Sect Year 5 · eighth month · night of day 30 · the fiftieth life: the Glass Shelf, his thirty-eighth year
He thought. Meanwhile, the names went round in him, of the faces that had sat on the stool that night. Kaelen Penrose with her knotted silver and her hands pressed flat on the glass. The young man with the ring turned on his finger, who had said little and had cried on the stool. The buyer’s gloves coming off one finger at a time. Each of them had come up the stair wanting one thing from the dead, and each of them had been given a lamp instead.
For the last part of the watch Heddo said the names of the lamps nearest the Anchor, one by one, under his breath. He didn’t read them from the book. He had the book in his lap, closed, and he didn’t need it. The cold woman’s name was first, then the boatman’s, then the boy’s on the lower rocks, and the lamps answered him with the flames standing straight, and then the flames began to lean. He said the names faster. He didn’t stop.
The lamp under the Anchor’s frame went out at the last watch.
