Sect Year 5 · third month · day 1 · the Loom’s step, dusk
Lin stood at the foot of the Loom’s step and counted the first lamps coming on in the net-yards below. He stopped at nine.
The gulls had left the Point at dusk, as they always did, and the air over the rocks was cold and clean. The Loom’s yard smelled of wet stone and tar. Somewhere below, a dog barked twice at the lamps and then gave up. He had his hands in his coat and did not sit, because no one had yet told him he could.
Ilvane Strum sat on the Loom’s step with her back against the door-stone. She hadn’t gone in for the lamp. She had asked for her chair to be carried out, and when Lin brought it she had shaken her head and sat on the stone instead. There, she could feel the cords hanging inside the doorway at her shoulder.
The cough had taken her three days before. She had hidden it since the wedding, behind folded cloth and the noise of the wind. On the morning she could no longer hide it she had sent for nobody. Pei had found her on the step with the cloth spotted at the edge. Pei had brought a blanket and a bowl of broth from the kitchen, and she had sat down beside her without being asked.
