Sect Year 5 · eleventh month · day 27 · the Glass Shelf, the Lantern’s house
Sleet came off the sea sideways and rattled against the panes that were left. Nearly three months had passed since Veyra Lothe’s last seeing, and the glass had been dark since the frame came down. The wall where the frame had stood was only stone now, grey and wet, with a pale square on it where the wind had kept the dust off. Lin trimmed the wicks in the lamp-house each evening for the clerks who still climbed the shelf to copy Registry forms. He cleared cold cups from the table and carried them to the basin. It was the only work anybody on the shelf had asked of him since the carts went down.
Pei sat across from him with her plain brown book open at her elbow. She wrote in it every morning and most evenings, small and square, and she wrote down whatever the clerks asked her to witness. A signed name on a receipt, a count of lamps, the length of time it took a pot to go cold. Dewe, the Registry courier, had gone down to Sarn quay after the carter’s last run, with his hat on and the price of an oak chair still in his head. Since then the lamp-house had been quieter, and Lin had caught himself listening for the chair to creak.
