Sect Year 4 · tenth month · day 3, evening · the Vault of the Scale, Serai
Lin had one hand on the door frame when the senior clerk called him back.
The man did not raise his voice. He never seemed to. He stood at the shelves with a tally in each hand, a narrow figure in grey with ink to the second knuckle, and he said, “The Clerk asks for the slip,” in the tone clerks used for a thing decided before anyone told them. Then he turned back to his shelves, as though the matter had been put away with the rest.
Lin crossed the hall again. The cords overhead had begun to knock in the evening draught from the wharf, and the sound ran along the beams in a slow, uneven rhythm, like someone pacing a wet roof. He didn’t look up at them. He looked at the table, and at Umbis sitting behind it with his gloves on and the two brass pans before him, level and still.
Umbis held out one gloved hand, palm up, as he had held it when the tally came.
Lin took the receipt from his coat. The paper was warm from his ribs and soft at the folds, and his right hand was steadier than his left had been all day. He laid the sheet in the Clerk’s palm. Umbis read it through once, the way he read everything, without moving his head.
