Sect Year 1 · seventh month · day 20 · Shen Mo’s stone house, the back room
The window in the back room had been painted shut so many times that the wood had swollen into its frame. Lin worked the blade of the knife into the seam and drove it along a finger’s width at a time, until the shutter gave all at once. Light fell across the low table. The dust on it stirred, lifted, and settled back in a slower drift. The room smelled of cold ash and of the wet ground outside.
Su stood in the doorway with the black book held against her chest. She hadn’t come in. Since the front room she had walked behind him at a distance of two paces, the way she might walk behind a clerk caught in some small dishonesty. He had let her.
“You can see it from there,” she said.
“I can see it from here.”
“Then come and look at it properly.”
He went to the table. The two cups were where they had been the day before, face up, with a small clay pot between them whose lid had been set slightly askew. The pot held an inch of black liquid, its surface furred with dust. He didn’t touch it. He picked up the cracked cup instead. It was lighter than he remembered, and when he turned it the dust came off on his fingers in a fine grey powder. The crack was old. He…
