Sect Year 2 · sixth month · day 20 · the Wastes’ edge, the last milestone
They walked for six days. Lin did not count the stones. He tried once, on the first morning, and the number slid out of his head before he could hold it, the way water ran out between the fingers of a cupped hand. After that he let the road be as long as it was. Pei kept the count instead. She called each stone aloud as they passed it, in her flat quick voice, and sometimes she got the number wrong, and he didn’t correct her.
The milestones stood as they had on the way out. The dead men stood beside them with their hands held open at the chest, palms turned outward, the fingers a little curled. Lin walked past each one without stopping. He had learned that the ones who wanted a name would ask for it, and that the rest were not helped by a stranger who stopped to stare at them.
The cold had stayed on his left side. It hadn’t come farther, and it hadn’t gone. When he walked, his left arm swung a half-beat behind the right, as if it were carrying a load nobody had told him about. He had stopped trying to make it keep pace. It kept its own pace, and he kept his, and by the third day the two had agreed to disagree.
