Sect Year 1 · seventh month · day 11 · Azure Stream Sect, Outer Court herb beds
The message came up the ridge stair in the mouth of a kitchen boy who had been running and did not want anyone to see it. He stopped on the step below the cave with his chest going in and out, and he gave the words the way Pei had made him learn them. The old gardener did not come to the water gate this morning. Pei says come before the Deacon does.
Lin was already reaching for his coat. “Did she say where he is?”
“She said you’d know where he sleeps.” The boy looked at the grey coming up over the ridge, then at Lin, then at the grey again. “She said you’d be quick about it, and not to ask him anything on the way.”
The lower path ran down from the ridge past the back walls of the Outer Court, past the wood-stacks and the dyers’ yard, and then it dropped in steps to the herb beds. The beds were cut into the bank above the Azure Stream, one below another, each hemmed with river stone. In the seventh month they were thick with mint gone leggy and coriander gone to seed, and between them stood the drying racks, split bamboo lashed into frames, like a row of unfinished fences. Lin had walked the path more times than he could count. He went down it slowly now, counting the…
