Sect Year 3 · second month · day 27 · Azure Stream Sect, the east wall walk, dusk
The light left the flats slowly and from the edges inward, as water leaves a basin. For a long while after the sun dropped behind the ridge the land kept a grey shine. Every stone of the Qingliu road stood up out of it, pale and separate, a line chalked from the gate to the river and left to dry.
Lin stood on the east wall walk with his right palm flat against the new course. The mortar had cooled under it through the afternoon. His left arm hung inside his coat, and he had stopped trying to work out whether the arm was colder than the stone.
Below the low roof wall the carriers’ lamps had been lit in the granary. Their light lay across the yard in yellow squares. From the long room came the voice of a child asking for water and being told that it was coming. Then being told again, more firmly, by someone who had run out of other things to say.
Pei stood at the low roof wall with the notebook open on the stone. She had ruled a line down a clean page and written a word at the head of each side. On the left was Wagons. The right side was empty.
