Sect Year 1 · fourth month · night of day 10 · the seventh life: Ghadir Wells, his thirteenth year
“Pay back the debt you lied about.”
“Tongue of Nations.”
Noon in the bazaar at Ghadir Wells, and the heat lay on the awnings and did not lift. Haddu stood at the cloth-seller’s stall with a brass tray held flat between his hands. The price went back and forth over him in the seller’s voice, and he let it run past him, watching to see where it would come down.
“Six silver!” said the seller. “And that is for the engraving, which was cut by a man who loved his mother.”
“Four,” said Haddu. “And the engraving was cut by a man who was paid by the stroke.”
The seller laughed so hard the cloth on his poles shook. He changed tongues, the way traders did when a price would not move in the first one, and tried the river speech, all soft consonants and bent vowels. Haddu answered him in it without pausing. Then the seller tried the coast speech, quick and clipped, and Haddu followed him there too, a step behind and then beside him, testing each word before he trusted his weight to it.
