Sect Year 1 · ninth month · day 20 · Azure Stream Sect, Sect Master’s Hall
The lamp bell rang from the east tower. Meanwhile, the light still lay on the courtyard stones, and by the time its last stroke had died away the lamp-boys were moving along the hall walls with their long wicks and their flint. Lin watched from the doorway. He counted the sconces as they caught, twelve on the left and twelve on the right, and by the last one the room had gone from grey to gold. The faces at the long table came up out of the dusk one at a time.
Six chairs stood on the dais. Gao Tingjun sat at the centre with his hands folded on his knees, a man who had been asked to wait and had decided to do it well. Xu Bairen sat at the reformists’ end with his cane leaning against the arm of his chair. Three other Elders sat between them with the stillness of men who would rather have been elsewhere and had been told where to sit. At the far end, under the sconce that burned a little lower than the rest, the sixth chair was empty. A grey sleeve-cloth had been folded across its back.
