What We Weighed Before the Scales Went Dark

Cassia by the fistful, saffron by the single thread — the Arcade spends what it hoarded all season, before the scales go dark.

Wool off the last Kael Dorn convoy, sold clean through by second bell, six marks five the bale — the chandler’s boy ran twice, before the scales go dark.

Copper from Oru keeps climbing with no cause entered anywhere for it; some prices, like some hungers, keep rising long after the reason has gone dark.

Olive oil at two full marks, the kitchens laying in three days of flame — a fire, I am told, can be hoarded too: poured now, spent only after the dark.

Nine jars of lamp oil moved today for every jar of kindling sold — the Bazaar has decided, with no vote taken, what kind of dark it expects.

A notary kept his bench an hour past closing, inking debts that could not wait; some accounts get settled only because the dark is coming, not because they are resolved.

A last berth sails north tonight, cargo only, before the mountain passes shut — no face goes with it. Only grain, and wool, and someone else’s whole winter, into the dark.

The gulls have held their line sixteen mornings running, arguing with a season that has already decided without them. They do not stop. They have never needed the dark to agree.

I weighed none of it. I only watched — a dyer with empty hands in a market that has mistaken counting for keeping, and called the mistake wisdom, before the scales go dark.