Sect Year 2 · seventh month · day 8 · Qingliu market town, the grain tower with the blue door
The sun came up over Qingliu one grain tower at a time. Lin watched it from the top of the road. The first light caught the crown of the nearest tower. Then it turned its stone the colour of wet bread, then the next, then the next, until the whole row stood up out of the river fog, patient and grey. They were squat drums of grey stone with slit windows and iron cradles on their roofs for the hoisting ropes. Each had a door at its foot. Most of the doors were brown and weathered. One was blue.
Qingliu market was larger than Tenwell and busier than Lin had expected at such an hour. Carts were coming in from the fields with their lamps still burning, and women were setting out baskets of greens on the flat stone slabs. At the market gate a proclamation had been nailed up on the grey paper, the black letters running. Beneath it someone had chalked a single word, over and over, until the chalk had worn into the grain of the wood. Pei read it under her breath. Then she stopped, and did not say it again.
