Sect Year 7 · twelfth month · night of day 29 · the sixty-sixth life: a salt-store in the north, his twenty-second year
Since Mosk had tipped the doorstep, the water had run fast through the glass tube, and the cup beneath it had filled past every mark the Court had scratched on its side. The measure belonged to the Court. It had come up from the coast in a crate packed with straw, with a clerk’s note tied to the bronze collar, and the collar bore the closed wheel, every spoke whole. The arrangement was simple. When the water reached the top notch cut into the ledge, the house was to shut its door and keep it shut until dark. No one in the house had ever asked for it to be explained.
Ruen had his shoulder against the planks and a bar across his back, and the planks were braced against the weight on the far side. The line ran down the lane from the Court’s notice-board, through the mud by the well, and round the corner into the square. Every face in it held a slip in one fist and a debt in the other. He couldn’t see the back of it from the doorstep, and he didn’t need to. Quick Count had given him the whole line once, and the number had stayed in him since then like a pebble in a boot, where he could feel its edges with every step. Three hundred and eleven…
