Sect Year 1 · twelfth month · day 3 · the Imperial Archive, east copy hall
The east copy hall was a long room of slanted desks set in rows, with a window at the far end that let the morning light in as a flat white sheet. The copyists sat in their rows with their heads bent and their brushes moving. The room smelled of ink and warm paper and the wet wool of coats hung by the door. Nobody looked up when Lin came in. A dozen pens went on scratching, as though the room had been built for that sound and for nothing else.
Pei stopped at the threshold with the bucket on her arm. She looked at the rows, the bent heads, and then at the wooden floor, where her boots would leave wet prints if she walked in. “I’m not supposed to come in,” she said.
“Stay by the door,” said Su. “Keep the bucket with you.”
“I wasn’t going to leave it.”
Su went to the clerk’s table by the entrance, and the clerk pointed down the room with his brush toward the window. A woman sat alone at the last desk with a board of papers propped before her. She had her back half to the light. Her head stayed bent over the board.
