Chương 18: Chapter Eighteen: In Which Institutions Prove Unavoidable

The wild stock sold out quickly as expected. Alice was restacking the cultivated dahlias in their place when she noticed the man across the market. He was standing at the edge of the corn chandler's awning, not browsing, not waiting for anyone, just watching her pitch in stillness with narrowed eyes. She kept her hands moving. Dahlias, chrysanthemums. She was a normal, perfectly innocent person, who had no opinions about men standing under awnings. Her first thought regarding his identity was of the killer.

If he had found out about her and had decided that she was a liability after all, standing in the middle of Aldgate Row at half-past nine in the morning was not where he would choose to approach her. Too many witnesses. Too much light. Additionally, her [Threat Detection] wasn't triggered, so this man was unlikely to be an active danger to her. Her second thought on who it could be was the police. Not Inspector Rowe himself, as he wouldn't stand there.

If it were him, he would come to her directly, he would buy something, he would be polite and irritating. But perhaps one of his men? A plain-clothed policeman of some kind? As she played with that idea, she was interrupted by Nell appearing at the corner with her match tray. Nell set up her boxes, glanced once at the man under the awning, and said, without particular emphasis, "You've had wild stock on this pitch for three weeks."

"I have," Alice agreed easily, unsure of where this was going.

"Every other day."

"More or less." Nell sorted a matchbox.

"That man's from the guild, most likely. The Gatherers' and Collectors' branch. They'll have had a complaint." Alice looked at the dahlias. The relief that it wasn't Rowe or worse was brief and immediately replaced by a different, more annoying kind of problem. She had known, if she was honest with herself, that something like this was possible.

She had known since Hyde told her in September that wild gathering was a licensed profession, since Nell had mentioned guild-registered collectors in a similar conversation. But she had not really addressed it, because she really didn't want to be involved with any organizations, be they the guild or the church, as it meant more people with more access to more information about Alice Darling, and that had seemed, for a while, like an unacceptable risk.

Now that she had more common sense knowledge about the world, she was aware of the powers that could ruin her life. She had a veritable library of books in her room to make sure that didn't happen. In her world, the 18th and 19th centuries were the time when guilds declined and unions arose. In this world that did not happen. Instead, the guilds thrived as a result of the Angel's Arrival.

The Crown Market Compact had been founded forty-six years ago, in 1791, which changed a lot about how people perceived and managed the System in their lives. The church had moved first to claim the gifts they received as divine, and the Compact had formed as the counter-weight, if your class was your divine vocation, your class was also your professional capacity, which made it a labour matter. And thus two things became true: the church managed spiritual rank, the Compact managed practical trade.

In the years since, the Compact had expanded into something more complex, a sprawling institutional network of guilds, branches, and registers that covered virtually every skilled profession in Britannia. A flower seller on a market pitch fell under the Aldgate Row market authority, which answered to the Compact, which was why she had a pitch registration at all. A wild gatherer was something else, a registered profession with its own branch, its own licensing structure, and its own rules.

Generally, a person foraging outside the city, every week or so, in small amounts was easily ignored, but Alice had been operating outside those rules for three weeks, in quantities and frequencies that made the violation impossible to overlook.

"What can they actually do?" she said.

"They'd report you for unlicensed trade." Nell's tone was quite dry.

"Goes to the Compact. You'd get a fine, proportional to estimated unlicensed income, and given what your wild stock goes for, that won't be small. If you don't pay or don't comply, they can flag your pitch registration. Market wardens can suspend your pitch pending review." The pitch. She would lose the pitch. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"I don't want to join a guild," Alice said.

"You don't have to." Nell set a matchbox down with a small precise click.

"There's a freelance license. The Compact offers it to occasional gatherers, people in your situation, supplementing their trade. One shilling registration, quarterly declaration of routes and goods, and a monthly fee. You'd be legal. The complaint goes away." Alice looked at her. Nell's face was entirely neutral, which was its own kind of information.

"You seem to know the process quite well," Alice said. In fact, much too well.

"It's useful information," Nell said.

