Sect Year 4 · eighth month · day 2 · Serai, the lodging over the canal
The ache in his shins was gone. Lin noticed it on the lodging stairs, going down to the canal in the grey before the carts began. He had carried that ache since his first winter at Azure Stream, a dull bar under each knee that came back with every damp morning. This morning he went down the steep steps with his arms loose and his weight settled over his feet, and at the bottom he stopped and waited for the bar to strike.
It didn’t come. He stood on the wet stones and listened to his own breath, and it went in and out of him without catching anywhere.
The Vault had done that. He knew it in his body. The life he had lived as a coin-cutter’s son in the Vault quarter had closed on the night it ended. The Wheel held it now as a deposit, as it held every lent life, and the life had left its work behind in him. The tar and the net-yard had refined the bones of his arms and shins.
When he bent his fingers he could feel it, a straightness in the long bones, as if someone had planed the grain out of them and left them smooth. The grey dust had cleared from his lungs. He drew the cold canal air down into himself without a cough, and the air tasted of weed and…
