Sect Year 8 · third month · night of day 3 · the silent life: the terrace road, his twenty-second year
The first ninth-day walk began on a cold morning, with the mist lying white in the bottom of the valley and the terraces standing up out of it in long grey shelves. Ossel had packed the baskets the night before. He carried one on each arm by its woven handle, and at the store-room door he set them down and lifted them again to feel the weight. Neither was heavy. He had weighed a great many loads in his life, and he knew the feel of one he could carry without thinking about it.
“You’re doing the sum again,” Anwen said. She came out of the house with a square of cloth folded over one shoulder and her hair tied back, and she stopped in front of him and looked at the baskets. “They’re the same as yesterday.”
“They’re the same as the ninth day before yesterday. I wanted to be sure.”
“Be sure on the road, then, not in the doorway.” She tucked the cloth tighter and stepped past him onto the path.
The hive yard lay on their left as they went down. Odo Fenn leaned against the terrace wall with his smoker cold in his hand and his cough sitting in his chest like a stone. He watched them come level with the boxes and did not get up.
