Sect Year 5 · fourth month · night of day 1 · the forty-seventh life: Hallam Ford, her thirty-first year
The lamp began to smoke before the first bell of the night. Nesa took the little brass scissors from the shelf and trimmed the wick, and watched the flame settle to a clean blue point. It smoked again within the time it took the ward to go quiet. She trimmed it a second time, more carefully. The room came clear. She could see the pattern of the blanket on the window bed and the beads of sweat standing on the carter’s forehead.
Emrys’s fever had climbed all through the evening. He hadn’t said much since the cart went by on the road. His skin was hot under her palm, and when he spoke his words came out of order, as if they were being pulled through a narrow door one at a time. Twice he asked whether his brother had come for the coat. Twice she told him the road was empty, and that she would tell the brother when he came.
When he stopped speaking for a long while, Nesa said the first thing that came into her head, because the quiet was harder to sit in than talk. “What did your mother keep for you, when you were small?”
