Seyun walked out through Oran’s north gate as the morning river mist lifted off the reeds. He began the climb up the old mountain burial road toward the western ridge. The sky above the limestone crags was a pale, washed autumn blue without a cloud along the northern peaks. On the winter afternoon ten months ago when Ash Reed’s gate had closed behind him, freezing rain had turned the wheel ruts into troughs of grey slush. He had walked with his chin tucked into a threadbare collar. He carried a torn straw sleeping mat strapped across his shoulders like a badge of grievance.
He carried no sleeping mat today. Two weeks earlier, with the first copper fees earned from teaching dockside stance classes at the timber wharf, he had bought a new tick of clean oat-straw and wool ticking for his bed above Master Orin’s wheelwright shop and burned the rotted matting in the charcoal pit. He wore a clean grey hemp coat over his linen shoulder wrap. His three copper needles were tucked into their leather fold inside his sash, his Account Book resting against his ribs, and a plain ash walking stick in his right hand to keep his stride even on the steeper switchbacks. Behind him, a young stable hand from the north gate led a hired brown pack mule carrying two empty wicker panniers lined with dry straw, paid for in advance out of Seyun’s teaching coin.
