between them were a physical gap he could cross only by choosing badly.
Then he handed it back.
His palm had left a damp mark on the wood.
Mara took the mark in without meaning to. He had dried his hand before touching the page. The other hand, the injured one, he had kept closed.
"Ilyra," Mara said, "open the inn."
Ilyra smiled, but did not move. "For whom?"
The archive bell gave one muffled stroke below them.
In the map vault, every roof line turned black with water.
Mara looked at the raised salt letters. Nineteen, twenty. The next name waited inside Ilyra Dane's house, and the door to that house was fastened by a key worn against the innkeeper's heart.
"For the claimant," Mara said.
Ilyra lifted the silver key. "Then tell me who has come to claim it."
Behind Mara, Iva whispered, "I have never been to an inn."
The key began to turn in Ilyra's hand without being touched.