Sect Year 2 · eighth month · day 3 · Ridgefoot Gate, the Wastes’ edge
Lin had counted them in through the gate for the better part of a fortnight, since he walked back up the road from the fork, and on the third morning of the eighth month he counted them out again. He kept the number the way the granary had taught him to keep it, in fives.
One thumb for each five and the other hand for whatever was left over, with nothing written down. The method had no ledger in it. It held the count until the count was finished, and then it let the count go, and that was the part he had never found a way to explain to Pei.
Twenty-two carriers stood in the gate-yard in the grey light. They had brought what they could carry on a back or in a sack. A copper pot with a dent in its belly, a coil of rope, a child’s wooden horse with one ear gone, a bundle of millet seed that a woman would not let anyone else lift. Some of them had been told by the Hollow Court’s clerks that a sleeping thing lived inside them. Some had known it all their lives and had kept their mouths shut until the clerks came and made them open them.
