Sect Year 2 · ninth month · night of day 14 · the twenty-fifth life: the valley under Silent Terrace, Ah Dong’s sixth year
“Teach the boy to wait.”
Lin lay on the pallet by the stove with his coat folded under his head, and the room went on around him as it always did before the Wheel turned. The fire ticked behind its grate. The ford made its soft noise beyond the walls.
Across the stove Pei sat with her back against the warm brick and her knees drawn up, and he could hear her breathing, slow and then slower, while she kept herself awake by hand. Her fingers moved over the wax tablet in her lap, feeling for the strokes in the dark and reading the names with her skin.
The quiet came up under him from somewhere below the floor. He let it take his weight. It didn’t come on him in a rush. It came the way cold settles onto a wall at dusk, a little at a time, until it is simply there and nothing can be done about it. He was calm. He had been calm since the stair, and before that, if he was honest, since the morning he had told Pei he would wait on the ford. He had only not known it until he lay down.
