The cover caught on the gate’s lower hinge. Eiran tugged at it before he could think. Pain shot through his shoulder and beneath his shoulder blade.
He stood in the narrow passage, pressing the panels against his stomach. The rusted iron held a fold of canvas. He had to step back, lift the cloth off the hook and turn the bundle sideways. Only then could he get through.
Beyond the gate, it smelled of wet lime.
He eased it back to where it had been and stood against the wall. Through the gap he could see part of the alley, a drain and the legs of people walking towards the canal. Two pairs of boots passed the entrance. Then a handcart went by; one wheel knocked with every turn.
He waited until the sound faded.
He had last seen the man in the coat fastened to the throat before dawn, across the canal. Or at least he thought it was the same man. During the night he had learnt to suspect anyone who stopped when he did. He had circled the same bakery twice, waited out a change of patrol beneath a flight of steps and doubled back along a street he had just come from. He did not want to lead anyone here.
Now he stood on the packed earth of the old dyehouse and did not know whether to wait any longer.
He laid the cover on the stone rim of the well. From beneath his arm he took two pieces of waxed cloth, bought on the way at a stall already open by the landing. He had chosen a piece with a damaged edge, cheaper than the others. The seller had cut it in half without asking what he needed it for. Eiran had taken his change and left before he began to count it.
The wax had hardened along the creases. He held the cloth to the light. One half had a few small holes left by a seam. He would have to double it over.
The bases of the vats remained in the yard, with shallow channels where the water had drained away. A nettle grew from one. Where the barrels had once stood, dark semicircles marked the wall. Higher up, the plaster was coming away.
A bucket still hung in the well. Eiran drew it up, hauling in the rope a little at a time. He drank from his hand. The water tasted of stone and old wood, but he swallowed some more. Then he set the bucket beside the stairs and went back for the panels.
The door to the stairs had swollen with damp. He held the bundle in place with his knee, pressed the latch and pushed. The lower edge scraped so loudly across the floor that he looked back at the gate.
No one came through it.
On the stairs he immediately found the place to avoid. The fourth step from the bottom sagged beside the wall. As a boy, he had taken it at a run and jumped over it. Now he stepped closer to the handrail and shifted his weight carefully, feeling the panels against his aching shoulder.
His mother used to change her shoes on the second step from the top.
He remembered her bare heels beside the pot he brought her food in. She put her wet shoes on a lower step so they would not drip onto the dry ones. One day she had told him to undo the laces because she could not straighten her fingers. She had grown angry when he pulled the wrong end.
He stopped on that very step. Thousands of feet had worn a hollow in the wood. He ran his sole over it.
It was dry upstairs.
Long gaps beneath the eaves let in air. Ends of cord hung between the beams, and two empty racks for hanging cloth lay beside the wall. One had fallen on its side. Light passed through its crossbars, laying narrow stripes across the floor.
Eiran propped the cover against a post, fetched the bucket from the stairs and left it on the threshold.
Beneath the window he found a gap between the floorboards. The ordinary key to the studio went halfway in. He used it to lever up the edge, slipped his fingers beneath it and lifted the short board. The second came out more easily.
A coil of string and scraps of paper lay in the shallow space between the joists. Expensive dyes had once been kept here, away from the wet ground floor. Eiran remembered open packets and being told to keep his hands out. He felt the bottom and corners of the hiding place. The wood was dry. He took out the paper.
Both panels should fit.
He spread out the waxed cloth and slid the first painting from the cover. The Gate lay across his knees. Near one corner, the ground had an old crack. He examined it closely. He could see no fresh chip.
In the painting, the woman still carried her basket. The donkey walked towards the well; the child pulled a toy. As Eiran shifted the panel, the light on the floor moved across the painted cobbles. He tilted it back.
Nothing had changed.
He examined the back and edges. He wrapped the painting loosely, leaving folds of waxed cloth at the corners. The stitch holes lay beneath a second layer.
The Study of Meran was smaller.
For a moment he held it in both hands before laying it on the cloth. In the morning light, the unfinished face looked less distinct than it had in the studio. The clothing, though, retained its weight and sheen. Saeron had given so much attention to the folds beneath the arm that Eiran instinctively studied the place where paint mimicked a seam pressing into flesh.
