Sect Year 1 · tenth month · day 4 · Ninefold Pass, the iron post
The road climbed the pass in nine switchbacks. Pei counted them aloud from the foot of the first, in a voice that carried up and down the stone like a child calling across a field.
“One. Two. Three.”
The rock walls were wet with the morning’s mist. Water ran in a thin channel along the outer edge of the road and dropped off the bends in little white threads. Lin walked on the inside. There, the rock was, with the bundle on his back and his breath going in and out easily, the way it had gone all the way up from the valley. He didn’t stop to think about that. He hadn’t stopped to think about it since the first step at the gate, and it hadn’t yet become a thing he needed to think about.
“Four. Five.” Pei took a breath. “Six.”
She stopped. Her lips moved. She looked back at the fourth bend and then forward at the sixth, and her face took on the expression of a person who has lost a sheep.
“You skipped one,” said Su.
“I didn’t.” Pei turned round and set her feet on the stone, and her heel slid, and she caught herself on the wall. “I lost it. That’s different. I’ll start again from the first.”
