The Vat Does Not Ask Which Thread Went In First

Two bodies rose from the Karvel wearing a single drowned blue, and called it true — it could not say which breath had stopped the sooner, so it named an order, and called it true.

I have dyed two skeins from one vat and sworn to a buyer which went under first; the water kept no ledger of the question — I spoke with my whole hand, and called it true.

A boy who never once hauled a line at dawn inherits the fifth share of a tow-boat, worked nineteen years by a man who hauls it still, for nothing the Register has called true.

Yelka Marn wears a groove up the New Quarter’s lane with another household’s wash on her hip; a clerk arrived to count her footsteps in paces, not in her, and walked off, and called it true.

I have sold a certainty the color of saffron to a woman who never once asked what made me sure; certainty is a dye I can raise from an empty vat by evening, and the raising, too, I call true.

The elder is presumed to have died first, not because the river kept an order, but because a house needs a widow, and a widow needs an heir, and someone has to call it true.

Zara, you have spent a whole trade persuading cloth to hold one color and refuse the rest — ask yourself, some night when the vats are cooling, which of your own sure things you only dyed, and called true.