Sect Year 3 · third month · day 18 · Azure Stream Sect, the watch-room and the east wall at dawn
Lin woke on the bench with grey light at the edge of the shutter. For a moment he didn’t know which wall he was looking at. Then he knew the stone box of the watch-room, the road pale beneath its window and grey with dew, and the cold lying across him like a second blanket.
Somewhere beneath the stone and the grey light the river was still running. He could hear it, or believed he could: a long brown sound under everything, which did not stop for anyone’s count.
Pei was asleep on the floor beside the bench. She had her back against the door and the wax tablet in her lap, and her notebook lay open on her knee at the forty-one names. Every line had a tick beside it. None had been struck. Her head had tipped to one side and her mouth was open a little, and in the grey light she looked younger than fourteen, and then she looked older.
His palms felt as though they had held a rope all night. He turned them over on his knees. They were clean.
