Brooke ‘Bookeeper’'s Arc

Chapter 25 of 32

Brooke woke before dawn with the merchant's tally still in her head. She walked back to the thrift store front while the sky was gray. The crate was gone, but the bearded man was there, loading empty sacks into a hand cart. She caught him before he could leave. She offered him a deal. Whatever books or magazines he hauled into Rust next, she would buy first. Top price, paid in coin and trade goods, before he laid a single spine on the walk. He scratched his beard and squinted at her. He had another run coming in two weeks. Cookbooks, almanacs, a stack of old hobby magazines. Brooke pulled a folded sheet from her coat. She wrote the terms in plain lines, read them aloud, and signed her name. He signed under hers in slow block letters. She tore the page in half and gave him his share. The accord was small, but it was binding between them. By afternoon she had cleared a long wooden shelf along the library's back wall. She rubbed the grain clean with a rag and set it under the window where the light fell. It would hold magazines. A whole row of them, free to anyone who walked in. She stood back and looked at the empty shelf. The merchant would come again, and again after that, and each time his crate would empty into her hands before the street ever saw it. The library would not be undersold. Then her clerk called from the front desk — a stranger was at the door asking after the contract by name.