Sect Year 1 · fifth month · night of day 19 · the ninth life: the Greywater ferry landing, his seventeenth year
The first wet day of the year came down the river from the hills before the sun had cleared them, and by the time the school gathered at the landing the boards were slick and the rain was coming sideways across the water. The ferry sat at its post with its rope taut and the boatmen crouched under the canvas. The ginger-seller had set up beside the rope-post with a fire bowl under a tarred sheet and a line of clay cups. She was calling her prices over the noise of the river to anyone who would stop.
Edric stood at the edge of the landing with his sword still in its cloth and his feet apart on the planks. He had been told the rule the night before. The master’s seat at the school went to whoever won on the ferry landing on the first wet day of the year. Liang Hu had kept it that way since he took the gallery, and nobody had ever been able to tell Edric why. Liang Hu had only said that a seat taken in the rain was a seat the rain would remember.
