Three copper chits sit on the tar board. One bends at the edge, one carries a clean stamp, and one wears a black thumbprint where a clerk pressed too hard and called it good.
The yard likes easy math. Wagons, seals, names, all of it gets cut down to marks, then the marks get cut down again to fees. Joss keeps the three chits in view while the line shuffles forward, because a man who waits too long in a yard like this ends up paying for his own patience. His left shoulder hangs lower under the strap, and the old break complains when he leans over the board. Mara's slow wagon stands in the second lane with one wheel sunk to the hub, and his chalk keeps drifting toward the tag that would leave her load in the ditch before the noon fee turns mean.
A warehouse hinge bangs somewhere behind the stacked pilings. The sound cracks across the yard and makes the nearest mule pull its ears back. River slime shines in the wheel grooves, black and slick, and the tar on the board leaves a tacky film on Joss's fingertip when he lifts the chalk. He wipes it on his thigh. The cloth there already carries three colors of road, none of them clean enough to bother naming.
A passage chit wedges under the gate chain pin, copper dark where the wood has rubbed it smooth. Ordinary yard trick. The chain bites less that way. The clerk calls it a washer, which is a clean enough name for a little stamped lie. Joss thumbs the edge of his own chit until the ridge bites skin, then sets it back on the board before the slate dust can stick. Clean line, clean count, clean crossing. That is the sort of rule that keeps a road open and a crew light.
Len arrives with the cracked tin cup hooked around one finger. The cup has a split along the lip and a dent that points at nobody in particular. He lifts it toward the gate table. "For the record," he says, "this cup has crossed more roads than the clerk, and it has the scars to prove it." The yard hand at the table keeps his face flat. Len sets the cup down anyway, because if the road wants a measure, it can start with something honest. Two mules shift in the hitch, and one of them bites through a wax tag like it has a grievance. That ought to count as a statement of opinion.
The clerk at the tally table looks up from the slate and taps the frost line with a fingernail. "New levy," he says. "Passage goes up at noon, and that rear wagon does not go through on the same fee."