Sect Year 1 · fourth month · night of day 10 · the seventh life: Ghadir Wells, his thirtieth year
The guild hall stood at the top of the salt-market, a low building of pale stone with a cool floor that kept the heat from the clerks’ necks. Haddu was summoned there at the first bell of the morning. He stood before the long bench of the register with his hands at his sides, because there was nowhere to put them that would not look like guilt.
Clerks moved along the bench around him without raising their eyes. A boy was scrubbing wax from a table near the door, and the sharp smell of it hung in the still air. Haddu listened to the scrape of the brush and waited, the way he had been taught to wait at the carts, letting the room speak before he did.
The head clerk was an old man with glasses of thick glass and a voice like a dry page. He didn’t hurry. He drew out the impression book, the great leather volume in which every guild seal was pressed and kept for comparison. He turned to the page marked with the salt train’s mark. He laid the bond beside it. Then he looked for a long time.
