Mourner walked up to the Garrison Mound at first light on the fortieth day, as she had walked up every morning since the grave-ground was first dug above the wall. The path was steep and stony, and the grass on either side of it was grey with the frost, and at the top the mound rose out of the mist like the back of a sleeping animal with its head turned toward the marsh. The stones of the graves stood in long rows along its flank. Some were carved with a name, and some with a trade, and some with nothing but a notch cut into the top of the stone, where the Hold’s grave-ground had been unable to find the name a stone needed.
Mourner did not carry a book. She did not need one. She carried the names in her throat, as a bell carries its note, and she sang them only in the order they had been given.
She stopped at the first row, where the oldest stones lay. They were the masons. Mourner knew them by their trades before she knew them by their names, because the trade was the first thing a builder had been, and the name had come after it, in the wage-forms. She sang them now in the old order, softly, with the trade first and the name second, so that nobody who heard her would think the names were for a wage.
