The Shopkeeper Who Counted the Missing

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Grab a seat on deck. The sea is about to get loud.

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The shopkeeper knew eight people had gone into his storeroom. He could hear seven breathing.

He put his ear against the door again. The eighth might have been holding her breath. She might have slipped out through the loading hatch before Buggy's men drove everyone inside. He had no view of the hatch from the narrow passage, and the pirates had shoved a rack of empty jars against the storeroom door. Guessing would not open it.

"Mrs. Vale?" he called softly.

Three people answered at once. None of them was Mrs. Vale.

"Don't all talk," he said. "I need names. One at a time."

Outside, a crash rattled the shutters over his front window. Orange Town had been making that kind of noise for most of the day. He had learned to distinguish falling masonry from cannon fire by how long the glass trembled afterward. This was neither. Someone had kicked a crate across the lane.

The storeroom lay behind the little shop where he sold oil, lamp wicks, cloth, and other things people remembered needing only after dark. Its rear loading hatch opened onto the alley. Its inner door led through his stock passage to the shop floor and out the front. He had locked the front shutters when the pirates took the square. Locking them had kept the stock in and his neighbors out. Then the neighbors had come pounding on the hatch.

He had opened it. He had counted eight as they hurried past him, two children, five adults and Mrs. Vale, who moved slowly on a bad knee. A pirate had appeared at the alley mouth before he could lead them through the shop. The shopkeeper had pushed everyone into the storeroom, pulled the door almost shut and dropped behind his counter. The pirate's boot had sent the jar rack sliding against the door.

The pirate had gone on to louder work. The rack had stayed.

"Toma," came a voice from inside. "I'm here."

"You make six," the shopkeeper said. He wrote the name on the back of a price tag with a stub of pencil. He had been making the list while he could still see the people run. He did not trust a count made entirely by fear.

"Seven," said a small voice.

"Who spoke?"

"Me. Lia."

"I have you already, Lia. You came in with your brother."

"Then why did you say six?"

Because he had counted voices instead of people. Because the boy had been too frightened to speak. Because Mrs. Vale had not answered. None of those was a useful answer for a child behind a door.

"I meant six who answered," he said. "Stay by your brother."

A roof tile broke somewhere above the next street. Shouting followed it, too far away to turn into words. The shopkeeper checked the passage to the front. The shutter bar still held. Behind it stood shelves of folded cloth and oil tins, all of it easier to carry than the people in the storeroom.

The rack was wedged between the door and a ceiling beam cracked by the earlier blast. Pulling it straight out would drop glass and perhaps the beam. He could tip the rack toward himself, but the passage was scarcely wide enough for his shoulders. Once it moved, he would have to hold it while the people came through.

He tried the iron frame with both hands. It shifted an inch. The beam ticked above him.

"Don't push from your side," he told the room. "Whatever you hear, leave the door alone."

"We can help," Toma said.

"You can help by keeping Lia away from the hinges."

The shopkeeper stepped back and saw another problem. Even if he opened the storeroom, the front of the shop was still barred. He could not hold the rack and open it at the same time. He needed someone he trusted with the key, and he needed the shutters lifted where the pirates could see straight into his stock.

From the alley came a quick knock, twice, then once. His neighbor's signal.

He opened the side door no wider than his palm. Mara stood outside with a sack over one shoulder and ash in her hair. She had run the bakery next door since before his beard went white. The sack was empty; he knew by the way it hung.

"The little one said you had people in back," she whispered.

"Eight. Maybe. I'm checking."

Mara looked at the rack through the crack. "Your front's still closed."

"I know."

"Give me the key. I'll lift it."

He looked past her to the alley mouth. Two of Buggy's men crossed the far end, one with a bolt of cloth under each arm. Not his cloth yet. Both had knives, and neither had noticed Mara.

"If I open that front," he said, "they'll come in for anything left on the shelves."

"They already took half the street."

"Not this half."

Mara did not call him selfish. That made it harder to cling to the shutters. She had a bakery with its door kicked in and flour tracked across the lane. He could see what she had lost without asking her to recite it.

"They're behind the door," she said. "Your cloth isn't."

He put the front key into her hand. It was the only copy he kept on his person. The second hung beside his bed upstairs, beyond the shop floor. Mara closed her fingers around the teeth.

"Open it wide," he said. "If you leave it half down, they'll crowd and trip. Take them through to the fountain street, then turn left by the green awning. The lane behind that is still clear. I checked it before the jar rack fell."

"Still clear when?"

He had checked it moments ago. Moments could expire. "When I looked. Have a second way if it isn't."

"I do." She glanced at the storeroom. "You coming?"

"I have to count them out."

"You can count outside."

"Not if one is still in there."

Mara's face tightened. She had known Mrs. Vale longer than he had. She went toward the front without arguing again.

The shutter bolts complained as she worked them free. Daylight came into the shop in bright strips, and with it the smell of powder and broken oranges. The shopkeeper heard a pirate shout at Mara from the street. She told him, in a voice loud enough to carry, that the oil tins were empty.

They were not. The lie bought her the length of one latch.

The front shutters went up with a scrape. The shop floor was open. The old counter, the cloth, the oil, all of it faced the street. He could lower the shutters again only by taking the key back and leaving the eight behind the rack.

