Sect Year 1 · twelfth month · day 4 · the capital, the Imperial Archive
The copyists’ desk under the north window had a brass fitting at one corner. There, the lid met the frame, and a pale chalk cross on its top that someone had drawn long ago and never wiped away. Lin sat down at it on the fourth morning with the ink pot at his right hand and the blotter squared in front of him. Before he touched anything else he laid his palm flat on the wood, the way he had once laid it on the rail of a bridge, to learn what the thing would do under his hand.
It did nothing. It was an ordinary desk, scarred at the edges by the elbows of men who had been bored at it for years. The light came in grey from the north, without any warmth in it, and lay across the paper in a clean square.
They had walked to the Archive that morning through the wet court, past the carts with their canvas rolled back and the Registry men at their doors with their small lanterns and their patient pens. The rain had thinned to a fine grey mist that hung over the roofs and beaded on the bronze crane above the east range. Pei carried the paper case the whole way, with the bucket hooked over her arm, and did not complain of either, which Su said was a bad sign.
