Sect Year 7 · first month · day 3 · the Reserve’s edge, below the Ledger gallery
Pei had the hand-lamp lit before he finished lacing his boots. He sat on the stool-bed a little longer than the morning asked for, with the third Wheel in his right hand and his left hand lying open on his knee. The bronze was cold. It had been cold all night, through the sleep the founder had told him to take, and it had stayed quiet. He turned it once with his thumb along the rim, which was worn smooth on one side, and he didn’t turn it the other way.
The weight had come into his arm sometime in the dark. He hadn’t felt it arrive. He woke with the crook of his left elbow full of something cold and without edges, and the arm had not shaken. It had only held.
“You’re sitting,” Pei said from the rail.
“I’m listening to my feet.”
“Your feet are fine. They’re wet and cold, and they’ll be wet and cold at the bottom of the slope too.” She shut her book and put it inside her coat. Then she took it out again and opened it at a clean page. “I’m the witness. I’ll say what I see and let it go.”
