Sect Year 2 · fifth month · day 2 · the milestone camp above Sallow Basin
The morning came up white off the salt, so flat and bright that the milestones threw no shadows at all. Lin lay with his eyes shut and listened to Su’s pen. It scratched across the page, steady and quick, and he understood before he opened his eyes that it had been moving for some time.
Pei was sitting up. Her hair was full of grit. The blanket had slipped off one shoulder, and she was looking at nothing in particular with her hands folded in her lap. Her lips moved. No sound came out of them yet.
Then she spoke.
“It’s saying buckets,” she said, in her own voice, with her head on one side. “Two. The first hooks on the left and the second on the right. The rail is pinned at the post end with a bent nail. Hook the first. Lower it. Count it down.” The patience in it wasn’t hers. It had the flat, tired evenness of someone who had said the same thing many times to people who did not listen. “The rail has a dent where the rope runs. It wasn’t there in the first dry year. It’s there now.”
