Sect Year 4 · tenth month · day 1 · the Vault of Serai, the brass pans
His own cord hung from a beam above the weighing table, and Lin kept looking up at it.
It was a debtor’s cord like the others in the Vault, a length of undyed hemp with knots tied down it at even spaces, like the joints of a reed. Most of the cords in the hall were dark with handling and heavy with years. His was thin and grey. It turned a little on its hook whenever a draught came through the open door, and each turn showed him the same bare stretch of hemp near the bottom, where nothing had been knotted yet.
The clerk who had brought him up the hall had not explained the grey. He had only said, without looking round, that the cord had been hung that morning and was not yet full.
Lodd, the junior clerk, stood on a stool beneath it with a tally stick in one hand. He counted the knots aloud and touched each one with a fingertip as he passed it. Lin counted with him under his breath. It was a habit he had kept since the flats. On a landing on a far river a ferryman had taught him to count the oars before a crossing and not to stop until the number came right.