"Ready," Mara called.

He set his shoulder against the iron frame and pushed it sideways. The first movement drove a shard through his sleeve and into the skin near his elbow. He sucked in a breath but kept his weight on it. The ceiling beam settled onto the rack's upper bar. It held.

"One at a time," he said. "Hands low. Go to Mara. Don't stop for anything on the shelves."

The door opened a narrow wedge. A boy squeezed out first, too quick to identify until he turned and reached for his sister.

"Toma," the shopkeeper said.

"I told you I was here."

"Now I can see it. Go."

Lia followed, one hand over her head as if that could stop the beam. He called her name too and marked the two lines on the tag with his thumb. The pencil was stuck behind his ear. He could not lift a hand from the rack to use it.

Three adults came next. One carried a cloth-wrapped bundle that clinked.

"Leave it," the shopkeeper said.

"It's medicine," the woman answered.

He could not see inside the cloth. He could see her grip and the way she kept the bundle away from the children's heads. "Keep it close, then. Keep moving."

Mara received them at the front. A man in stripes ran into the shop while she was guiding Toma and Lia out. He took two steps toward the cloth shelf, saw the open passage and the people coming through, and grinned.

"Customers," he said.

Mara planted herself between him and Lia. "You'll wait your turn."

The pirate laughed and swept three folded bolts from the top shelf into his arms. He did not follow the children. That was the only useful thing about his greed.

The shopkeeper felt the beam press harder on the frame. The sixth person crawled out, then the seventh. He had faces for all seven, even if he could not bring the pencil down to mark them. Mrs. Vale had not emerged.

"Mrs. Vale," he called. "I need your voice."

Silence.

The pirate at the front shouted for someone else to bring a cart. More feet entered the shop. Glass broke near the oil shelves. Mara's voice cut through the noise as she gave the neighbors the route past the green awning.

The shopkeeper could let go of the frame and hope Mrs. Vale had left by the hatch. He had not seen her do it. A count of seven would become a claim of eight if he wanted it badly enough. That was how towns learned to misplace people after a fight.

"Look behind the flour sacks," he told the others in the room.

"We're all out," someone said from the shop.

"You are seven."

He shifted his foot to brace the rack with his hip. The beam creaked. A torn sleeve caught on the iron, pinning his arm until he yanked it free. Blood warmed his forearm. He bent low, keeping one hand against the frame, and looked through the opening.

Mrs. Vale was on the floor beside the loading hatch. Her bad leg lay under a fallen crate. Her eyes were open. She was trying to push the crate off without enough leverage.

"I thought I could get out the back," she said when she saw him. "I couldn't lift it."

"I can see that."

"A polite man would pretend I almost had it."

"A polite man wouldn't have built this room with only two exits."

He could not reach the crate while holding the rack. The room's other exit, the loading hatch, still opened to the alley, but someone had dropped a barrel across its outer step. He could not tell whether a pirate waited beyond it. Mrs. Vale could not crawl there on that leg anyway.

"Mara!" he shouted. "One still inside. I need your shoulder on the frame."

Mara appeared at the passage with the key hanging from a cord around her wrist. She had made the children go on without her. That was her choice, not one he had asked her to make.

"The front is full of pirates," she said.

"They can have the front. Hold this."

She braced beside him. The frame took her weight. He slid inside and lifted the crate just far enough for Mrs. Vale to pull her leg free. She bit back a cry and took his arm. He did not call the leg sound because she could stand for one step.

At the doorway Mara's boot slipped on the shards. The rack shifted. The beam struck its top with a crack that went through the shopkeeper's teeth.

"Now," Mara said.

He brought Mrs. Vale through the wedge. Mara let the frame fall behind them. The storeroom door slammed and held. They did not go back to see whether the beam followed it down.

The front of the shop had become a market for men who paid with threats. A pirate wrestled an oil tin from its shelf. Another dragged cloth toward the street. Mara turned Mrs. Vale toward the side door instead of the open front. The shopkeeper guided them into the alley and counted again: Mara, Mrs. Vale, himself. The other seven were already beyond the green awning.

"Can you reach them?" he asked Mrs. Vale.

"With Mara. Not if you make me run."

"No running." He handed Mara the price tag. Seven names had marks made by a thumb, one did not. "Mark her when she reaches them. Tell me if anyone from the list is missing there."

Mara studied him. "You're staying with the shop."

"I'm staying until I know the lane is empty."

It was not the same thing, and they both knew it. She took Mrs. Vale away at the pace the injured leg allowed. The key stayed on Mara's wrist. He did not ask for it back.

From the front came the sound of a shelf falling. The shopkeeper stood in the side doorway and watched the last of his oil carried into the street. A narrow roll of clean wrapping cloth remained in his apron; everything larger was on the shelves. He could not stop the pirates without sending them down the alley after his neighbors. He could keep the passage clear and count anyone else who came through.

Above the roofs, a metal strike rang once and was swallowed by shouting. He did not know who was fighting or which way it would turn. He knew where eight people had gone, where seven had reached the awning, and where the eighth was being helped. Until Mara returned with a count, he would not call anyone safe.

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