Sect Year 1 · seventh month · day 9 · Azure Stream Sect, Outer Court kitchen table
The cook had gone to bed. The kitchen was quiet, as it only was at night, with the coppers cooling and the stone floor giving back its cold through the soles of his feet. One lamp burned on the scrubbed table. The pot hooks hung in their row above the coppers, still bright from the scrub, and the smell of lye had nearly gone out of the room. Su had left the bound book there at Lin’s request before the evening bell. Then she had gone back up the ridge without saying why. He understood that she had agreed to it for his sake and not her own, and that she would read every line again at dawn regardless.
He had come down from the ridge at dusk with his hands in his sleeves. The path had been wet at the bends, and the gate boy had been whistling a tune with no words, and the Outer Court had smelled of supper and wet earth. Nobody had stopped him on the way in. He had come to the back door out of habit, as he had come to it for three years. Then remembered that the kitchen was shut to him once the cook had gone to bed, and stood on the step until Pei opened it.
