Turn 5 of 7

Ask what your grandmother's coin has to do with any of this

You hold both coins up, one in each hand, and the lamplight catches the identical stamp — the same bare tree, the same roots splayed like pulled threads. The weight of them is uncannily alike, as though they were struck from the same die or cut from the same piece of metal. Your grandmother's is darker, aged, but the craftsmanship is unmistakable. You set them down side by side on the counter and look at Aldous across them.

"My grandmother had one of these," you say. "She kept it wrapped in cloth at the bottom of a box she never let me touch as a child. She called it a weight, not money. She never explained what that meant, and I was young enough to stop asking." You pause.

"What does she have to do with your service in the Underwood?"

Aldous stares at the two coins. The colour has drained from his face further, and he reaches out a hand toward your grandmother's coin but does not touch it, as though he is afraid of what it might confirm. His fingers hover an inch above the surface, trembling.

"I don't know your grandmother," he says quietly. "But I was told — the one who asked me to carry the thing out — they said if I needed help, I should find an apothecary. Any apothecary near the Underwood would do. They said the coins would be recognised."

He pulls his hand back and closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, the grief you saw earlier has shifted into something more urgent, more frightened.

"I thought they meant the coins were currency. Trade. Something I could spend. I did not think they were — I did not think they were connected to people. To families." His voice cracks on the last word, and he presses his knuckles against the counter to steady himself.

You think of your grandmother's hands, broad and sure, grinding compounds in the mortar that is now yours. You think of the way she used to walk the treeline some evenings, alone, without explanation, and how the family learned not to ask about that either. The box of weights sits open on the counter, and the word your grandmother used keeps turning over in your mind. A weight. Something that holds a thing down. Something that keeps a thing in place. You are beginning to suspect that the coins are not payment at all — that they are something far older and far more specific than that, and that your grandmother knew exactly what they were.

Behind you, Iris steps through the doorway. She does not announce herself. She simply appears at your shoulder, her apron still on, her dark hair escaping its tie, and looks at the coins on the counter with an expression that is not surprise but the careful blankness of someone who has been listening long enough to piece a few things together. She meets your eyes, and in hers there is a question she has not yet earned the right to ask aloud.