Then he looked beneath the left ear.
The red line was still there.
He lifted the panel to tuck the folded edge of the cloth beneath it. The chipped corner slid across his hand.
He felt a brief tug at his skin.
He set down the painting and spread his thumb and forefinger. A drop of blood gathered on the web of skin between them. He tilted his hand before it could fall. It ran along his thumb and stopped beside the nail.
“Damn.”
He pressed the underside of his sleeve to the cut. He held it there for a moment, looking at the study. There was no blood on the cloth beneath the panel.
He got up to fetch the bucket. As he bent down, dried mud inside his boot scraped his ankle. Only now did he feel how swollen his feet were.
He sat by the threshold and scooped up water in his left hand. He poured it over the cut. The blood spread in a thin streak along his wrist. Again. On the third rinse he saw a red-brown thread, shorter than a fingernail.
He rubbed it with the wet thumb of his other hand.
It did not come off.
There were flecks of dark paint on his skin as well. One crumbled beneath his nail; another came away on his sleeve. He knew those stains. As he worked, pigment would lodge in cracks he had not even felt before; sometimes it stayed on his hands for days.
He stretched the skin between his fingers.
The thread stretched with it.
The fine lines of his skin were visible above the colour. Where the corner of the panel had cut his hand, the split was paler and beginning to grow wet again. Eiran wiped it carefully. The red beneath remained distinct.
He tilted his hand towards the light. From this angle the mark looked darker. He turned his wrist and for a moment could scarcely see it.
He might have rubbed the paint deeper when his fingers clenched by reflex.
He scooped up more water. This time he rubbed longer, until the skin around the cut turned pink. The pain built slowly, burning. He stopped when another drop of blood welled from the wound.
Something struck the wall below.
Eiran jerked his head up. He held his sleeve against his hand and listened. Through the gate came the squeak of wheels, then someone’s brief curse. The handcart rolled on.
Only then did he notice the ordinary key on the floor beside the open hiding place.
He stood and slipped it into his coat pocket. Through the fabric of his jacket he checked that the silver one was still there. The Study of Meran still lay uncovered. He turned to it, carefully taking hold of the undamaged edges. His hand stung when he opened it, but with his fingers closed he could barely feel the wound.
At the bottom of the hiding place he laid two dry slats taken from the rack. He placed the separately wrapped paintings on them, leaving space between the bundles. The folded cover went beside them.
The floorboards would only fit back into place after he turned one of them round. Eiran pressed it down with his knee.
He rubbed dust from beneath the rack into the pale line along the edge, then backed away towards the stairs. From there, the floor looked almost as it had before.
He leaned against a post. Without the weight of the paintings, his shoulder throbbed harder. The drying loft was quiet, and a dry, acrid smell was beginning to return as the wood warmed. He could sit for a moment. Rest his head, close his eyes.
He looked at the empty patch of floor where the cover had just been.
Perhaps Lira had found a corner like this too.
All night he had imagined her still by that wall, or wandering somewhere near the studio, angry that he was taking so long to come back. He had no reason to believe she was still there. He knew only where to begin.
He picked up the bucket.
In the yard he tipped the remaining water into the drain and lowered the bucket into the well. Before going through the gate, he checked the street. It was brighter and busier than when he had come in. Someone opened a shutter above the passage; a wet rag dropped onto the sill.
Eiran adjusted his coat, covering the inner pocket with the key. He kept his right hand loose so the edges of the cut would not pull with every step.
At the junction he turned towards the market by Saeron’s studio.
* * *
At the market, the first thing he saw was the empty space where a cart had stood.
A rectangle of dry dust remained on the cobbles, broken by wet footprints. Farther on, women were setting out baskets; someone drove a wooden wedge beneath a table leg. An upstairs shutter at the studio had been opened. Eiran walked along the opposite wall, well away from the yard. He saw Saeron’s door for only a moment, between a passer-by’s shoulder and the canvas over a stall. It was closed.
He stopped beside a basket of onions.
“I won’t pick them out for you,” the stallholder said.
He had not touched the goods. Only after a moment did he realise that he was standing so close he blocked them from the view of people coming from the well.
He stepped back.
