Sect Year 2 · third month · day 10 · the milestone road above Sallow Basin, midday
The road narrowed after the shoulder of rock, and the stones along it came closer together, as though the Wastes had decided to count them too. By midday Lin had stopped trying to read the numbers cut into their faces. The numbers were worn down to ridges. The heat had got into the salt and stood up off the road in a shiver that made the far milestones swim, so that the dead men beside them seemed to step in and out of the light.
Pei walked ahead. She always did now. Each time they reached a stone she went to the dead man beside it and looked at his hands, not his face. Then she came back to the road and walked on with her list tucked into her sleeve. Lin had let her. Su had said nothing about it, though she wrote down each stop.
“Pei,” Lin said. “Stay where I can see you.”
She turned at the next stone, perhaps thirty steps up the road, and lifted one hand to show she had heard him. Then she looked again at the dead man’s open palms, and she didn’t come back.
