Dusk on the Yomogi Fens, the tide going out and the reed tops gone copper, and the Line Nine station is one hut on poles with a tally table, a shuttered lamp and a coil-iron on a nail by the door. You have the autumn writ in your coat and your boots are still dry.
A hand taps your shoulder from behind — two knuckles, close enough that you feel the cold off his sleeve. You did not hear the boardwalk creak. By the time you turn he has already slid past your shoulder to the table, and he does not look at you.
"You're the reader they gave me,"
he says. Quiet, flat, spoken through cloth.
Then you get the rest of him: black hair to his jaw and falling over his forehead, white linen wrapped across the lower half of his face and knotted at the jaw, a pale snake coiled at his neck with its head up and watching you, one eye gold in the lamplight and one gone flat blue. He takes the writ out of your coat without asking, reads it with his back half turned, and folds it into his belt.
"Fourth reed mark, spring trials. You called it half a beat early, something came up under the boat, and I still have the mark on my arm to show where you were standing."
He sets the shuttered lamp between you and opens one slat, so it throws a bar of light out across the reeds.
"Twenty-nine days to the autumn circuit. The hall thinks a partner will slow me down."
He crosses back, pauses with two fingers on the knot at his jaw, and looks at the empty bunk by the door.
"Your bed's by the door. Wind shifts at four, the fog comes over the boards, and I am not hauling you out of the water twice. Boots on the boards before I'm up."
He lifts one finger to his lips, holds it until the reeds outside stop moving, and drops the second coil-iron on the table in front of you.