that cramped him, but something else, something outside him. He heard Rasali falter. “No.…”
He recognized it now, the sound that was not a sound, like the lowest pipes on an organ, a drone so low that he couldn’t hear it, one that turned his bones to liquid and his muscles to flaked and rusting iron. His breath labored from his chest in grunts. His head thrummed. Moving as though through honey, he strained his hands to his head, cradling it. He could not see Rasali except as a gloom against the slightly less gloom of the mist, but he heard her pant, tiny pain-filled breaths, like an injured dog.
The thrumming in his body pounded at his bones now, dissolving them. He wanted to cry out, but there was no air left in his lungs. He realized suddenly that something beneath them was raising itself into a mound. Mist piled at the boat’s sides.
The mound roiled and became a hill, which became a mountain obscuring part of the sky. The crest melted into curls of mist, and there was a shape inside, large and dark as night itself, slid, and followed the collapsing. It seemed still, but he knew that was only because of the size of the thing, that it took ages for its full length to pass. That was all he saw before his eyes slipped shut.
How long he lay there in the bottom of the boat, he didn’t know. At some point, he realized he was there; some time later he found he could move again, his bones and muscles back to what they should be. The dog was barking. “Rasali?” he said shakily. “Are we sinking?”
“Kit.” Her voice was a thread. “You’re still alive. I thought we were dead.”
“That was a Big One?”
“I don’t know. No one has ever seen one. Maybe it was just a Fairly Large One.”
The old joke. Kit choked on a weak laugh.
“Shit,” Rasali said in the darkness. “I dropped the oar.”
“Now what?” he said.
“I have a spare, but it’s going to take longer and we’ll land in the wrong place. We’ll have to tie off and then walk up to get help.”
It was nearly dawn before they got to Nearside. The two big moons rose just before they landed, a mile south of the dock. The spice traders and their dog went on ahead while Kit and Rasali secured the boat. They walked up together. Halfway home, Valo came down at a dead run.
“I was waiting, and you didn’t come—” He was pale and panting. “But they told me, the other passengers, that you made it, and—”
“Valo.” Rasali hugged him and held him hard. “We’re safe, little one. We’re here. It’s done.”
“I thought.…” he said.
“I know,” she said. “Valo, please, I am so tired. Can you get the
The “Imperial seal” was a letter from Atyar, some underling arrogating authority and asking for clarification on a set of numbers Kit had sent–scarcely worth the trip at any time, let alone across mist on a bad night. Kit cursed the capital and Empire and then sent the information, along with a tautly worded paragraph about seals and their appropriate use.
Two days later, he got news that would have brought him across the mist in any case: the caravan carrying the first eyebar and bolts was twelve miles out on the Hoic Mine Road. Kit and his ironmaster Tandreve Smith rode out to meet the wagons as they crept southward, and found them easing down a gradual slope near Oud village. The carts were long and built strong, their contents covered, each pulled by a team of tough-legged oxen with patient expressions. The movement was slow, and drivers walked beside them, singing something unfamiliar to Kit’s city-bred ears.
“Ox-tunes. We used to sing these at my aunt’s farm,” Tandreve said, and sang:
Tandreve chuckled, and Kit with her.
One of the drivers wandered over as Kit pulled his horse to a stop. Unattended, her team moved forward anyway. “Folks,” she said, and nodded. A taciturn woman.
Kit swung down from the saddle. “These are the chains?”
“You’re from the bridge?”
“Kit Meinem of Atyar.”
The woman nodded again. “Berallit Red-Ox of Ilver. Your smiths are sitting on the tail of the last wagon.”
One of the smiths, a rangy man with singed eyebrows, loped forward to meet them, and introduced himself as Jared Toss of Little Hoic. They walked beside the carts as they talked, and he threw aside a tarp to show Kit what thy carried: stacks of iron eyebars, each a rod ten feet long with eyes at each end. Tandreve walked sideways as she inspected the eyebars; she and Jared soon lost themselves in a technical discussion, while Kit kept them company, leading Tandreve’s forgotten horse and his own, content for the moment to let the masters talk it out. He moved a little forward until he was abreast of the oxen.
After that night on the mist, Rasali seemed to have no bad days. She took people the day after they arrived, no matter what the weather or the mist’s character. The tavern keepers grumbled at this a bit, but the decrease in time each visitor stayed in town was made up for by the increase in numbers of serious-eyed men and women sent by firms in Atyar to establish offices in the towns on the river’s far side. It made things easier for the bridge, as well, since Kit and others could move back and forth as needed. Kit remained reluctant, more so since the near- miss.
There was enough business for two boats, and Valo volunteered to ferry more often, but Rasali refused the help, allowing him to ferry only when she couldn’t prevent it. “The Big Ones don’t seem to care about me this winter,” she said to him, “but I can’t say they would feel the same about tender meat like you.” With Kit she was more honest. “If he is to leave ferrying, to go study in the capital maybe, it’s best sooner than later. Mist will be dangerous until the last ferry crosses it. And even then, even after your bridge is done.”
It was Rasali only who seemed to have this protection; the fishing people had as many problems as in any year. Denis Redboat lost his coracle when it was rammed (“By a Medium-Large One,” he laughed in the tavern later: sometimes the oldest jokes were the best), though he was fished out by a nearby boat before he had sunk too deep. The rash was only superficial, but his hair grew back only in patches.
Kit sat in the crowded beer garden of The Deer’s Heart, watching Rasali and Valo build a little pinewood skiff in the boatyard next door. Valo had called out a greeting when Kit first sat down, and Rasali turned her head to smile at him, but after that they ignored him. Some of the locals stopped by to greet him, and the barman stayed for some time, telling him about the ominous yet unchanging ache in his back; but for most of the afternoon, Kit was alone in the sun, drinking cellar-cool porter and watching the boat take shape.
In the midsummer of the fourth year, it was rare for Kit to have the afternoon of a beautiful day to himself. The anchorages had been finished for some months. So had the rubble-fill ramps that led to the arched passages through each pillar, but the pillars themselves had taken longer, and the granite saddles that would support the chains over the towers had only just been put in place.
They were only slightly behind on Kit’s deadlines for most of the materials. More than a thousand of the eyebars and bolts for the chains were laid out in rows, the iron smelling of the linseed oil used to protect them during transit. More were expected in before winter. Close to the ramps were the many fish-skin ropes and cables that would be needed to bring the first chain across the gap. They were irreplaceable, probably the most valuable thing on the work sites, and were treated accordingly, and were kept in closed tents that reeked.
