Sect Year 3 · eighth month · night of day 24 · the thirtieth life: a river county beyond the Wide Sea, his eleventh year
The captain’s men put Imrin in the granary’s back room for the night. They didn’t call it a punishment. They said the steward wanted the clerk off the bank and out of the rain. They barred the front door with a plank and set a man on the step outside with a lantern and a rod across his knees.
Through the gap under the door Imrin could see the light move whenever the man shifted his weight. Once he heard him say something to himself about the river, in the flat voice of someone who had been told to stay awake and was trying hard to do it.
The room was small and smelled of rice husks and damp wool. Along one wall ran a bench where the clerks slept when the granary was full. Along the other, the rice store had been cut back into the stone, and the big glazed jars stood in a row with their lids tied down. Imrin set the lamp on the copy table in the corner, took the stub of wax from its dish, and sat with the slate in front of him, wiped and grey.
