Sect Year 2 · eleventh month · day 24 · the Qingliu fork post-house, the common room
Hao came up the east road in the grey before noon, with mud to his knees and a bundle in oiled cloth under one arm. He was an outer-court runner, perhaps sixteen, with a sect cord knotted round his wrist and a horse behind him that had been ridden too far for one day and too fast for two. He stood in the post-house doorway and blinked at the stove as though it were the first fire he had seen since leaving Azure. Then he looked round the common room until he found Lin.
“Lin Cang?”
“Yes.”
“The Deacon says to put your name to this.” He held out a slate and a metal pen. “Put it with the hand you write with.”
Lin signed with his right hand. The letters came out steady and square, the way that hand made them, and Hao took the slate back and looked at the name and seemed relieved to find it readable.
The bundle held two papers. The first was a strip torn from the outer-court ledger, written in the Deacon’s close and cramped hand. Lin read it standing at the stove with the cup still in his left hand.
