Sect Year 4 · seventh month · night of day 9 · the thirty-eighth life: the Vault quarter of Serai, his thirteenth year
The clerks had gone home at the night bell, and the archive was his to keep until the shutters came down. Jorn carried the cord through the long room with both hands, the way his father had taught him to carry anything that might be read later. The shelves ran from floor to rafters on either side of him. Cords hung from their pegs in rows, hundreds of them, each with its knots and notches.
Some were grey with age, and some were so new the hemp still smelled of the dye-vat. everyone could feel the damp and old ink. A single lamp burned at the far desk. There, the book-keeper had left it, and its light reached only as far as the second row of pegs.
Jorn knew the rows by heart. He had carried cords to these shelves since he was ten, and he could have walked the length of the room in the dark without touching a peg. The cords on the outer shelves were the small debts of the quarter, bread and rent and the odd cracked boat. The cords nearest the lamp were the ones the Vault had not yet closed. He had never asked why the clerks kept the open ones so close to the light.
