Sect Year 4 · ninth month · day 4 · Serai, the Vault clerks’ table
The cords hung from the beams of the Vault in long grey rows, one for every debt the dead had left behind. In the lamplight they were the colour of old rope and dust, and they had hung in that order since before the Scale was made. Lin had stopped looking at them on his first day in the hall. He looked at them now, because the junior clerk had turned his back to them, and the cords were the only thing in the room that moved.
When a clerk walked behind the rows, the cords knocked together. It was a dry, soft sound, like a set of sticks dropped one after another, and it rose and fell as the clerk passed through. Lin had listened to it for three days, and he could tell the clerks by it now. The senior men walked heavily, and the cords answered them with a clatter. The juniors hurried, and the cords barely stirred. Umbis made no sound at all. He crossed the length of the hall, and the floor took his weight without a complaint.
Lin sat at the clerks’ side table under a horn lamp whose glass was cracked and mended with wax. A clean page lay under his hand. The table was scarred with the rings of old ink pots, and someone had cut a row of tally marks into its edge that had nothing…
