Sect Year 1 · fifth month · night of day 21 · the eleventh life: a gate town at the edge of the marsh, his eleventh year
“Light the last lamp before the gate shuts.”
Iron Constitution.
Ansel climbed the gate tower with a taper pushed through his belt, a flask of lamp oil knocking against his hip, and the flint closed in his fist. The stairs were stone, worn into shallow dishes in the middle where ages of lamplighters had stepped in the same places. The wall on his left was wet with the breath of the marsh. Every step smelled of reeds and cold water, and under that the animal fat the Warden’s men burned in the guardhouse below.
His father had sent him. Gerit had a cough that had settled into his chest at the start of the wet season and would not be moved. That morning he had sat by the cooking fire with a blanket round his shoulders and said the boy was old enough to climb a tower. Ansel had not argued. The tower was the only place in Corrin where a boy could be alone for longer than it took to fetch water from the well.
