Sect Year 4 · ninth month · night of day 9 · the fortieth life: a delta ferry landing, Idrik’s fifth year
“Bring every oar back into the boat.”
Tongue of Nations.
The steps were wet under him. Idrik sat on the third from the bottom. There, the stone had been worn into a shallow dish by people sitting in the same place for longer than anyone had kept count, and he looked at the ferry.
It was a broad, flat-bottomed boat with a blunt bow and a stern post carrying a lamp that had not been lit yet. Six oars lay across the thwarts, three to a side, each one seated in a bronze lock on the gunwale. Their blades were pale from the sun and their grips were dark from hands. The river went past the bow in long brown tongues, carrying reeds and the odd torn leaf, and on the far bank a line of white birds lifted and settled and lifted again.
The boy did not know yet what the words were for. He knew only that the evening had stopped moving around him. The gulls kept crying over the mudflats, but the sound seemed to come from very far off, like a voice through a shut door, and his own breath was the loudest thing on the landing.
