Sect Year 1 · fourth month · night of day 2 · the sixth life: Ashaw, a county seat on a river, his fourteenth year
“Calm. Willing.”
“Keep the judge’s daughter alive.”
“Thread of Fate.”
The loft above the yamen stables was warm with horses. Hay dust hung in the light of the one lamp the groom had left burning at the head of the ladder, and the air smelled of the leather oil the guards worked into their belts. Adeyn lay on his back with his coat folded under his head and the short blade rolled inside it, the grip pressed against his ear. He was fourteen. The knife-house that raised him counted years by the thaw, and this was his fourteenth thaw. Last spring the house had sold him to the yamen guard for the price of a good mule. He didn’t hold it against them. A mule was worth what it was worth, and a boy who could keep one sound and walk at its head was worth a little more.
Below him a horse stamped and settled. He listened to the stamp and then to the quiet after it, and he counted the horses without meaning to. Nine. For a month the count had come out at nine, and every night he counted again to be sure.
