Sect Year 4 · seventh month · night of day 9 · the thirty-eighth life: the Vault quarter of Serai, his fifteenth year
Sabel’s net-yard stood on the river side of the canal. There, the water widened toward the mouth and the salt came up on the wind. Nets hung from poles in long grey curtains, and the tar pots in the corner gave off a smell so thick that Jorn tasted it at the back of his throat before he reached the gate.
He crossed the footbridge with the sack under his arm. He had carried it for most of a month, in the drawer and then in his coat, and every morning he had told himself that today he would bring it back.
She was sitting on an upturned crate by the first pole with a torn net across her knees and a bone needle in her fingers. She looked up when his shadow fell over the tarred planks. She didn’t get up. She looked at the sack, and then at his face, and then she went back to the mesh in her lap and pulled the needle through a knot with a short hard tug.
“You’re the cutter’s boy,” she said.
