Sect Year 2 · fourth month · day 2 · the dry floor of Sallow Basin, the sun overhead
“Lin!” Su’s voice came down the slope behind him, pitched to carry and held level by will. “Wait for the rope!”
He didn’t wait. He heard her move on the shelf above, and heard the scrape of a boot on rock, and then a flat voice he didn’t know telling her to stay where she stood. He didn’t look back to see whether she obeyed. He had already put his weight on the lip, and the lip had gone.
The slope below the shelf was broken shale and loose salt crust, and it ran down at an angle no sensible man would choose. Lin chose it. He went down the way the ferry-wife had taught him in a life that was not his own, with the weight on the outside edge of each foot and never on the heel. That way, the crust broke under him in small plates and did not take him with it. The Ferry Step had never been his. It was something he had borrowed from a river and forgotten to give back. Now, on the shale, it carried him down without his asking it to.
