Sect Year 1 · fourth month · night of day 10 · the seventh life: Ghadir Wells, his thirtieth year
The counting-house above the salt-market was quiet once the carts had gone down to the wells. Haddu sat at the low table with a lamp at his elbow and a guild bond spread flat under his hands. It was a short document in Renn’s careful script, four lines of terms and one sum, and at its foot was a blank space for the master’s seal. Nobody had pressed the space yet. Nobody would, if Haddu could help it.
Ustam Renn held the salt train’s guild in his fist and always had. He had buried two partners and a wife, and he had never once let a debt go unrecorded on his register. The loss at the dry ford stood there under Haddu’s name, with nine years of halves written beside it in Renn’s own hand, each one a little smaller than the last. Haddu had kept the rule. He had paid in part. Renn had accepted it, as the rule expected. The balance had not moved in years, because the halves went into the roof of the counting-house and a new cart-axle and a dozen small debts Shuyi had not yet heard about. That was no excuse. He didn’t offer it as one.
