Sect Year 2 · seventh month · day 16 · the Qingliu fork post-house, the back room
They came back up the river to the fork in a day and a half. Then they walked the last stretch in the dusk because Pei said she would rather count the stones by lantern than sleep in a village where the wells were being asked for names. Somewhere past the second bend Lin found he was counting the stones after all, and that he had to hold each number still to keep it. He let it hold. It didn’t make the road any shorter.
The post-house was lit when they came into the yard. The boy at the door had a bowl of cold millet in one hand and a stick in the other. He looked at Lin’s face, and then, without a word, went back inside for the lamp for the back room.
The back room had a table under the window, a stove that smoked when the wind came round from the east, and a shelf of letters that had waited there for the people they were written to. Lin had read Su’s letter from Azure three times since Tenwell. It lay on the table now beside the empty bill, the coarse grey paper flattened under the lamp. Su’s hand was plain and upright, with no flourish anywhere in it.
