Sect Year 2 · first month · the twenty-third life: the Reincarnation Hall, Qiao’s twelfth year
The fire started in the lower wing. There, the copy lamps had been left burning through the night. Qiao did not see it start. He saw the stair when he came down the ladder from the roof-walk. The stair was full of smoke from the bottom step to the top, grey and thick and moving, with men shouting somewhere inside it.
“Buckets to the stair!” someone was calling. “Form a line!”
The ink-boys had already formed one. It ran from the water tank court, through the lower door, up the first flight and into the smoke: a chain of hands passing wooden buckets from one to the next. Tanno, who had carried the ledgers up the stair beside Qiao in his first week and had never once been kind about it, grabbed Qiao by the arm and pushed him into the gap.
“Take it and keep it level. Don’t slop it on the steps.”
The bucket came to him heavy and full, its rim wet and cold against his palms. He took the weight without thinking. His shoulders dropped, his knees bent, his elbows came in close to his ribs, and the water stayed where it was, as though his own care had sealed it in. He passed it on, took the empty one back, and turned for the water tank. He had done this a hundred times in his life. He had never…
