Chapter 4: Four to Go Down

"Then I'll mend my own party," I said.

The Mother of the House looked at my grey hand.

"With one hand?" she asked, and walked out with her healers behind her.

The next morning I sold the warden's heart to the lamp-house on the square.

It paid more than I had earned in four years of twentieth shares.

Then Daan and I went out to the guild yard behind the hall to find two more people.

The law says a party goes down the Mouth with four or it doesn't go down at all.

The yard was full of parties forming up at the long board where the clerk chalked the day's floors.

Hunters looked at my iron cord, and then at my hand, and then away.

One Steel I had mended a dozen times walked straight past me without a word.

"This is going well," Daan said.

"Go and stand by the board and look dangerous."

"I am dangerous."

"You have a bandage on your head."

The porters sat on a bench along the yard wall, waiting to be hired to carry packs and hearts.

At the end of the bench sat an old woman with one burned ear and arms.

Nobody had hired her in the hour I watched.

I sat down beside her.

"I'm looking for a porter," I said.

"I'm sixty-six," she said. "Look somewhere else."

"I'm a healer with a dead hand and no cord. Nobody else is looking at me either."

She laughed, a short dry bark.

"I've carried down that hole for thirty-one years," she said. "I've carried for nine healers who never came back up."

"Nine," I said.

"I remember every one. Somebody should." She spat on the cobbles.

"My husband carried too. A Gold called him to carry on a descent to the tenth floor."