The tower staircase had ninety-one steps. Hesta knew because every new assistant counted them and told her. She had never bothered to count for herself.
Neri climbed ahead with the outlet key. Two porters followed carrying the cradle. Hesta came last, with the release chart under her arm. Downstairs, the buyers were covering stalls and finding buckets. Pell had sent a hotel boy for more canvas. Rusk had gone to the pump house with the eighty silver.
At the top, a narrow door opened onto the release chamber. The town lay visible through four tall windows: red tiles, dry gardens, the pale thread of the empty canal. On the western hill the new hotel flew three flags in a wind bought by someone else.
Weather was usually released one kind at a time. There were marked wheels for rain, wind, and temperature. Bell codes from the chamber told the streets what to expect. A single rain jar might provide ten minutes over the market. A complete day needed the old brass throat in the centre of the floor, the one nobody used because it could not choose what to let through.
Hesta knelt beside it. The rubber seal had hardened. She pressed it with her thumbnail.
“New gasket,” she said.
Neri fetched one. They seated the vessel in the throat and tightened the collar. The porters lowered the shutter over the stairwell, as the chart required. Through the windows Hesta could see people waiting on the awning below.
She pointed to the bell rope.
“Three warning strokes. Then we wait for the market bell to answer.”
Neri pulled. Hesta heard each great note fill the chamber.
She opened the vent a finger's width.
The green glass cleared from the neck down. A strip of blue appeared inside it, so sharp and beautiful that Hesta forgot the warmth under her hands. For an instant it held a little sky. Then a grey seam curled across it.
Cold air struck her face.
The vent needle climbed.
Neri said something. Hesta watched the needle. It stood in the yellow band, then moved towards red.
“One quarter-turn,” Hesta said. “Steady discharge.”
Neri caught her wrist.
Hesta turned, furious.
“The market bell hasn't answered.” Neri's face was close enough that every word reached her. “The pump-house bell is ringing. We have to stop.”
Hesta closed the vent. The needle kept moving. Below the glass, a curl of vapour pushed past the new gasket.
The porters stepped away from the windows. One looked towards the stairs.
Hesta knew the rule: never leave pressurised weather sealed in the outlet. But without the pump-house response they could not send a whole day's rain through the town. The canal gates had to be open. Otherwise the lower market would fill like a basin.
From the eastern window she could see a person at the pump house hauling the red signal flag. She should have checked the flags. She had been listening for bells she could no longer reliably hear.
Neri reached for the chart.
“Give me a moment,” Hesta said.
“We haven't got one.”
The glass made a noise like a spoon tapped against a tooth. This time Hesta heard it.
All her ordinary evasions were ready. She could blame the bell ropes, the wind, the porters standing between her and the window. None would open the canal gates or make the glass stronger.
“I cannot hear the answering bells,” she said.
The words sounded absurdly loud inside her head.
Neri held her wrist a moment longer. “I can.”
“You take the signals. I take the pressure.”
Neri nodded. There was no astonishment in her face. Hesta found that harder to bear than astonishment would have been.
“Tell me what they said.”
“Pump intake closed. Working on it.”
“We need somewhere for the rain before they open it.”
Hesta looked down at the brass awning. It sloped over the hall entrance towards a narrow gutter, connected to the Exchange's empty cellar tank. That tank had not held water for years. They used it for packing straw.
She pointed a porter at the speaking tube.
“Tell them to clear the cellar tank. Everything out. Open the gutter valve.”
He shouted down the tube. A small, distant response came back. Neri listened, then nodded.
Hesta eased the pressure wheel. The first rain struck the awning with the sound of a thousand coins spilled onto a counter. Beneath it people scattered, then came back carrying pails.
Inside the vessel the weather turned. Brightness, cloud, brightness again. The needle fell, steadied, rose.
“Pump house?” Hesta asked.
“Still red.”
She held the discharge low. Rain ran into the gutter. The cellar tank would not take a whole day. She watched its level indicator begin to rise.
Out in the square, the woman with the painted door was spreading the tarpaulin. Wind caught it. Four people grabbed corners. For a moment it rose between them like a large blue animal, before they pulled it down and lashed it over the door.
The glass warmed again. Hesta turned the wheel another fraction. She had told hundreds of customers that weather could not be hurried. Now, with her shoulder aching and the needle creeping, she resented the truth of it.
“Tell me when the market answers,” she said.
“I will.”
The cellar indicator reached its upper mark.
Hesta looked east. The red flag hung against its pole. At the pump-house doorway, a man emerged with something black wrapped around both hands: the old belt, finally off.
“Nearly,” she said, without knowing.
Neri listened.
Hesta waited. A bead of water travelled from her scalp to her collar. She had not been soaked outdoors for twenty-eight years. She had considered this an achievement.
Neri raised three fingers.
“Intake open.”
Hesta waited for the second signal.
The vessel gave another thin crack. A white line appeared near its base.
Neri raised her whole hand.
“Market ready.”
Hesta opened the wheel.
Thursday rose through the brass throat and went out over Bellwether.
There was rain, certainly. There was enough wind to turn an improperly fitted hat inside out. There were brief, extravagant sheets of sunlight moving among the houses while rain still fell, and a cold breath that made the butcher put his hands in his armpits. No hail came. Hesta would remember that with unreasonable gratitude.
The canal took the rain. Water ran along its cracked bed, carrying dust ahead of it in a brown little wall. The fountain coughed, spat a leaf from eighty-three years ago, and began to fill.
In the tower, Hesta held the wheel until the needle dropped to zero. The vessel was clear now. Only ordinary air remained in it.
She took her hands off the brass. They would not immediately straighten.
Neri helped her unhook the collar. Neither mentioned the white crack in the glass until the vessel was safely back in its cradle.
“No longer a sound piece,” Hesta said.
“Pell still might buy the cradle.”
They both laughed, though Hesta felt hers come out at a different size from Neri's.
Downstairs, rain dripped from the awning. The hall smelled of wet coats and the packing straw dragged out of the cellar. The schoolmistress's skirt had acquired a dark border. She was helping the butcher calculate how many barrels to take back to the school.
Pell examined the empty vessel.
“Twelve for the cradle,” he said. “The bottle has a crack.”
“Fifteen,” Hesta said. “And you carry it yourself.”
He paid fourteen. Rusk put the money towards the cellar cleanup and handed Hesta her eight-silver commission on Thursday. She laid it in Neri's palm.
“You conducted the sale.”
Neri looked at the coins. “You usually say the assistant's wage covers everything.”
“Usually does not include everything.”
The reply pleased Hesta. She hoped Neri would remember it. Then she saw Neri was still waiting.
“And tomorrow,” Hesta said, “we will need a board.”
“A bid board?”
“Do not make me describe it. Large numbers. Nothing floral.”
Neri closed her hand around the silver.
The next morning, Hesta stood beside a slate board beneath the awning. Neri wrote the bids as they came. The man who had offered thirteen for the wind raised his hand and said something Hesta could not catch.
She looked at his face.
“Again, please.”
He repeated himself. He wanted to know whether yesterday's weather was still for sale. His wife had liked the smell of the rain.
“No,” Hesta said. “That Thursday is gone.”
He looked disappointed.
She could have offered him a jar of morning mist, described it as practically the same, and probably sold it. Instead she opened the shutters behind her.
Outside the catchment nets, beyond the last roofs, a low cloud was coming over the hill. Hesta watched it for a moment before lifting her hammer.
“We will see what arrives.”