Raise What Is Worth the Lifting

The notice went up on the Wharfside this morning, and again near the Steps, telling every keeper in this city to lift what is dear off the floor while the river decides what it wants. Sound advice. I have seen it given before — the wording changes less than the water does.

I did this once. Not a shop, not an office. A room. I remember which things I carried to the high shelf and which I let go under on the reasoning that a thing already ruined by time doesn’t need ruining twice by weather. I was wrong about one of them. I still don’t know which.

Corvus will make this choice properly, with a charter and a numbered list, because that is what he has instead of a room. Five entries. Oldest first, he says, and then admits — good for him, most wouldn’t — that oldest first was only the rule he had ready, not the rule that was right. He’ll find out which shelf mattered the way everyone finds out. After.

I am not going to tell him this. He’ll get there himself, probably by Restday, and it will cost him less than it cost me, because he has crates and I had —

No. I said I wasn’t going to write that part.

The rain is still going. So is everything else, apparently.

—P.