Sect Year 2 · eighth month · day 16 · the crossroads at Four Stones, on the river road
Four grey stones marked the crossing, one at each corner where the road met the south track. Their faces had been cut with the names of towns, and the names had worn so far that only the shapes of the letters were left, like the marks of fingers in wet clay. A dry well stood at the north corner with its rope hanging down into nothing. A ditch ran along the south track, and reeds grew in the ditch, the first green thing Lin had seen since Sedge Well.
They reached Four Stones in the heat of the afternoon. Since the well the carriers had grown by four. Four had come out of the villages along the road with bundles on their backs and a look Lin knew from the gate, the look of people who had been asked a question by a clerk and had answered it too well. The tally stood at twenty-six. Lin kept it in fives, the thumb moving, the other hand empty.
“Stop here,” he said. “Let the boy rest.”
They sat down along the ditch bank where the reeds gave a little shade. Pei knelt at the edge of the water with the metal pen in her teeth and looked at the brown current as though it had said something rude to her. The water moved. It went slowly past the reeds in a long…
