Sect Year 4 · ninth month · day 2 · Serai, the lodging over the canal
The Ketch Shoal packet came up the lodging stairs in a post-runner’s satchel, the same boy in the wet cap who had brought the Registry’s writ a month before. He set it on the table and then stood in the doorway with his hand out for his copper. He sniffed the air of the room and wrinkled his nose.
“That’s the flats,” he said. “You can smell the mud on it.”
“Is it?”
“Everything from the coast smells of mud.” He took the copper Lin held out to him and went down the stairs two at a time, and the sound of his boots faded into the noise of the carts on the quay.
Lin turned the packet over in his right hand. It was wrapped in sailcloth, not oilcloth, and tied with a length of tarred cord that had been pulled through its knot three times and left. It was the kind of cord the Qerrin boats used for mooring lines. Inside the sailcloth lay a flat piece of something hard and pale. When he drew it out, it was a tag, cut from a length of the same rope and scraped smooth on one face.