“I’m looking for a girl.”
The woman shook dry skins from her apron. The skin on her fingers was cracked, and a pale burn scar showed below a sleeve that was too short.
“I don’t sell girls.”
“Lira.”
She did not look at him at once. She picked a soft onion from the basket, pressed it with her thumb and put it beneath the table. Only then did she study his face.
“They were looking for her yesterday too.”
Behind him, Eiran heard a basket thump down on the stones. He turned his head too quickly. Two men were arguing over a place by the well; one held a broken stave and was showing it to the other.
“Who?”
“They weren’t asking for you.”
The woman pushed the basket of onions aside and drew a sack of small broad beans towards her. She spread a piece of cloth on the table. Eiran slipped his uninjured hand into his pocket. Sweat had stuck the coins together; he prised one loose with his nail and laid it beside her hand.
She covered it with the cloth.
“How much?” she asked more loudly.
“A handful.”
“You can have more for that.”
“The rest later.”
She did not return the coin. She poured out the beans, tied the corners of the cloth and slid the bundle across the table. When Eiran reached for it, she held it down with two fingers.
“You’re with the painter.”
He nodded.
“I saw you together. Her face was already battered then.”
“A guard pinned her against a wall.”
“And then she went with you.”
The stone wall warmed the space behind the stall. Beneath the smell of onions he could detect the sourness of something rotten, hidden at the bottom of the basket. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
“She stayed outside the studio. When I came out, she was gone.”
“I’d go too, if they told me to wait outside a door like that.”
“Do you know her?”
“She carries baskets for me. Doesn’t always bring them all back.”
She let go of the bundle. Eiran slipped it into his outer pocket, away from the keys.
“Those men. How many were there?”
The woman scooped beans into a measure and poured them back into the sack.
“Two stood here. I wasn’t counting the whole street.”
“Were they wearing colours?”
“Coats. One kept his gloves on, though he touched everything. Pushed the goods about as if he expected to find her under the onions.”
Eiran looked towards the studio. The stall’s canvas hid the door.
“What did they ask?”
“Where children sleep when it rains. Under which steps. Whether the sheds by the river can be locked from inside.”
“Did they say what they wanted with her?”
“That she’d taken something.”
The woman tilted the sack. The beans shifted with a dry rustle. Among the whole ones were others, black and gnawed; she picked them out without looking at her hands.
“And you?” she asked. “Lost something too?”
The silver key pressed against him through the lining. Eiran moved his elbow away from his side.
“I have what I was looking for.”
The stallholder waited.
“I want to find her.”
“That’s what they all say at first.”
A woman with a pot came to the stall. The stallholder measured out beans for her, took her money and waited with her hand out until the woman added another small coin. Eiran moved to the end of the table. He could leave now, go back to the wall where he had left Lira and look into the same empty passage once more.
When the customer moved on, the stallholder looked up at him.
“If they come back, what am I to say?”
“That you haven’t seen me.”
She looked at the place where the woman with the pot had just stood.
Eiran pressed his lips together.
“That I asked, and you didn’t know.”
“They saw you with her too. They might want to check whether we tell the same story.”
For a moment he could not answer.
“I won’t come back with men,” he said at last.
The stallholder moved the sack to the other side of the bench, leaving a space between it and the wall. Eiran stepped out of the middle of the passage. Now she did not have to raise her voice for him to hear.
A thin arm slipped beneath the table. The boy who had brought the basket picked two beans out of the mud and dropped them into his pocket. The stallholder tapped the measure on the tabletop.
“Not those. They’ve been lying in water.”
The boy looked at Eiran and went still. His trouser legs were unevenly rolled, one dark as far as the knee. Fibres from a split sack clung round his ankle.
“He’s asking about Lira,” the woman said.
“Didn’t see her.”
“You told me she got into the ropeworks.”
“Didn’t see her come out.”
Eiran crouched by the end of the bench. He rested his right hand on his thigh so he would not put weight on the cut.
“Did you go in after her?”
The boy shook his head.
“I left the basket. She took it to stand on under the window. She was meant to give it back.”
“When?”
“In the night. It was raining.”
“Was she alone?”
The boy glanced at the stallholder.
“She took the basket on her own.”
