Sect Year 2 · eighth month · day 20 · the Qingliu fork, the post-house yard
The post-house at the Qingliu fork had a painted sign that no one had repainted in a generation. Two arms pointed out from a post above the gate, one toward the east road and one toward the south, and the paint on both had flaked away to the grain of the wood. The gate itself had two leaves. One still hung true on its hinges. The other lay against the wall with its top rail split, and somebody had propped it there with a barrel, as if they meant to fix it later and had never got round to it.
They came up the last rise at midafternoon, under a sky that had cleared behind the rain and left the air washed and cold. Lin saw the roof first, grey tiles with moss in the joints, and then the stable beyond it with a loft above the stalls, and he stopped at the top of the rise without meaning to.
He knew the roof. He knew the shuttered window at the back, and the beam over the door with a crack along its length that someone had stuffed with tow. He had woken under that beam once, in the seventh month, with his hands still moving in his sleep as though they were counting something very large.
