Sect Year 2 · seventh month · day 14 · Sallen Bend, the granary yard at the river
They walked down from the fork in the morning and came over the bridge at Sallen Bend before the middle of the day. The line was already waiting in the granary yard. Lin counted it before he had decided to. Three hundred, and a few more at the back who had not yet made up their minds whether they belonged in it.
Since the basin, numbers had come to him slowly, and on the Wastes road Pei had kept the count for him. Now the number would not come up on its own. He had to hold each one still, and the effort of it sat behind his eyes. He didn’t like the effort, and he kept at it anyway.
Pei stood at his shoulder with the wax tablet inside her coat. She had said little since the fork. She looked at the line with the flat patience of someone who already knew how far a crack would run.
Sallen Bend was a village of grey roofs and wet nets, strung along the river where the lower road crossed on a stone bridge. Its granary stood at the end of the lane, a squat barn with both doors propped off their hinges and a stack of empty sacks against the step.