“She went through the window?”
“Looked behind her first. Then climbed in. Didn’t want me standing in the street.”
The boy wiped his nose on his sleeve, leaving a wet streak on his skin.
“Did you tell anyone else?”
He glanced at the stallholder, then lowered his eyes. The woman moved the measure closer to the edge of the table.
“You’ve told him now. Before that, me.”
“What about those men?”
“I spoke to them myself.”
Eiran looked towards the ways out of the market. They need not have heard about the ropeworks here. They had asked about shelter, and there were few places by the river. Even so, the boy tucked his hands beneath his arms as though he had been caught giving the girl away.
“She’ll bring your basket back,” Eiran said.
It sounded more certain than he had intended. The stallholder said nothing.
Eiran straightened slowly. He could keep asking about the hour, the weather, every word the girl had said. The child was already backing behind the bench. The boy had given him a place to look.
“Which window?”
“On the side by the net shed. Downstairs. There’s no glass.”
The boy took the wet beans from his pocket. The stallholder held out the empty measure for them, took some others from the sack and poured them into his hand. Eiran turned towards the river.
“Don’t take him with you,” she said behind him.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“And don’t tell anyone there who told you.”
He nodded. He moved slowly through the crowd, aware of the added weight of the beans at his hip. He had spent more on them than he had meant to spend on food all day. He could go back and ask for the change. Instead, he broke a stalk off his coat with his nail and dropped it into the drain.
The way to the ropeworks ran along a row of low sheds. Some had their doors wide open; others were fastened from outside with wooden bolts. A man standing ankle-deep in water was hanging a net between posts. Eiran waited while he pulled the weighted edge across the passage.
He remembered how long the ropeworks was. As a child, he had taken a shortcut along its wall, where a strip of ground stayed dry even in the rain. Now the gutter had broken away above the middle, and water had cut a deep groove in the earth. A locked hasp hung at the main entrance. Someone had also tied it with a leather thong whose ends had blackened with damp.
He found the broken window on the side facing the shed.
An overturned basket lay beneath it. The bottom was dented, and one hoop had come loose from the weave. A broad streak had been wiped through the wet film on the stone sill. Eiran touched it with a fingertip. He could not have said who had last passed through, or how many times. He saw a dark hair beside the frame, but when he tried to pick it up, it came apart into short rope fibres.
He left them.
Through the window he could see the empty ground-floor room, scraps of hemp in the hollows of the floor and a motionless wheel on a wooden axle. Light seeped in from the other side of the room. A side door had been left ajar; the bolt had been pulled from its bracket, which now hung by a single nail.
He went round the corner. The soft earth by the threshold was trampled. Two clearer impressions remained beneath the small roof, out of the direct rain. One belonged to a broad boot; the other overlapped its toe. Beyond them the cobbles began, and all traces vanished.
He went in sideways, keeping clear of the loose door.
The smell of wet hemp filled his throat. Short lengths of cord lay by the wall, some covered in a whitish growth. Someone had left a bowl with a little hardened fat on the long bench. Dust coated its inside. Eiran passed it without touching it.
The stairs began at the far end of the room.
He stopped at the first step. Above him, something stirred a piece of canvas. Then a draught came, cold from the river, and shifted a dry stalk beneath his boot.
“Lira?”
She did not answer.
He put his left hand on the rail. The wood bent under the pressure but held. On the fourth step he saw mud pressed between the board and the wall. More lay farther up, scattered in small clumps. The loft could have sheltered anyone who knew about the broken window. Eiran looked at the marks without yet trying to make a single route out of them.
A sheet of canvas lay beside the wall. Beneath a folded corner, something round had left an impression in the dust on the dry wood: an elbow or a knee. A broken workbench stood nearby, coils of rope farther on. A length of old canvas hanging against the opposite wall had torn from the bottom almost to the beam. Its ends moved separately.
Eiran went over to the sheet on the floor. He lifted it carefully, trying not to shake anything from the folds. Only dry hemp and a dead beetle fell out. He pulled the cloth farther aside. Beneath it there was neither a body nor the stain he was afraid to look for.
He let the canvas fall.
The opening in the wall was too high to see from the street. Two boards were missing. Along their former edges,