Sect Year 1 · seventh month · day 15 · Azure Stream Sect, Inner Court north ridge
A crow walked along the ridge-top above the cave, stopping now and then to look down at the step. The frost had not yet begun to melt, and behind Lin the fire bowl was cold, and he could smell the old ash in it.
Su read the last few days aloud at first light, as she had at every dawn since the book was begun. Her voice was exact. She didn’t perform the entries and she didn’t soften them. She read the herb beds, the cloth, the bier and the river in the order she had written them down. Lin sat with his coat pulled round him and heard his own days come back in the voice of the one person who had been there to take them down.
He had woken on the cot each morning that week with the same question in his mouth and no answer ready for it. Su’s book lay open on her knee. It had a green silk ribbon marking the place. The cover had gone soft at the corners from being opened every dawn, as a thing goes soft when a hand has held it long enough to stop noticing the weight.
