Sect Year 3 · second month · day 22 · Azure Stream Sect, the east wall
Each block for the new course of the wall was as long as a man’s arm and heavier than any one man could lift. The outer court carried them up from the yard on a ramp of planks laid over the mud.
Four new students to a block, two on each side, a rope through each end and the rope wound twice round a shoulder. The ramp creaked under the weight. Every few paces somebody slipped, swore, and got up again, and nobody laughed at it. That was because the same thing had happened to each of them at least once since the morning bell.
Lin took his share at the foot of the ramp. He set his right hand under the near corner of the stone, bent his knees, and lifted. The block came up off the boards with a low scrape that he felt in his back teeth. His left hand was meant to take the far corner. It hung at his side inside the coat sleeve, and when he tried to close it on the rope the fingers closed only halfway. The rope slid out of them and dropped into the mud.
