Sect Year 7 · twelfth month · night of day 29 · the sixty-sixth life: a salt-store in the north, his twenty-second year
Lin lay down on the mat by the record-room desk at the second bell, of his own accord. He let his shoulders go and his breath go slow, and he felt himself grow calm, and then willing. When he was still, the Wheel said:
“Hold the Court’s door shut until dark.”
“Quick Count.”
Ruen had held the door of the salt-store for three winters, and his shoulder had learned the shape of the bar. The house stood at the top of a cobbled street in a northern town whose name the Court painted over every spring with a new one. That way, no one could be sure which name was true. Its door was oak, banded in iron and taller than two men. It opened inward onto a passage where the clerks sat at long tables under lamps. Outside, the debtors’ line ran down the street, round the corner and out of sight. It had been running since before the bread was baked.
The purpose was simple. The clerks had explained it to him twice, so that he wouldn’t forget. The door was to be held shut until the sun went down. Anyone who came through before dark was counted in the salt-tithe, and anyone who came after was counted as owing, and what was counted as owing went onto the Court’s tally-board in the Court’s own…
