Sect Year 2 · sixth month · day 14 · the rim of Sallow Basin · night
The stars came out over the rim one at a time. Lin watched them arrive and did not count them. It was a small effort, like setting down a bag he had carried so long that his arms had forgotten they were holding it. He found that the effort got easier each time he made it.
Pei had fallen asleep sitting up. Her head had tipped sideways against his arm, the right one, the one that was still warm. She had chosen that side without waking, the way a cat chose the warmest stone. Her breath was slow and even and smelled of the millet they had eaten at dusk. Lin did not move. He had the tablet in his lap, and the wax was cold, and he kept one hand flat on it so the wind could not take the cloth.
The wardens’ fire burned at the lip, small and steady, and beside it the rope hung down the slope in its loose curve. No one had come down the rope since the light went. No one had come up it either. The masked men were gone. The slope above the basin was only rock and dark. The basin itself was a pale flat country under the stars, with the bronze rising out of it like the back of something that had been buried a long time and was not yet ready…
