Sect Year 3 · eighth month · night of day 24 · the thirtieth life: a river county beyond the Wide Sea, his twentieth year
The debt belonged to a widow named Lenna Brenn, and it was small. Her husband had carried salt up the road for eleven years and had paid the toll on every load. In the last month of his life he had owed the road the toll on one load more, which he couldn’t pay before the fever took him.
Nine measures and a half of copper. Imrin had copied the figure three times that season, once into the road’s ledger, once onto the carter’s tally, and once onto the sheet that went down to the toll-master’s brother in the city. Every copy carried the same figure.
“The road has decided it will not chase a dead man’s salt,” Orrec said. He set the book down on the copy table, open at the page, and put his thumb on the figure. “Strike it. Clean. The woman has enough to carry.”
Imrin looked at the figure. He had written it in his own hand, square and upright, the way the road wanted. He thought about the county book on the bank, and the plain straight stroke that Fen had drawn through his name at the gate. The ink had gone dark and dried, and from that moment the name could not be read. Nobody who opened the county book afterward could have known that a clerk by…
