Sect Year 2 · ninth month · day 14 · the first inn below Silent Terrace, the back room
Yuen came down the meadow path alone on the fourteenth morning, leading a thin brown donkey by a rope halter. She was six, and she had walked the whole way with her chin up and one fist closed round a fold of paper. When she reached the inn gate she stopped, looked at the yard and the barn and the people in it, and then walked straight across to Lin without hesitating.
“Father says ten days,” she said.
Lin crouched so that his face was level with hers. “Ten days.”
“He wrote it down.” She opened her fist. The paper was grubby and had been folded into a hard little square. Across the middle a thumbprint of lime dust had been pressed into the crease. “I can’t read it. He read it to me. He says the last firing has to be drawn and the lime sold before the rain. Or it sits in the sacks and goes to nothing. He says don’t wait on the ford.” She frowned, getting the words right. “He says wait on the lime.”
“That’s what he said?”
