Sect Year 4 · eighth month · night of day 6 · the thirty-ninth life: a delta market town, Bessim’s fourteenth year
“One night. One life. Will you turn?”
“Calm. Willing.”
“Keep one town’s weights true for one generation.”
Echo of a Past Life.
The weights-maker’s workshop sat above the bread market, up a stair so steep that the apprentices carried the heavy trays on their shoulders and swore at it under their breath. Bessim had carried them for two years. He could do it without spilling the crumbs, and he could tell from the sound of a tray on the stair whether the baker below had packed the loaves too tight.
Below the town the river broke into a hundred slow channels across the delta, and the salt came up them at every high tide. The market sat on the last firm ground before the marsh. Its arcade was built of pale stone gone green at the joints. The bakers’ carts came up the central road before dawn with their wheels wrapped in sacking so that the sleeping houses would not wake. The air always smelled of hot crust and mud.
Inside the workshop the room smelled of brass filings and animal fat, and of the oiled felt the master kept for the balance-arms. Under the north window a long bench ran the length of the wall, cluttered with tiny files, scraps of leather, a set of pans wrapped in cloth. The weights themselves, each stamped on its shoulder…
