Sect Year 1 · seventh month · day 14 · Azure Stream Sect, the lower bend of the stream
Dawn came up grey over the ridge, and Lin woke on the cot already breathing slowly. For a while he lay still and did not reach for the Lamp-Breath. He was afraid that reaching would find nothing there. The breath came on its own, in and out, unrushed, as air comes into a shut house when someone opens a window in another room. He hadn’t been calm like this since the strain came back in the sixth month. He didn’t yet know whether he could trust it.
He went down the ridge path with the lamp unlit in his hand, and he didn’t need it.
The bier in the drying shed had a cloth on it again. The striped weave lay folded across the gardener’s legs, the fringe combed flat, as neat as a blanket on a made bed. It had come back in the night. Pei was on her basket by the door, the lamp across her knees burned low to a blue bead. She hadn’t slept. Her eyes were red at the rims and very steady.
“It came back,” she said.
