Sect Year 1 · ninth month · day 25 · Azure Stream Sect, Outer Court kitchen
The rice in the Inner store had run down to the bottom of the sack, so on the morning of the twenty-fifth Lin went back down the stone steps to the Outer Court with a cloth bag over one shoulder. He had made the walk every morning for a year, and his feet knew the turns before his eyes did. Ruan Tiao’s gate was at the bottom of the last flight, and beyond it the kitchen smoke was already rising past the roof edges.
Inside the kitchen the steam had a white edge to it that had not been there before. The whitewash was going on at the back wall. There, the stone met the coppers. Liu Mai stood on an upturned stool with a broad brush in one hand and a bucket hooked on her wrist, painting the stone in long downward strokes, as though she meant to bury something under it. A sack leaned against the stool’s leg. Across its mouth someone had pressed the Deacon’s seal, an ink square with a notch cut from one corner. The seal had gone so deep into the weave that it showed through on the other side.
