Sect Year 1 · twelfth month · day 2 · the Imperial Archive, lamp-hall
The Imperial Archive was longer inside than its wall had promised, and quieter than anything Lin had walked through since the sect’s own library. Shelves rose from the flat stone slabs to a ceiling so far overhead that their tops were lost in the lamplight. Cedar oil and old ink hung in the air. Somewhere a pen scratched, stopped, and scratched again, and apart from that the only sound was rain on the high leaded windows.
Su signed the copyists’ book at the entrance in her plain square hand. She wrote the day beside her name, and then, after a pause, the words for the register of the old halls, which she had decided on in the lodging-house and had told no one else. Pei stood beside her with the paper case in both arms, holding it the way she held the bucket, and watched the clerk’s inky fingers as though they might try to take something.
“Copyists go east,” said the clerk. He was young and sleepy, with a smear of ink along one cheek where he had rubbed it with the back of his hand. “Through the second court, past the bronze crane on the top door beam.”
