Sect Year 5 · third month · night of day 4 · the forty-sixth life: old Sarn quay, his fifteenth year
Before the light came, the ash was grey on top and still red underneath. Ketil knelt at the pit with the long iron tongs and felt the heat come up through the grate, dry and close on his face.
The morning bell had not rung yet. Rund had said not to open the ash before it, and Ketil had kept his hands off the pit all night. But the grey had come up over the bay, and the ash had gone grey enough to see through, and he couldn’t wait any longer. He opened the pit slowly and drew the bowl out into the cold air.
It was cool enough to hold. He turned it in his palm and felt the weight of it settle.
He tapped the rim with a fingernail. It rang true, a small clean note that went out over the empty glass-house and did not come back. He turned the bowl again and looked for the line where the paddle had closed the lip. There had been one, the evening before, a faint ridge where the glass had been pressed. He knew it had been there. Now he looked, and the lip was only a lip, round and even all the way along, and his eye could not find a seam anywhere on it.
