Sect Year 1 · fifth month · night of day 19 · the ninth life: the Greywater ferry landing, his fortieth year
The rain came on the first wet day of the year, as it always did. It found Edric at the landing with his back stiff at the base and his wrist as good as it had been at twenty. The ferry bell hung new on its post. The old one had cracked in the frost two winters before. The boatmen had paid a bronze-founder from the upper town to cast another. It carried clean over the water whenever a crossing was called. Edric stood under it and listened. It sounded like a bell that had never been asked to be anything but a bell.
He hadn’t fought a true bout in years. He had taught instead, in the yard and on the landing and in the lane above the boats. The teaching had worn the edge off him the way years wear the edge off any blade that is used every day and never sharpened for itself. He didn’t mind. He had found that a worn edge still cut, if the hand behind it knew where to put it.
