Sect Year 1 · seventh month · day 19 · Shen Mo’s stone house, above the Azure Stream spring
The Deacon’s writ was three lines long, and Su read it aloud at the head of the path as though someone would later ask her to swear to every word. The first two lines were in a clerk’s neat hand. The third was not. Hou Meng had written it below the seal himself, in the cramped strokes he used for the grain quotas, and it said what the sect wanted said in a dead man’s house. Open it, and say what you took.
“He’s pleased with that,” Lin said.
“He wrote it at the lower gate, with the stores clerk watching him.” Su folded the paper along its creases. “I think he was pleased with that too.”
The path ran down through the cut terraces, past the herb beds and a stand of bamboo that clicked whenever the wind got into it. Lin had walked this way more times than he could count, but never with a writ in someone else’s hand. For two years, before the old man died, he carried a brown cup up these steps every morning, held in both palms so the tea would not slop over the rim. His feet still knew where the step was worn and where the root crossed the stone. Nobody had cut the grass on either side since the autumn. It stood high and wet and brushed against his knees.
