They drew the last three years in the light of a single candle. The clerk read each name back before taking it, the way a priest reads a list before the stone goes up, and Wren answered each time: yes, that one.
When it was done Wren looked at the map on the table. It was Halloway, washed and true, and it was the best thing her hands had ever made. The river was in it, and the fallen bridge, and the names of every road. The map had no name for its maker in the corner.
"That is the last of it," the clerk said. "The debt is settled. The river thanks you."
Wren did not know how to answer. Her head was full of facts with no hooks: a ferryman she had liked, a sister whose face she could not call to mind. The cartographer's mark on the map was her own, but she could not remember putting it there.
"People will know it was me," Wren said. "The guild ledger has my name. The village will remember."
The clerk folded the coins and stood, and for the first time it looked almost sorry for her. "They will remember a Wren Osprey who has no other record. That is not the same as remembering you."
Wren turned the map over and wrote a single line on the back: Draw true, or the water will collect. Then she went to find a river, and a map, and a name she could deserve. She rolled the map and tied it with string that had been her sister's, and could not remember why the string was hers. That was the first moment she understood what had been taken. The road out of Halloway was the road on the map, and she walked it slowly, checking the water each time, and each time it told her the truth. She had never been so tired of being right.