The Luminaries

pounds weekly, with expenses. I charge in advance, of course.’
    She shook her head. ‘I can’t pay you in advance. I don’t have any money.’
    ‘Perhaps you might draw down a loan of some kind,’ Fellowes said delicately, shifting his gaze away. ‘I’m afraid that I am very strict on all matters of finance; I make no exceptions, and take nothing on promise. It’s nothing personal; it comes with the training , that’s all.’
    ‘I can’t pay you in advance,’ Anna said again, ‘but if you do this for me, I can pay you treble your retainer, when the money comes in.’
    ‘Treble?’ Fellowes smiled gently. ‘Legal processes often take a very long time, Miss Wetherell, and sometimes without results: there is no guarantee that the money would come in at all. Mrs. Wells’s appeal took two months to verify, and as you’ve shown very well, that business is not over yet!’
    ‘Treble, up to a ceiling of one hundred pounds,’ Anna said firmly, ‘but if you clear the funds for me within the fortnight, I’ll pay you two hundred, in cash money.’
    Fellowes raised his eyebrows. ‘Dear me,’ he said. ‘This is very bold.’
    ‘It comes with the training,’ Anna said.
    But here Anna Wetherell made a misstep. Mr. Fellowes’ eyes widened, and he shrank away. Why, she was a
whore
, he thought—and then it all came back to him. This was the very whore who had tried to end her life in the Kaniere-road, the very day of Staines’s disappearance, and Wells’s death! Fellowes was new to Hokitika: he did not know Anna Wetherell by sight, and had not immediately recognised her name. It was only at her brazen remark that he suddenly knew her.
    Anna had mistaken his discomfiture for simple hesitation. ‘Do you consent to my terms, Mr. Fellowes?’
    Fellowes looked her up and down. ‘I shall inquire at the Reserve Bank about this alleged retortion,’ he said. His voice was cold. ‘If the rumour you heard was a good one, then we will draw up a contract ; if it was not, then I’m afraid I cannot help you.’
    ‘You are very kind,’ Anna said.
    ‘None of that,’ said Fellowes, roughly. ‘Where might I find you, say in three hours’ time?’
    Anna hesitated. She could not return to the Wayfarer’s Fortune that afternoon. She had no money on her person, but perhaps she could ask an old acquaintance to stand her a drink at one of the saloons along Revell-street.
    ‘I’ll just come back,’ she said. ‘I’ll just come back and meet you here.’
    ‘As you wish,’ Fellowes said. ‘Let us err on the side of caution and say five o’clock.’
    ‘Five o’clock,’ Anna said. She held out her hand for the charred document, but Fellowes was already opening his wallet, to slip the piece of paper inside.
    ‘I think I’ll hold onto this,’ he said. ‘Just for the meantime.’

MOON IN ARIES, CRESCENT
    In which Te Rau Tauwhare makes a startling discovery.
    Te Rau Tauwhare was feeling very pleased as he leaped from stone to stone through the shallows of the Arahura River, making his way downriver towards the beach. He had spent the past month with a party of surveyors in the Deception Valley, and his purse was full; what’s more, that morning he had come upon a marvellous slab of
kahurangi pounamu
, the weight of which was causing his satchel to thump against his back with every step.
    Back at Mawhera it would be time to dig the crop of kumara from the ground: Tauwhare knew it from the appearance of
Whanui
in the northern sky, the star low on the horizon, dawning well after midnight, and setting well before the dawn. His people called this month
Pou-tu-te-rangi
—the post that lifted up the sky—for at nights
Te Ikaroa
formed a milky arch that ran north to south across the black dome of the heavens. It hung between
Whanui
, in the north, and
Autahi
, in the south, and it passed through the red jewel of
Rehua
, directly overhead: for a moment, every night, the sky became a perfect compass, its needle a dusty stripe of stars. At the dawning of
Whanui
the crops would be unearthed from the ground; after this was
Paenga-wha -wha
, when the tubers would be piled upon the margins of the fields to be classified and counted, and then taken to the store pits and storehouses, to be stacked for the winter months ahead.After
Paenga-wha-wha
, the year came to an end—or, as the
tohunga
phrased, it, ‘to a death’.
    He rounded a bend in the river, left the shallows, and mounted the bank. Crosbie Wells’s cottage