Sect Year 1 · fourth month · night of day 2 · the sixth life: the east stair at Ashaw, his fourteenth year. Dawn of day 3
He didn’t sleep after the bell was tested. He lay in the loft with his bad hand on his chest and listened to the men on the roofs shift their weight, one at a time, stiff from the cold. A tile slid somewhere and was caught. A voice said something low and was answered with a laugh that stopped at once. Adeyn counted the sounds the way he counted horses, and each time the count came out the same, and each time he was less sure what it meant.
Before the light came he got up off the boards and dressed in the dark, by feel. He buckled his belt. He set the short blade under his coat where it had always sat, against his ribs, and felt the cold of the grip through the cloth. He didn’t take the back way. He went down the ladder with his good hand on the rungs and his bad one held against his chest. He crossed the yard past the sleeping horses to the small gate in the east wall.