"Come on. I know someone."

The office was a single ground-floor room on a side street off the market, shared between three different Compact runners by the look of it, with three desks, three sets of ledgers, and one window looking directly at a wall. Thomas Baxter was at the desk nearest the door, writing something in a ledger, the carnation in his buttonhole slightly wilted from the morning. He was a young man, with curly hair, a somewhat tanned face and freckles. He looked up when they came in. His eyes went to Nell first.

"I've got ten minutes," he said, and pushed the ledger back.

"That's enough." Nell nodded toward Alice.

"Thomas Baxter, Sixth Compact. Alice Darling, she's on the Row. Flower pitch, Aldgate side." Thomas stood briefly, it coming off more as an automatic courtesy than genuine care for rules of etiquette, and extended a hand.

"Baxter."

"Darling." She shook it. He had a very simple handshake, firm and quick.

"The flower girl who's undercutting us," he said. Alice held his look for a moment and raised an eyebrow.

"That's one way to put it." Something in his expression shifted slightly, it wasn't quite warmth, but he did seem amused. He looked at Nell.

"She wants to know her options," Nell said, and sat down in the chair beside the door as if she had sat in it before.

"I thought so." He settled back into his seat and opened a different ledger.

"The Gatherers' and Collectors' branch has had three complaints in the past week about your pitch. Volume and frequency, you've been undercutting licensed freelancers who operate within their declared limits. They're considering filing a Notice of Unlicensed Trade with the Crown Market Compact."

"What does that result in, practically?"

"A fine, initially. Estimated at six to eight shillings given your apparent sales volume over the past two weeks, which…" he looked at her as if checking whether she wanted him to continue "... is the better outcome. If the notice goes unaddressed, the market authority can issue a pitch suspension, pending compliance review. That process takes four to six weeks and during it you cannot operate a registered pitch on any Compact market in the district." Four to six weeks without the pitch.

That would set her back financially considerably.

"What does the freelance license cover?" she asked. He explained it, and Alice thought it over. One shilling registration, paid once. A quarterly route declaration, meaning northeast gate to the Lea marshes, first open section, which she didn't have an issue sharing at least for now. Goods declaration on return, cursory, handled at the gate. That was fine. Maximum three gathering runs per week, which she was currently within, so she wouldn't need to change much.

A flat monthly fee of two shillings, which she could afford with the wild foraging, though it was a tad expensive. No guild membership, no additional dues, no obligations beyond the declaration. The guild would receive a notification of her license and the complaint would be administratively resolved.

"What does membership offer that freelance doesn't?"

"Medical coverage for injuries sustained on a licensed run. Guild archive access, such as route maps, creature classifications, historical records going back to 1793. Guild training, if you wanted it. Knight escort eligibility for deeper routes." He paused.

"The freelance license doesn't cover anything beyond the outer marsh sections. If you go further, you'd need to register with a guild-supervised party." She did intend to go deeper some time soon, but that was not something she was willing to share with anyone at the moment.

"The freelance license, then," she said.

"I'll need until end of week to have the money in order." Thomas closed the ledger.

"End of week is fine." He looked briefly at Nell. He looked like a man doing a favour for someone they owed favours to. Then he turned back to Alice.

"I'll hold off filing the complaint until then, for Nell's sake." Alice said thank you and tried to mean it but genuinely couldn't. She didn't like the idea that she would have to pay consistent fees for a license to a single authority that apparently controlled all Londinium trade, but she didn't really have much of a choice. She smiled politely and followed Nell back out into the street. They walked the length of the side road before Alice said anything.

"You seemed to know each other well," she said, and left it there. Nell glanced at her sideways.

"I sell matches," she said.

"You meet people." It was not an answer to the question Alice had not quite asked. She was fairly confident Nell had a gatherer's license, freelance or otherwise, though she had never seen her gather or sell anything other than her matches. Probably had one for quite some time. Still, she did not say any of this, and Nell did not offer any of it, so they walked back to the pitch in the ordinary comfortable silence of two people who were at peace with not needing to know the answers to everything about one another.