Sect Year 2 · ninth month · day 4 · the first inn below Silent Terrace, the back step
The ford could be heard from the back step of the inn even with the stable door shut. It sounded like a cart dragged slowly over loose stones, a long grinding that never stopped and never came any nearer. Lin sat on the step in the grey light with his coat around his shoulders and listened to it until he stopped hearing anything else.
He reached out and tapped the post beside him with one knuckle. The wood gave back a dull note, soaked through, the sound of a beam that had stood in weather for a long time. He tapped it again to be sure. The same dull note came back. The river did not change its voice to suit him.
Behind the stable the carriers slept in the barn, eight of them in a row of blankets along the hay. They were the eight who had walked up the valley road with him from the fork. The other eighteen had stayed under Ottery’s roof to wait out the thaw, with Gu Lanying’s rope and Pan Zheng at the lamp over the gate. Tian Mao and his mother, who had asked to stay near a roof for the boy’s chest.
