Sect Year 3 · twelfth month · night of day 2 · the thirty-fourth life: the Tolu uplands, his seventh year
The ford camp had grown into a town of canvas and stone in the three weeks since they came down off the hill. It sat on the new bank below the broken Span. There, the old road ended at the water, and the river ran past the end of it with a sound that did not stop.
The Span itself lay across the gorge like a sentence broken in the middle. Its two halves stood on either bank, and the water went through the gap between them, and at night the lamps in the camp made a row of small yellow shapes on the swirling surface.
Lin sat with his back to a flat stone at the edge of the fire. The wood was damp and gave more smoke than heat. The smoke went up past the canvas and into the dark, and under it the river went on. He had grown used to the river in three weeks. He no longer heard it as a sound. He heard it only when it changed.
The chip was in his right hand. He had kept it there since the morning on the hill, and it hadn’t gone cold again. He held it loosely in his palm, the way he would hold a coin he wasn’t yet ready to spend, and every so often his thumb moved across its sharp edge…
