Iva shifted the slate against her hip. "Does everyone in Brineshell think their social surveillance counts as neighborliness?"
"Mostly." Fetch leaned one shoulder against the stair post. "We are a marsh settlement. Privacy exists, just not under the same terms as where you trained."
"I did not ask for interpretation," she said.
"Good. I am not giving it." His expression steadied. "Only telling you what is visible before it surprises you later."
Which was, annoyingly, a kindness.
Iva exhaled once through her nose. "Thank you."
Fetch tipped his head and stepped aside. "Dema wants the south-wall timing. Also, for what it is worth, no one looked scandalized. Only interested."
That might have been meant to help. It did not. Interest was harder to defend against than scandal.
She found Dema by the supply racks, discussed unveiling cloth placement in a voice that sounded nothing like her interior state, confirmed the south wall could be uncovered by opening bell if the weather held, and walked back to Reedwalk at dusk with every line of the escape calculation assembling itself in her head.
It waited for her in the room like an old habit smelling blood.
She shutthe door, set down the slate, and began to pace.
Ferry schedule first. Lowwater Exchange departures from Brineshell: dawn load ferry twice weekly during flood lead-up, midday trade skiff daily if weather and channel depth allowed. She had memorized the times the first week because memorizing exits was what she did. The numbers came back at once, obedient as trained dogs.
Restoration hours next. Remaining work on the east flood wall, lower claim frieze, final sealing at north section. If she took eighteen-hour days and accepted a higher fatigue risk on the less delicate sections, she could conceivably finish in time to hand final notes to Dema and leave a week before Lantern Flood proper.
She even rose long enough to pull the contract copy from her work case and verify the payment schedule against the ferrydays, because panic always wanted paperwork as sacrifice. The money column behaved beautifully. Money always did. It was people who made arithmetic rot from the inside.
She sat on the bed edge and did the math again.
Still possible.
This was the calculation that had kept her alive for three years. Finish the commission. Keep the body functioning. Do not stay long enough for attachment to complicate departure. It always closed. The numbers behaved because the premise was simple: invisibility costs less than being known.
Except the premise no longer sat cleanly on the page.
Because she knew now what hidden bonds cost from the other side. Fetch's shard about the unwitnessed woman left with nothing. The old claim-painting under the wall's later coats. Tavren Shell-Hand still named beneath the disaster panel. Error recorded without authorship erased.
If she left before the ceremony, the math worked in hours and ferries and unfinished want. It did not work cleanly in consequences anymore.
The calculation still closed numerically. It refused to close morally.
Iva pressed the heels of both hands to her eyes until color burst behind them. "Damn it."
The room stayed small and warm and unimpressed.
At last she sat, unlaced her boots, and stared at the narrow strip of floor between them.
The calculation that had kept her safe for three years had a crack in it shaped like a named painter on a wall and a public ritual she wanted turned on her so badly it made her feel sick.
Outside, the festival platform crews worked late. Hammering crossed the water in softened strikes. Brineshell moved toward its public ceremony with the calm inevitability of weather.
Iva lay down fully clothed on the narrow bed and looked at the ceiling until the boards blurred.
The ferry schedule remained in memory. The eighteen-hour days remained possible. The crack remained too.
She slept, eventually, without finishing the math. Morning would come whether or not the arithmetic closed.
12