Sect Year 1 · ninth month · day 20 · Azure Stream Sect, Sect Master’s Hall
Lin let go when the Sect Master’s hands closed on his shoulders. The fingers were dry and strong, and they didn’t hurry. For a moment he kept the wrist in his grip anyway, as though his hand had not yet been told it might stop. Then the grip left his fingers all at once, and his arm hung at his side, numb to the bone.
Gao Shun’s knees struck the flat stone slabs. The sound was loud in the hall, a dull crack, the sound a stone made when it was set down too hard on a step. The Elder swayed and did not fall. He knelt with one palm flat on the floor and the other pressed to his chest, and his breath came in pulls, each one tearing a little, like wind through a split reed.
Gao Tingjun stood over him. The Sect Master’s face did not change. He looked at his brother the way a man looks at a column of figures he had been adding for a long time, one line at a time, and had finally reached the bottom of.
