Sect Year 3 · eighth month · night of day 24 · the thirtieth life: a river county beyond the Wide Sea, his eleventh year, then his twentieth
They marched him into the granary yard after the sun had cleared the far bank. The yard was cobbled and wet, and the rice carts stood in a line along one wall with their shafts propped up on blocks. Half the bank had come up to see. The wagon drivers leaned on their wheels.
The women who had carried the drowned up the reed-bank stood at the gate with their baskets on their hips and did not come any closer. Imrin saw the boy with the mud on his face sitting on the tailboard of a cart. His bare heels knocked against the wood, and he looked at the boy once and then did not look again.
He didn’t think about the names while they held him. He thought about the strokes, because the strokes were what he had cut, and they were still under the granary floor, dry now in the rice dust. He waited in their rows the way the drowned had waited on the mats. Nobody had found them. Nobody would find them by asking. That was the only thing in the yard that did not hurt.
