Sect Year 2 · third month · night of day 6 · the twentieth life: the high road milestone, Halde’s eighth year
“Stand at the milestone until the dead man lowers his hands.”
“Long Look.”
Halde was eight years old when his father walked him up the high road and put a cloth in his hand.
“The face and the names,” his father said. He was a stone-cutter with a bent back and a voice that did not carry, so Halde had to lean in to hear him. “Keep the face clean so the miles show. Keep the cutting deep so the wagon drivers can read it in the rain. That is all the stone asks of you.”
“And him?”
“Leave him be.” His father looked past the milestone at the thing that stood beside it, and his face did not change at all. “He has his hands out. Don’t stare at them.”
Then he went back down the road to the village, which was a grey smudge in the valley where the grass still grew. The grass stopped a few hundred steps below the stone, along a line as neat as the hem of a blanket. Above that line there was only bare rock, the wind, and the stone steps going up to the milestone. Halde stood at the top of the steps with a cloth, a bucket, and a dead man.
