Sect Year 1 · ninth month · day 9 · Azure Stream Sect, Inner Court
Su came up the ridge path at dusk, climbing steadily and not fast, with a slip of paper held in front of her as though it might spill. The cold had come down off the peaks since the morning, and her breath went out in short clouds. Lin heard her on the stone steps long before the lamp at the cave mouth showed her face. She counted the steps aloud, under her breath, in the flat voice she kept for ledgers, and at the top she stopped, frowned, and said, “Thirty-five. I was looking at the wall again.”
“You’ve been looking at the wall for a month,” Lin said.
“I’ve been looking at it since the spring.” She ducked under the top door beam and set the slip on the plank table beside the lamp, and she didn’t sit. “The Sect Master’s clerk sent it up at noon. I was told to bring it in person, so that nobody can say I read it on the path.”
Lin stood up. He didn’t need to ask what it said. He asked anyway. “Read it.”
She read it aloud. “The journal and the ledger will be heard by the Sect Master on the morning of the twentieth. The full council will sit at the lamp bell the same day, once the Elders are back from the county court.” She lowered the paper. “Those are the words. I’ve…
