Sect Year 4 · seventh month · night of day 9 · the thirty-eighth life: the Vault quarter of Serai, his first year
“One night. One life. Will you turn?”
“Calm. Willing.”
“Pay what you owe, not what you are owed.”
“Perfect Recall.”
The house smelled of wax and cut brass. That was the first thing Jorn knew, before the light and before the cold on his skin, and he would keep it for the rest of his life without once trying to.
The canals of that Serai still ran open to the sea, with no planks laid over the silt, and the Vault across the street was the grey stone of an older city.
The midwife had rings of brass on every finger, worn to a dull shine. She cut a tally for his birth into a strip of pale wood, notch by notch, the way the Vault’s clerks cut a debt. She hung it on the board above the cradle where the wax lamp could reach it. “A good weight, and a boy,” she told the room. “He has been shouting since the door.”
