Sect Year 1 · sixth month · day 24 · Azure Stream Sect, Inner Court north ridge
Su came out to the step at first light with the new book held in both hands, as though it might spill. The cover was plain grey board. On a paper label brushed in her square hand were the words Who Lin Cang Is, and beneath them, smaller, the day it had been begun. She had written in it for three nights by the lamp on the table, and this was the first morning she meant to read it aloud.
Lin sat on the top step with his knees drawn up and the blanket around his left arm. The cold had eased a little in the night. It hadn’t gone. No voice had come up the ridge since the last night he had turned the Wheel, and he had stopped listening for one at dawn. He watched her sit down beside him, careful of the stone, and open the book across her knees. The ridge below was grey and silver with dew, and the Inner terraces were only beginning to show their roofs.
“You’ll check it,” she said.
“I’ll check it.”
“Then listen.” She read the first entry. Her voice was flat and exact, a clerk’s voice, and it made the words sound like facts before she had got to the end of them. “Taps iron to test it before he trusts a gate.”
