Sect Year 5 · twelfth month · night of day 1 · the fifty-fifth life: the Ledger steps at Low Bridge, his twenty-second year
The steps of the Ledger stair were black stone, worn into shallow dips by eighty years of porters’ boots. The bell hung in the tower above them, out of sight, and its voice came down through the stone before the sound reached the air. Cade always felt the steps tremble a breath before he heard anything.
The wax had cracked on the ice. Cade saw the split as he climbed, a thin line running from the rim of the seal toward its centre. Through the crack the first fold of the slip showed the word Sale, set in the square type the house kept for buyers. He stopped on the fourth step with the rail cold under his right hand and the slip held in his left.
The porter’s rule was plain, and he had kept it for eleven years. Read nothing. A slip was a weight, not a letter, and the weight belonged to the house. Mattick had said it on the first morning, and again every winter after, and Cade had never once broken it.
