Sect Year 5 · twelfth month · night of day 1 · the fifty-fifth life: the Low Bridge counting-house, his eleventh year
“Carry the sealed slip to the Ledger door before the bell.”
“Iron Constitution.”
The counting-house on Low Bridge stood with its back to the canal and its face to the road, a squat brick building with iron bars across the ground-floor windows. Sealed slips left it all day. They went between the warehouses along the water, and from the warehouses up a long stone stair on the far side of the bridge to a black door at the top. The porters called that door the Ledger door, because the house’s tithe books were kept behind it. Nobody who carried a slip was allowed to read one. Cade had been told so on his first morning. He believed it, because the porter-master had a way of saying things that made them true.
“A slip carried late is a debt the house holds against you,” Mattick said. He held the first slip out between two fingers, its wax seal bright and whole. “Two hundred steps and the bell. Don’t run on the ice.”
“I won’t.”
“You will. Everyone does. Run anyway, and don’t drop it.”
