Sect Year 1 · eleventh month · day 30 · the capital’s South Gate
The capital came up out of the rain in pieces. First there was a grey line where the flat fields ended, then a row of watchtowers with their lamps already lit. Then the wall itself, so long that Lin could not see both of its ends at once. Under the wall a queue of carts and foot travellers stood in the mud. Each of them faced the gate. None of them moved far.
They had left the Lower Gourd more than two weeks before, and the river road had been wet and slow for all of it. The road had been crowded since the river ford. Every cart in the province seemed to be heading the same way. He carried grain or cloth or sick relatives or the last of somebody’s savings. Every one of them had stopped to wait for the South Gate. The rain came in sideways off the plain. It found the gap at the neck of every coat, and it ran down the back of Lin’s collar in a thin cold line that he could feel the whole time.
He held the mule’s reins wrapped twice around his right hand. They had hired the animal at the Lower Gourd for more than it was worth. It walked with its head low and its ears back, as though the weather had insulted it personally and it meant to remember. His wrist did not…
