South Quay, Higher Than Pride

Bee’s father came from Exchange with a coat that believed in interiors.

“She has school.”

“She had school. Now she has water.”

Joss did not put down the crate. Sila Ren, in the pit, did not put down the broom. The family argument had an audience of one municipal clerk and one sea.

“Inside work,” the brother said, the old hymn.

Bee said, “The sea doesn’t invoice. I wrote it. She didn’t erase it.”

Sila, traitorously, nodded.

They ate fish from the stall that fried as if the century were optional. The brother tried to pay with a terminal that fogged. Paper money, laughing, still worked on the quay.

Forge Mutual rang about static goods. Joss let it ring. The crate was higher than pride. Static enough.

“I worry,” the brother said, quieter, when Bee went to bully the cat.

“Worry at Exchange. Here we sweep.”

Sila said, “I’ll write him a tide table. Some people need a rota to respect a force.”

She did. She titled it NOT A FORM. The brother folded it like a ticket.

On the tram Bee held Joss’s sleeve and then let go, which was growing.

Joss went back to the rope that remembered water.

Sila emptied the pit of the last insult of salt.

The brother, in Exchange, would tell a colleague his family was colorful. The colleague would laugh. The pit would still flood. The broom would still be civic by use.

Harbor Reach did not mind being a story people told badly.

It minded crates on the wrong boards.

Those, at least, you could move.