Sect Year 3 · second month · day 9 · Azure Stream Sect, the Elders’ hall
The old Elders’ hall stood at the back of the Inner Court, a long low building of black timber with a roof that sagged in the middle like a tired horse’s back. Its roof edges had been patched so often that the patches had patches of their own.
Lin had been inside it three times before, and each time he had come out with a worse opinion of the benches. There were two of them, dark wood, facing each other across a floor of worn flat stone slabs. At the far end, raised one step above the rest, stood the Sect Master’s chair, with a cushion on it so thin it might as well have been bare wood.
The benches were full. One Elder in grey sat on the left, and Han Qiwen sat beside him nearest the door, a narrow man with a soft voice and an ink-stained thumb. On the right three Elders sat in a row, and Xu Bairen sat at their centre with both hands folded on the head of a walking stick.
Sect Master Gao Tingjun presided from the chair. He was a broad, tired man with his brother’s heavy brow, and he had the look of someone who had been told he was in charge and had not yet found out what that meant.
