Sect Year 5 · second month · night of day 3 · the forty-third life: Wenlow Cross, his ninth year
“Return the thread you took from the dye-yard.”
“Quick Count.”
The blue was on his hands before anyone told him to stop.
He was six, crouched at the edge of the far vat. There, the water ran dark and warm and smelled of something sour underneath. He had dipped one hand to the wrist to see how far the colour would go. It went past the wrist and up to the knuckles, and when he lifted the hand the dye ran off his fingers in slow drops onto the boards.
A hand came down on the back of his collar and lifted him off the edge. He hung there with his heels kicking, and the heat came up off the vat into his face, and the voice above him said nothing at all, which was worse.
Then the voice did speak. “Blue doesn’t wash, boy,” the dye-master said, and set him down on the boards with a grip that did not loosen for a long while. “It stays where it’s put. Remember that, and you’ll not need telling twice.”
Then the memory let him go, and it didn’t go anywhere. It stayed. He was six, and then he was nine, and both of them were his.
