The river is brown and honest. It smells of weed and old rope.

The mooring pole at Piers the bargeman’s place is empty. The pole should have a barge like a loaf has a crust. Wat, the smith’s apprentice, is there anyway, kicking mud as if mud owes him money.

“Outlaws,” Wat says, because Wat likes a story with a sword in it. “Stole the salt. We’ll starve and then we’ll have a proper adventure.”

You look at the mud because Hew taught you that mud is a gossip who cannot help it.

There are barge-pole dimples. There is a torn whisker of rope on a willow. There are no boot-prints in a gang. There is one set of prints going downstream, heavy, as if a tired person walked beside a heavy thing.

“That’s not a raid,” you say. “That’s a rope giving up.”

Wat looks cheated, then interested, which is his second-best mood.

Town bells will start soon. Dame Keld, weaver-guild warden, will be in the square putting up the weavers’ stall, and she knows the price of salt the way Hew knows stones. The keep will want answers on paper.

The towpath follows the willows downriver, narrow and wet.

The town path lifts toward the square, drier, already noisy with trestles.