Sect Year 2 · fifth month · day 9 · the milestone road above Sallow Basin
Pei slept through most of the day in the shadow of the stone. She lay on her side with her cheek on one folded arm and her knees drawn up. Every so often the sun moved across the salt and she shifted a little to stay out of it. She didn’t wake for the carter’s cart when he rolled the water barrel down the road and back. She didn’t wake for the thornwood smoke that drifted over her at noon. Lin had never seen her sleep like this. In the kitchen she had slept like a cat, with one ear open to the stove, and on the road south she had slept lightly, waking whenever someone else turned over. Now she slept with the whole of her set down at last, and she hadn’t yet worked out where to pick it up again.
Su was asleep too, in the shade of the cart, with the book shut under her hand. It was the first time Lin had seen her sleep in daylight. Her face looked younger with the lines gone out of it, and her mouth was open a little, and he didn’t wake her to say that he was going to walk.
