Sect Year 2 · seventh month · night of day 12 · the back room of the Qingliu fork post-house
They came back to the fork because it was the only place on that road where a letter from home could find them. Lin had thought about it for four days in the market town, lying awake under the rafters of an inn that smelled of wet wool. Meanwhile, the board at the grain tower grew another column of names in chalk.
He hadn’t gone back to the lane. He had walked the length of the market twice and come to the same corner each time, and on the fourth evening he told Pei they would go back up the road and wait where the post could reach them. Pei said that was the sensible thing. She sounded disappointed in him and in the sensible thing both.
The keeper had nothing for them. He flicked his counter along the ledger and did not look up. “Nothing for you,” he said, the same as before, and then, with the air of a man giving a small gift, “Rain’s back.”
It came in the evening, as he had said it would. It didn’t fall hard. It fell steadily and grey, drumming on the tiles and running off the roof edges into the barrel by the door. There, the iron band rang dully each time a drop struck it.
