Sect Year 1 · tenth month · day 1 · Azure Stream Sect, Inner Court, north ridge
The Sect Master’s writ reached the north ridge on the first morning of the tenth month. The runner did not climb past the step. He held the scroll out at arm’s length, the way a man hands over a thing he has been told not to read, and when Lin took it the runner was already turning back down the path.
Lin carried it into the cave. The fire had gone out in the night and the air still tasted of ash. Su was at the table with the bound book open and the ink drying on the morning’s line. She looked at the scroll and then at his face. She held out her hand, and he gave it to her.
Before she unrolled it she read the night’s entry aloud, as she did every morning, in the flat voice she kept for the record. He had slept on the cave floor with his back to the wall. He had said nothing about the dead. In his sleep he had said “the wall” once, clearly, and then nothing else. “Slept,” Su read, and closed the page, and only then unrolled the writ.
