8
Early the next morning, Paix carried Reina's wheel to his cousins' booth. Heap Tableau, a dumpy pale man with thinning mousy brown hair, merely glanced up at them from his knitting.
"Haven't seen you in years," his wife Lane said. As dumpy and pale as her husband, her golden hair always looked oily, no matter how often she washed it. She put down her knitting to hug Paix, then pulled back to examine him. "You're looking well."
Lane's parents ‒ cousins on his mother's side ‒ had thrown her belongings into the street when she joined the Bridgers, about the same time Paix had been forced to leave his home too. Paix and Lane had stayed in the room he now shared with Reina for a short time, until he moved into the trainee barracks and she into the home of one of the Bridger widows.
Paix w
