Ridge Breadth

They were made to face one way, toward whatever comes for an emperor after he's done.

The evidence is behind them: a print on the back of a clay head, another on the stud of a breastplate, pressed in while it was soft.

You measure the gaps between ridges. They widen as a hand grows up.

No single print will tell you who. The model takes the seventy-nine at once and says, roughly, a third were women, a fifth were under fifteen.

Thirty-six figures. One trench in one pit. Some of those prints are surely the same thumb twice.

Still. They stand where they were put, facing the door, and the hands that steadied them are on the backs of their necks.