Washington, D.C. · June 24, 2230
The first tax collected at the empty tram apron was paid by a man who had come to complain that nobody was collecting taxes there.
He bought tea from a cart, handed over a stamped copper, and asked the vendor why the traveling repair fair had chosen the Pledge Market instead. She gave him his change and pointed downhill.
“Ask the fair.”
The fair was still a week away. What had arrived was its painted sign, carried by two apprentices who were already being blamed for every decision on it.
Hale, who kept the apron accounts, found them leaning the sign against a wall. He had cleared six stalls for the fair and worked out what six stall fees could pay: two months of lamp oil for the stair, or half the roof over the public washroom. He showed the apprentices the figures. They agreed that both things sounded useful. They did not move the sign.
“We offered them room,” Hale said to the people gathering behind him. “We asked the charcoal ovens to fit covers and told the fuel sellers to keep their barrels away from the well. Apparently that makes a place impossible to do business.”
“It made my oven dearer,” said Venn, who fitted hinges. “But I fitted the cover.”
“Mine too,” said the tea vendor. “I'm still here.”
No one could establish whether the fair had ever asked to use an oven or a fuel barrel. By noon this had become the most confidently discussed part of its plans.
At last the organizer came up from the market with a coil of rope on her shoulder. Her name was Aru. She measured the cleared stalls, admired the washroom roof, and said the apron would have held the fair beautifully.
“Then why isn't it here?” Hale asked.
Aru set down the rope. “Our customers bring broken things. Most carry them. The Pledge Market sits where the cart paths cross, and its awnings are already up. I can pay one crew to mend tools there. Here I'd need a second crew to haul them up the steps.”
Hale looked at the accounts in his hand. They contained no column for steps.
Venn did not much care for Aru's explanation. He had hoped to work the fair and now faced a longer walk with his box of hinges. The tea vendor liked it even less; people waiting for repairs would have bought tea. Aru listened without offering either of them a stall she did not have.
“You could put a ramp here,” she said.
“With the fees from what?” Hale asked.
That evening, Venn brought two planks to the apron. They would not make a ramp, but they let the tea vendor roll her cart over the worst lip of the paving. Hale entered the cost of the nails beside the six fees he had expected and left both numbers uncrossed.
Below them, the Pledge Market's awnings held through a short rain. The fair had not opened there yet, either. But someone had already hung a lamp over the path by which people would bring their broken things.