Sect Year 1 · ninth month · day 23 · Azure Stream Sect, Elders’ hall
The envoy came back to his bench with a second paper. He hadn’t opened it. He held it folded on one knee through the whole of the morning sitting, the way a man holds a card he has no intention of showing, and nobody asked him what it said. Nobody in the hall wanted to be the one who did.
The cushion still lay on the folded seat at the far end, though someone had moved it an inch to the left. Lin noticed that. He noticed too that the Sect Master had not moved anything at all.
Elder Xu waited until the clerk had settled his brush. Then he put on his glasses and said, “Sect Master, before we take up the charge itself, I would ask the council to state what this sect owes its student.”
Gao Tingjun did not look at the bench. He looked up at the lattice. There, the grey light came through in squares and lay across the flat stone slabs like a board for some game nobody was playing. “Lin Cang is a wandering fighter,” he said. “He is no longer the sect’s concern.”
