There was a dead-end canal leading here, with a Gate on it, wide enough to allow for barges towed by horses to pass through it, and a second Gate for foot-traffic. The idea being that if you ordered a full string of empty barges, they could be put in the water here with your horses or some borrowed from the manor, and they could be Gated to a spot on another canal near or at their destination. There was no Gatekeeper here, but of course you’d need the proper talismans to use the things.
This was where the Gates at what they were now calling “Crescent Lake” were linked—anyone buying barges now intending to take them home and fill them would have to bring his own horses and tow them to the next Gate in line. With what Jonaton called a “hard link,” the Gate used far less energy to send things to the refuge from here than they would if they used talismans. And it meant no one needed to have a talisman at all to come here from the refuge, which meant one less thing for the mages to do.
Oh! And since we’ve got all those paper talismans now, that means far fewer talismans our mages need to make! Which means most of them can probably go settle at Crescent Lake now, rather than later . . .
If they would. The mages did like their comfort, and there was more of it here than there. It wasn’t as bad out there as it had been when they’d created the Gates, but things were still a bit primitive.
Not that she blamed the mages for preferring comfort in the least. She agreed with them, actually.
She tied Sundrop up to a ring in the side of the huge building that housed the barge-makers and went inside. She’d been here before—and already she could see that there were far fewer barges stored here. Plenty of people had already claimed what they needed, and there would soon be far fewer. There were also a lot more barges in various states of construction than she had ever seen before. Every single workstation was full, and there were dozens of hulls in various stages of curing. She waited until one of the barge-builders noticed her, finished smoothing down the fungus-paste on the barge he was working on, washed off his hands, and came to see what she needed.
“Lady Isla put me in charge of three home-barges,” she said, trying to project an air of someone who knew what she was about. “One for me, one for herself and Duke Kordas, and one for—” She stopped herself before she said “the children” and said instead, “four servants.” Because the boys would need an adult actually with them.
“We’ve been expecting this request, and we put two aside just for the Duke and his Lady,” the workman said, wiping his hands on his apron. “Will you come have a look? I expect you’ll need to see them to understand what you can bring down from the manor.”
She nodded, and he took her to the back of the enormous storage area, where there were two barges off to one side, set on a platform of rough-sawn planks to keep them off the dirt. As they approached, Delia could not help but notice that these barges were considerably more “finished” than the ones loaded with grain from the manor had been.
Windows had been cut along one of the slanted upper sides of each of the two barges. Shutters that could be closed and locked to keep out weather had been installed on either side of the windows, and glass had been fitted into frames in the holes. It wasn’t the best glass possible—it had bubbles and a few thick ripples—but she assumed that, amidst the stepped-up schedule for the escape, they used what they had at hand at the moment. The barges had been painted in muted browns with black trim, and wooden decking was laid on the narrow walkways around the sides and at the prow and stern. Rough-cast brass cleats and rings were set at corners, and boarding planks could apparently be used to link several boats together. A stout wooden door at the prow, which faced her, gave into the interior of the barge, and the workman climbed up to the prow, helped her up, and flung the stout door open to let her inside.
Inside, everything had been painted white, which made it look much larger than she would have thought. And there was room to stand upright, which she had not been expecting. Wooden decking had been laid down with hatches in it at intervals. “You’ll store anything that is waterproof beneath the hatches, milady,” the workman said. “She shouldn’t leak, but if she does, you won’t want to lose what’s down there. Or, you could stow wood for the fire down there, which is what I’d do, so there’s not wood in the way all the time, and so you can have as much as you’ll need for several days. The gods only know what sort of weather you’ll meet out there, and you know for yourself that we’ve had snows that kept us to the manor for days at a time. You might not be able to get out for wood, and it’ll be just you and your maidservants until people can break a trail to you.”
A lot of work had clearly been done here already, and the boat had been divided up into rooms. The first one was almost all storage: a wardrobe with doors that latched shut, and cabinets, also with doors that latched shut, plus a very small table built into the deck, and a bit of seating with it, built into the bulkhead in a corner under the window, with shelves and hanging hooks above the window and the seating. I can have everything I absolutely need here, and everything else can go on a cargo boat, she thought. It was a pity that most of the nice things she’d absconded with from home would have to go into storage, but this was already better than she’d feared.
Passages were narrow, but not impossible. You had to go single file, but she had imagined much worse. She had, in fact, imagined something like a cargo barge, with everything stacked everywhere, and sleeping on top of a bed of crates with the roof of the barge inches from her nose.
The second room held a big bed, with a narrow passage along the wall with the window. The window, she saw now, was in a frame that could be slid open along the wall, and there were curtains to close out the light, gathered on round metal rods above and below the window. Above the bed were shelves and more ceiling hooks to make the maximum use of space.
“This would be your bed, or the bed of Kordas and his lady,” said the workman diffidently, with a hint of a blush.
The next room was small, and held a small barrel-like cast-metal stove with a stovepipe going up through the ceiling, a tiny hip-bath that could also be used to wash underthings or even larger garments, a bit of a pantry, and a bit of a sink.
This is even better. She’d pictured herself having to wash small-clothes in the lake or river, and how she was going to do that in winter, she’d had no idea. But the flat top of the stove gave a place to heat a pot of water, so the wash water would be warm, at least. And once the clothes-washing was done, she could at least give herself a quick once-over with a wet cloth, even in the dead of winter.
Next to that, an even tinier room with a close stool with a chamber pot, and sliding doors for privacy. And the last room, with a door at the end that led out to what she supposed must be the rear of the barge, held more storage and two narrow beds, one on each side, with shelves and hooks above the one that was on the wall that did not have windows. “Beds for servants,” the workman said. “We assumed you’d want them.”