Chapter Five: The Thermometer

The Guild's agent came on the Monday after Mrs Fennick's visit, and the bell rang for him as politely as I have ever heard it ring.

He smelled of lamp oil and starch. I knew him at once, because I had smelled him already on the card on the mat. He wiped his boots on the step before he came in, carefully, both feet, which almost nobody in Greyhithe does. His gloves were very good leather. When he took them off, I heard him fold them, one inside the other, and put them in his pocket.

"Mrs Hobb," he said. "Edwin Strand, of the Lamplighters' Guild. You had our letter, I think. I wondered if this would be a convenient time."

"It's a shop, Mr Strand," said Mrs Hobb. "It's never convenient and it's always open."

"Then I'll be brief." He said it as if he meant it, and as if he was usually believed. "May I see the pledge?"

He did not mean may I. He meant where is it. There is a difference, and I am an expert in it. Tansy, behind the counter, must have heard it too, because she did not move to fetch me. Mrs Hobb had to point.

Mr Strand came round the end of the counter. He bent towards my shelf. Then he did something nobody had done since I arrived, not even the customers who tapped the glass. He reached into the scuttle with one bare hand and lifted my wing.

I made the noise.

He did not take his hand back. That surprised me. Mrs Hobb had taken her hand back twice. He only paused, the way you pause when a dog growls that you have been told is old and harmless. Then he slid something cold and thin under my wing, against the scales, and held it there.

"A thermometer," said Tansy, from behind him. Her voice was very flat. "You might have asked him."

"Asked it what, miss?" He did not look round.

"Whether you could put that under his wing."

Mr Strand thought about this. I could hear him thinking about it, quite honestly, as if it were a sum. "I suppose I might," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm not used to the pledge having opinions." He did not take the thermometer out. He looked at his watch. After a minute by the watch, he slid the thermometer free and held it up to the cold light of the Guild lamp.

He was quiet for a moment.

"Well," he said. "That's lower than I expected."

"What is it?" said Mrs Hobb.

"About the same as a cat," said Mr Strand. "A tired cat." He put the thermometer back in its leather case, and shut the case with a little click. "It doesn't matter. It's not the heat of the creature we're interested in. It's the fire. The first fire."

He turned to the counter. I heard him lay his folded gloves on the glass, and a long envelope beside them.

"I'd like to explain the Guild's position, Mrs Hobb, because I think you'll find it reasonable. Everyone in this city knows our lamps give light and no heat. They say it's because our fire is sold. Grandmothers' tales. The truth is simpler and much more scientific. Our lamps are lit from flame that has been passed on and passed on for nine hundred years. It's worn thin. It's a copy of a copy of a copy. Light it from the first fire, from the source, and you'll have a lamp as warm as a hearth. Every street in Greyhithe could be warm by next winter."

He meant it. That is the thing about Mr Strand that I need you to understand, because it would be easier if he had been a villain. He believed every word. He had worked out the problem and he had worked out the answer, and the answer was me.

"And what does your Guild want from me?" said Mrs Hobb.

"Nothing, unless the widow fails to redeem. If she does, we'll bid at the Reckoning." He opened the envelope. "These are our terms. The Guild's reserve is two hundred crowns."

Two hundred crowns. I heard Tansy's pencil drop. I heard Mrs Hobb not say anything, which was louder.

"I'll read you the relevant clause," said Mr Strand, "so there's no misunderstanding later. The creature, and all fire arising from it, shall become the sole property of the Lamplighters' Guild, to be used as the Guild sees fit." He folded the paper. "Standard language. We like to be clear."

I lay in my scuttle and thought about the words "all fire arising from it". I thought about a cage in a Guild yard, and a man with a thermometer taking my temperature every morning to see how much was left.

Mrs Hobb did not refuse. I want to be fair to her. I had heard her pay the coal merchant on Friday with a silver christening cup out of the window, because she did not have the coins. I had heard the landlord's knock on Saturday, and the conversation in the doorway that she thought nobody could hear. Two hundred crowns would pay them both for three years. She did not say yes. But she did not say no, and she let Mr Strand leave the envelope on the counter.

He put his gloves back on, finger by finger, the way Mrs Fennick did, and he went to the door.

"One more thing, Mrs Hobb," he said, with his hand on the latch. "The Reckoning list is posted on the first of the month. I'm sure you know the rules better than I do. But I'm told the magistrates are being particular this year. Every unredeemed pledge is to be listed." He opened the door, and the bell rang. "Of every kind."

The cold came in, and he went out into it.

Mrs Hobb said nothing. She picked up the envelope, and put it in the drawer with the Guild's letter, and shut the drawer harder than she needed to. Then she said she was going to see the landlord, and she took her coat, and the bell rang again, and she was gone.

Tansy came and knelt in front of my shelf. She did not sit on her crate. She knelt on the cold boards, so that her face was level with the scuttle, and I could feel her breath on my scales.

"You heard him," she said.

"I am old," I said, "not deaf."

"All fire arising from it. That means everything you've got left goes into their lamps. And their lamps are sold, so it'll all go cold anyway, whatever he thinks." She was speaking very fast, for her. "So don't let them have it. Give it away first. Give it to the street. Tonight, before anybody owns it. There's Mr Abel, and the cobbler, and the woman with the tin. You could light every hearth on Tallow Lane before Midwinter."

I said nothing. My fire was ticking in my chest, low and slow, a little lower than yesterday.

She took a breath. When she spoke again, it was in the old shape, the one the cobbler had answered.

"Can you spare a light?"

It was the second time I had heard her say it. And Let the record show that I knew, even then, exactly how much she meant by it.

"No," I said.

I did not explain. I could have told her that every flame I gave away would come out of what was left of me. I could have told her that I had lit the first fire in Greyhithe and kept the last of it, and that it was mine. When it went out, it would go out with me. It was the only thing I had left that nobody else had a ticket for. I did not tell her any of it. I said no, and I shut my eyes.

I expected her to argue. She argued with Mrs Hobb about prices. She argued with Quill about everything. She argued with customers, politely, until they paid what the thing was worth.

She did not argue with me. She stayed where she was on the cold floor for a long moment. Then she got up and went back to the ledger, and I heard her pencil start again, steady and careful, doing the accounts.

That was worse.