Sect Year 2 · first month · the twenty-third life: the Reincarnation Hall, Qiao’s eleventh year
The fever came up the mountain stair in the wet part of the year. The copyists who had gone down to the river quarter for paper came back coughing, and within two nights Qiao could hear it through the floorboards of the lower bunkhouse. A rasping sound, slow and even, like a saw working in a room where nobody was building anything. The steward climbed the stair with a lantern and a face gone grey. Three cots in the lower room were already full, and the boards that had carried the ledgers up from the valley were being carried back down with men lying on them.
“Water,” the steward said. He looked at Qiao’s basket, then at Qiao. “Not the ledgers. The long jug and two buckets. Don’t spill it on the stair.”
The jug was heavier than Qiao had expected, and its handle was slick with someone else’s sweat. He went down the lower stair one step at a time, counting as he went, the way he counted every stair in the Hall. There were forty-one to the landing. He lost the number at the turn, found it again, and said it under his breath to keep his feet on the stone.
