Sect Year 1 · sixth month · day 29 · Azure Stream Sect, Inner Court north ridge, then the healer’s hall at dawn
Su had gone down the ridge once the entry was written, without a word about the name. At the top of the stone steps she stopped and looked back at him.
“Do you want the lamp?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll leave it.” She left it. It burned on the step beside him until the oil ran low and the flame began to lean, and he didn’t get up to trim it.
The cave had one window, and it faced the wrong way, so the dark came into the room all at once and stayed there. Lin lay on the mat with his back against the wall and his hands open on the boards. He had meant to sleep. Instead his heart ran on ahead of him.
It wasn’t loud. That was the trouble with it. It ran in quick uneven strokes, and each one landed before the breath it was meant to follow had finished. The gaps between his breaths and his beats kept opening and closing, like a cart running downhill with no one on the brake. He counted the beats. He reached eleven and lost the thread. He began again at one, and the count came apart at seven. He tried counting backward from twenty, and the numbers slid off the edge of his mind before he could take hold of them.
