The curtain was not a door. Sefa had learned that on the first day she ever set foot in the chapel, aged seven, when Bunmi had marched her in to be baptised in the salt and she had hidden behind the same curtain from the same priest. It was a length of faded green velvet on a rail, and it kept out nothing but eyes.

Haldis Orrefors-Kumalo drew it aside herself.

She did it gently, with two ringed fingers, the way a person turns the page of a book in somebody else's house. She was exactly as Sefa had just seen her in the rain: a broad woman of fifty-two in a mustard headscarf and a long dun coat, with a ring on every finger, and on her left wrist the silver bracelet in the shape of a salt rake, whose tines caught the light each time she moved. In her arms she held a tray of cups. Behind her, with a plate of biscuits and a look of tremendous importance, came Pico.

"Chief Forger," he said, in a stage whisper. "I got the biscuits. Madam Brine-Master paid. Four coins. Which is the exact amount you owe me, so we're square."

"Are we."

"I'm saying nothing was wasted."

"Pico, love," Haldis said, without looking round, "put those down by the candles, would you? And then run along and see whether the sheds have opened. They always want a boy about on a morning like this."

The boy set down the plate and ran. Sefa watched him go. It was the way he went: not quite looking back, with his shoulders a little too high.

She had hidden the enamel cup behind her skirt. She was not sure when. Ansgar had slid the horn spoon into his sleeve and was holding the mended hinge of his spectacles as if it were a rosary. Teodor, who could not have concealed a thing if you gave him a week, simply stood very straight with his hands behind his back and looked at the wall.

"Mr Ilves-Nakamura," said Haldis. "I'm so sorry. I did not think to see customs at the vigil."

"I did not think to be at one, ma'am."

"Annex six, of course. How tidy of you." She smiled at him, and it was a lovely smile, wide and creased and generous, a smile that would have talked a cat out of a fish. "Do forgive me. I came because I heard it was a stranger, and strangers should not die alone. In my father's day the guild always stood the first night with them. I thought the custom should not lapse because the world has got busy."

"That's good of you," Sefa said.

Haldis turned. And for the first time in Sefa's remembered life, she felt the full warm weight of that look land on her, and thought: *so this is what it was like*.

"Sefa, dear," said Haldis. "You've been up since before dawn. You're pale. Have you eaten?"

It was a very simple question, and it nearly worked. Sefa felt it go through her like warmth through a cold sleeve, a loosening around her ribs, a rising instinct to say *no, actually, I haven't*, to sit down and let someone take the weight of the day. Under the letter against her ribs, a line of her own handwriting seemed to prickle. *Do not trust the Brine-Master when she is kind to you.*

"I had toast," said Sefa, which was the first lie of the day she'd really enjoyed.

"You never eat enough toast. It's a worry." Haldis lifted the tray an inch. "Tea?"

"I'm fine."

"It's very sweet."

"Then I'm fine twice."

Haldis laughed softly. It was a good laugh. The laugh of a woman who has been told no in her life by smaller people than Sefa and been tremendously gracious about it. She set the tray on the steel counter beside the dead man's feet, and then, with perfect courtesy, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, laid her palm for a moment on his shin through the tarp.

"Poor man," she said. "Do we know his name?"

"No," said Teodor.

He said it flat and fast, and Sefa heard it catch, a tiny hitch in the middle of the word, but it didn't choke him. It was true. They didn't know. Not really, not the way that mattered. For a second she was dizzy with gratitude at the exactness of him.

"What a shame," said Haldis. "And no papers?"

"There is a transit record," Teodor said, "which I will be filing in due course."

"Ah. Well. That's your trade, and I would never presume." She had not stopped smiling. "I only wanted to say a word about the body. I know Annex six gives you twenty-four hours, Brother, and I'd never dream of cutting it short. But the Bone Quay sits on guild lease, you know. Has done since the river failed. Anything found on guild ground that nobody claims is, strictly, a guild matter. We have the proper facilities. A clean cold room. A physician who knows how salt behaves in the body." She spread her ringed hands. "It would be simpler to bring him to us. It would save the chapel the trouble. And Captain Vosk's people can hardly want him in a vestry with the candles."

"The candles are in the fridge," Ansgar said faintly.

"Of course they are, dear."

There was a short silence in which nobody breathed.

Sefa could feel the shape of it as clearly as the shape of a coin in a pocket. It would be so easy for the three of them to say yes. That was the genius of Haldis Orrefors-Kumalo. She never asked for a thing the sensible person could refuse. She waited, and she smiled, and she let the sensible person do the work.

"I think," said Teodor, "that the treaty is clear."

"Is it?"

"Annex six says the chapel of record retains the deceased for twenty-four hours." He had gone slightly pale around the mouth. "I cannot waive it. I can only note your offer, ma'am, and say that I am not able to accept it."

"That's quite right," said Haldis warmly. "I would think less of you if you had."

She meant it, too. That was the horror. Sefa could see that she meant every word.

The Brine-Master poured one cup of tea, quite slowly, and held it in her ringed fingers, and did not drink. She turned, still smiling, to look at the dead man's face; and in that moment, for the length of a blink, Sefa saw something else cross her features. Not pity, not greed. It was an enormous, naked, helpless hunger, as of a woman who has sat for years in a locked house and has just smelled bread.

Then it was gone. She touched a small glass vial that hung on a chain at the base of her throat, tucked half into her scarf, a brief, absent gesture, as a nervous person touches a cross.

"Sefa," Haldis said. "A word. Just a small one. Walk me to the door."

There was no way to refuse it that did not look like what it was. Sefa glanced once at Teodor, who gave the smallest nod, and followed her down the nave.

The chapel was cool and silent and gleaming white. Their footsteps rang. At the great door, with the morning light pouring in over the threshold, Haldis stopped and turned and looked at Sefa. She took her hand. It was warm, and dry, and strong, and Sefa did not pull away. She did not trust herself not to.

"I have a small job for you," Haldis said softly. "Nothing very much. A paper for the guild. You've always been so careful with them. I'd pay well. Would you come to the Hall at noon?"

"I've got a shop to open."

"Then open it at one." The thumb moved gently over Sefa's knuckles, over the place where the sleeve ended and the first pale threads of the bloom began. "And Sefa. Bring the letter."

The nave went very quiet.

"What letter?" said Sefa.

"The one you took from his hand," said Haldis, with infinite gentleness. "I'd hate for Captain Vosk to hear you had removed evidence from a body. It would be such an unkind thing, on such a hard day." She let go. She smiled, and her eyes were so kind that Sefa wanted to weep. "Noon, dear. Don't forget the tea."

She went out into the sun, a broad, upright shape in a mustard scarf, and the great door sighed shut behind her.

Sefa stood where she was, quite still.

Nobody had seen her take that letter. Nobody had been on the barge but Bunmi, Pico and herself.

Across the pan, a small figure in a hood was already running as fast as it could go in the opposite direction.