Sect Year 5 · ninth month · night of day 2 · the fifty-first life: Dunlin Ford, his thirty-first year
Hal counted the room once more before he moved. A count was not finished, in his hands, until a second look had checked it, and he had learned that from the chief clerk’s own habit of counting twice and then once more to be sure.
Thirty-six households on the benches, the floor, and the stove-step, from the door to the back wall. He let his eyes go down the table to the far end. There, the grey wool was still humped over the small shape beneath it. He counted the shape. He counted the woman on the bench under the broken window, with her head down and her red hands folded on the bundle. He looked at the roll in front of him, with its thirty-six lines of ink, and then he looked back at the room.
Thirty-seven in the room.
“The roll says thirty-six,” said the chief clerk. He had come back down the table without Hal hearing him, and he stood with the lamp in one hand and looked at the ruled columns, not at the child.
“The roll is one short.”
