Isole did not return to the dinner tables.
Nine days had taught her the difference between questions answered out of hospitality and questions answered because answering them belonged to someone's work.
So, on the morning after they received their provisional cords, she went to the one place in the settlement that kept records instead of memories.
Torvin worked in a low stone building near the courtyard. Shelves lined every wall, each packed with lengths of cord wound tightly around narrow spindles. Some were pale with age. Others carried knots, beads, carved slivers of wood, or small pieces of metal pressed into the fibre.
Lives, Isole guessed.
Or at least the parts of lives the Standing had decided to preserve.
Wrong-angled light slanted through the open doorway. Dust hung inside it, drifting so slowly that Isole found herself wondering whether even dust settled differently here.
