Sect Year 1 · eighth month · day 4 · Azure Stream Sect, Inner Court record room
The ration post at Cold Water counted its millet three times, and Lin counted it a fourth while the clerk watched his fingers. The number came out the same each time. It was the most useful thing he had carried back from three nights on the road. He set it on the record room desk with Elder Xu’s chit folded on top, the dust of the ford road still grey in the seams of his coat.
Su did not look up. She had the journal open on the sloped desk under the lamp, its pages held flat with four stones from the spring-house step. Beside it lay her black book, and down its left margin ran a column she had ruled herself, straight as a rail, with twenty-two rows waiting in it. Her pen rested in the gutter of the book. As far as he could tell it hadn’t moved since he came through the door.
“You took the long road,” she said. “The ford is half a day’s walk.”
“The millet took a day to count.”
“Then it took you a day and a half, and you counted it again on the road.” She turned the lamp a little higher with one finger. “Sit down. Read it to me. All of it, out loud.”
