A Day in the Life
One ordinary day each, at seven stations, in seven places. None of it is remarkable, and that is the point.
A laborer, Forgegate
He wakes at the fourth bell in one rented room with his wife and three children, and the fire is already lit because she was up before him. Bread and what was left of last night's Simraun, standing; out of the door before the fifth. At the yard gate a guild man picks the hands he wants from the men standing there, and picks him, because he turns up sober and works — eight Braell for the day, hauling for the metalworkers whose noise he stopped hearing years ago. At the eighth bell the whole city stops and he eats something hot from a stall for two Braell. Work until the twelfth; home; the second meal, mostly bread and Chiaz and whatever his wife got cheap at the end of the market. A neighbor comes in. He mends a strap. It is Staer, so the week's money is in his hand, and he stopped at his Therplae for one and stayed for two, at the table he has sat at for eleven years; somebody's son is looking for work and he said he would ask at the yard. Asleep by the fifteenth, because the fourth comes early.
A master's wife, Shining Reach
She rises at the sixth. The hired woman has been in since the fourth, and the day's provisioning is settled in a quarter of a Spaen because she has bought from the same four stalls for a decade. The shop opens at the sixth and her husband is at the bench; she is at the book — what is owed to the chandler, what the timber merchant is charging now, which customer has been slow twice — and when a woman comes in about a commission she takes the order herself, better than he would have. At midday the household eats together, the two apprentices included, and the younger one is careless and knows she has noticed. The afternoon is callers and being one: a guild wife, an hour, and by the end of it she knows which master is overextended and who is likely to marry whose daughter, and has said three careful things that will be repeated. Shutters up by the fifteenth, accounts squared. Tomorrow she will go and look at a coat she cannot afford, because the house she buys from puts out the new season in Rwyth.
A guildwoman, Forgegate
She is at the bench by the fifth, before the master, because she likes the shop quiet and her hands need the first hour to warm. Her border says what she is and nobody in the hall has found it interesting for fifteen years. Today it is a commission with a tolerance in Threid and she will not be hurried by anybody, including the man who is paying. At midday she walks home, because her mother lives with them and there is a child of three, and a quarter of a Spaen in the middle of the day is the difference between her and the woman she was two years ago, who did this without help and did not sleep. Back at the bench until the twelfth. Guild hall in the evening, because a member's masterpiece is being judged and she is one of the four judging it. Two Spaen, two of them argument. The piece passes, narrowly, and she was the one who said what was wrong with it, and the man will fix it and be better for it and will not thank her for eleven years.
A house slave, Eldershore
She is up at the fourth with the rest of the staff, and the fires and the water are done before anybody upstairs is awake. The morning is the senpei's, who has run this house for twenty years and allots the day without raising her voice; the house is receiving in three days and everything must be turned out. She works, and is given her rest in the middle of the day, and takes it in the yard where it is warm, because a household that lets its people be seen exhausted has told the street what kind of house it is. She eats off a plate, with the household's cutlery, what the household ate. There is a woman from the house next door at the back gate most days, and the two of them know more about both households than either owner would like. The evening is service at table, then the kitchen, then her own hour. She keeps what her mother kept, which is a name said at a particular time, and nobody has ever suggested she should not. Her owner asked her a question about the house this afternoon and listened to the answer. She told him the truth, which she is obliged to do and would have done anyway.
A whaler ashore, Stormharbor
It is Endwr, and the fleet has been in since Gaedhr and will not sail until Eiveil. So he is a cooper this season, as every winter, at it by the fifth. His left hand does not close all the way, which happened four years ago, and he can read it like a page, and so can everyone else. At midday, Haerlchaz at home, better on the second day than the first, and Sorstoek out of the crock with it. His wife has run the household for eight months without him and hands back only what she chooses to, and he knows better than to ask about the rest. The children have grown a year while he was gone, which is the arrangement and is not less strange for being the arrangement. The evening is somebody's kitchen, four households who have lived on this street since anyone can remember, and the talk is whether the ice came early on the grounds and what that means for Eiveil. Nobody will say out loud that a boat was lost. Everybody is thinking about it.
A Roedhaven keeper, the Guild Road
There is no bell out here. He is up when it is light enough to see the wall. The gate opened at dawn and last night's caravan is watering, feeding, and paying — a Braell or two a head for the Muyra, a Braell an animal, two or three a night for each Dorath stabled, feed extra — and the stabling and the provisions are where the money is. He walks the wall; there is a section on the north side that wants work before Foerg and he has been saying so for a year. The Vennek are fed. His wife has the hall in hand, and somebody's child has been sick since they arrived, and there is a physician two days back the way they came and nobody is going to fetch him. The caravan goes out at midmorning and the place is empty by noon, and stays empty until the next one, in three days if it is on time. At dusk the gate shuts, and everybody inside is inside and everything outside is outside, which is the whole of what a Roedhaven is for.
A Coves hand, Blacktooth Bay
He wakes when he wakes; the ship is laid up and half the crew is scattered. His share from the last voyage is with the Fences' Association, which holds money for crews between voyages and is a bank in everything but safety. He draws some of it and does not ask what the rate was. The afternoon is the tavern his crew drinks in, the nearest thing to a club he will ever belong to, and somebody is putting together a run and is short two hands. He can read a manifest, which is why he is asked and why he is paid better than the men who cannot, and which he can do because his mother sat him down with a slate. That is the whole of the difference between him and three men at the next table, and everybody at both tables knows it. He will sail, probably. He has not decided. Nobody will ask him to explain himself either way.