Sect Year 8 · first month · night of day 7 · the sixty-seventh life: the foot of the Pilgrim’s Stair, his sixty-first year
That night, after the gate, Lin lay down on his cot in the lodging by his own choice, calm and willing, with his coat folded under his head. He had nothing left to listen for. The Wheel asked:
“One night. One life. Will you turn?”
He said yes.
“Climb to the top stair and sit down.”
Iron Constitution.
Aldo Tennet stood at the foot of the stair before the light came, with his ash stick in his right hand and his left hand resting on the cold post that marked the first step. The stair went up into the mist and did not come out of it. There were eleven hundred steps, the monks at the lower house said, though nobody he had asked had counted them twice. Each tread was worn into a shallow dip in the middle, polished by the feet of pilgrims who had climbed it for longer than there had been a lower house to tell them how far it went.
He had come alone. His daughter had wanted to come with him, and her husband had said her knees were too old for it, and Aldo had let them both believe he agreed. He hadn’t told them he meant to go up without anyone at his elbow. He was sixty-one years old. His wife had been buried three winters before, and…
