Sect Year 5 · eighth month · night of day 30 · the fiftieth life: the Glass Shelf, his thirty-eighth year
The woman came up the cliff road in the late light with a knotted cloth held against her chest. She didn’t climb the stair at once. She stood at the foot of it with her head tipped back. She looked up at the row of lamp-houses along the glass, and Heddo, who had come down to meet her, saw that she was counting them too. Her lips moved. She reached the end of the row and began again.
She was thin in a way that had nothing to do with food. Her shawl was patched at one elbow, and her hands were raw across the knuckles from the cold water of the lower washing-pools. There, the shelf’s linen went to be beaten clean. Her hair had come loose on one side and she hadn’t pushed it back. When she looked at him at last her eyes were very dark and very tired, and she didn’t look away.
“Kaelen Penrose,” she said. “I’m paying for Tomas.”
“Come up,” said Heddo. “Brisa will take your silver at the top. She’ll write your son’s name in the book, and then you can sit with him.”
