Sect Year 1 · third month · night of day 15 · the fifth life: Carrow Flat, a dry plain, his ninth year
“One night. One life. Will you turn?”
The question came over the plain in the dark, before anything else. Dathi, asleep on the mat beside his father’s bed, heard it as a sound in the roof-beams and did not wake for it. The answer was given anyway. Nobody in the house heard that either.
“Bring the seed back to the field before winter.”
“Iron Constitution.”
The well in the square had been mud for three seasons. Dathi carried the bucket up to it before the sun cleared the eastern flats, because his mother said the water was best before the flies found it. The rope was rough and wet in his hands. He let the bucket down, felt it touch, and hauled it up hand over hand. The water came up grey. It didn’t look like water so much as ash that someone had poured into a bucket and told to stay put. A thin skin of dust floated on the top, and when the bucket swung, the skin broke and slid to the rim and stayed there.
