Sect Year 3 · third month · day 11 · Azure Stream Sect, the east wall and the cookhouse door
Lin counted the stones of the east wall from the gate tower to the ditch, because counting was the only thing that kept him still. There were two hundred and twelve between the tower and the first stone support prop. He counted them at midnight and got two hundred and twelve.
He counted them again before the grey came up over the Qingliu flats and got two hundred and eleven, and then he lost his place at the new course. Pei had re-pointed it in the second month. The mortar there was still pale against the old stone, and his eye kept sliding off the seam and starting again somewhere else.
He hadn’t slept properly since the herald came up the road under his white cloth. He slept in pieces. A short sleep on the gatehouse bench, a doze against the low roof wall with his coat buttoned to the chin, a long grey stretch in which he dreamed of nothing and woke with his left hand gone numb beneath him. Su’s letter from the fords lay folded twice in the inside pocket of his coat. He had read it so many times that the creases had gone soft as cloth. Its last order was the word she had underlined. Sleep.
