Sect Year 3 · eighth month · night of day 24 · the thirtieth life: a river county beyond the Wide Sea, his eleventh year
“Count the dead without lying.”
“Tongue of Nations.”
The water had gone down on the near side of the flood bank, and the mud it left was grey and smelled of rot. On the far side it still stood high and brown against the reeds, and the reeds leaned in it like cattle at a trough. Imrin sat at the end of the row with a slate across his knees and a stick of chalk in his fist.
The bodies lay along the top of the bank on reed mats, one beside another, with their feet to the wind. Someone had hung a lantern on a pole at the head of the row, and its light made a yellow room of the first twenty mats and left the rest in the dark.
He was eleven. His mother had sent him out with the slate because he could write, and the judge’s office had given him the chalk because nobody else in the county wanted to sit up all night with the dead. The office had said the count would be taken at dawn.
