On by Adam Roberts Page A

you be back?’ he asked.
    ‘If it goes well, who knows?’ said Akathe, shouldering his pack. ‘If it goes badly, we may be back inside the week, begging off all our friends for food to stop us starving.’ He laughed at this and Tighe laughed too, but there was a desperation behind the fun and behind the too-hard hugs they gave one another.
    The market shelf was now always busy with people loitering and hoping for work. Some of their faces were starting to look very drawn indeed. These were people who had eaten nothing but stalkgrass for weeks. When Tighe would wander up to his usual crags, up to where the goats were pastured, he was never alone any more. There was always a group of people, with sucked-in faces and rips in their clothes, pulling up stalkgrass and munching at it with a frightening desperation. Sometimes they would call to him for work; or for money, food. But he avoided these encounters, turned and scurried back down the dog-leg to make his way down.
    For about a week he avoided going to Witterhe’s. Then he met the old monkeymonger on the market shelf. ‘Well, my boy,’ he called over to him. ‘Haven’t seen you in quite a while, quite a while. My girl, she’s been asking about you.’
    And despite himself Tighe was drawn in. ‘She has?’
    ‘Sure she has.’
    Tighe grinned. ‘Well, I was thinking of going down this afternoon. I’ve got to buy a candle now, but I could come by this afternoon.’
    ‘Evening’s better,’ said Old Witterhe. He spat, the saliva coming out dark with whatever it was he was chewing. ‘She’s off in the Rightward crags gathering some vegetation for now, some apefeed. Come in the evening. What you do to your head, boy?’
    ‘Knocked it on the door,’ Tighe said, automatically. The thought of seeing Wittershe again had filled his stomach with light and excitement. Itwas an uneasy feeling, too; a knowing transgression. His pashe would be furious if she knew, his Grandhe also. But his Grandhe need never know. His pashe need never know.
    Most of the traders on traders’ ledge were closed, but his pashe had told him to get a candle, so Tighe went to the chandler. Even hungry people needed light at night and the chandler – a woman called Anshe – had had a long relationship with Tighe’s family. Candles were made mostly out of wax secretions scraped from the leaves of a number of plants, but a degree of goat fat was an important ingredient in the mix to stiffen the finished product. Pashe had told him that Anshe would hand over a candle, part of some complicated arrangement of debt and counter-debt, and Tighe had agreed eagerly to collect it. Anshe was leaning over the bar of her dawn-door, smoking, when he arrived.
    ‘Well met and hello,’ said Tighe, a little shy. ‘I have come for a candle. My pashe says you and she have an arrangement?’
    ‘I’ll fetch the one I made,’ she said. ‘I made it for your pashe a few days ago. I’ve been expecting you.’
    She went inside and returned with the candle all wrapped up in grass-weave, handing it over with a smile. Tighe smiled back.
    He loitered on the way home, and found a crevice in a not too busy ledge to sit in and stare out at the paling midday sky and the bone-coloured clouds. He toyed with the candle. It was so heavy; like stone. Yet he could press his thumbnail into its pliancy. How could it have the weight of stone and not the hardness of stone? That was an interesting question. Wax must be made out of different stuff from stone. Two different sorts of matter. He pondered for a while, trying to reckon up how many different sorts of matter there must be. Air and water, for example; then brittle and solid and pliant. But it was too tiring. The sun was warm against his face. He slowly cleaned out one of his nostrils with his little finger.
    A monkey skittered along the ledge, running with legs and draping forearms. It was gone before Tighe could notice if it was collared, or to whom it might belong.
    There