Sect Year 3 · fifth month · night of day 7 · Azure Stream Sect, the cave on the spring slope
They walked him up the terraced path above the Outer Court in the afternoon of the next day, Pei on his right and Gao Wen on his left, the salt-barge pole knocking on every step. It was a short climb. Lin had made it a hundred times with a water yoke across his shoulders, and once with Su’s hand on his sleeve. Just then, she had wanted him to see the spring before the autumn rains came down. It had never seemed so long.
“Breakthrough,” said Gao Wen, when they reached the cave mouth and he had to stop for breath. “You look like a man who fell off one.”
“I fell off the wall.”
“From the road it looked the same.”
Gao Wen set the pole against the rock and stood in the mouth of the cave for a time, getting his breath, looking down over the roofs of the Outer Court. They were grey and quiet in the afternoon. Beyond them the white road ran from the gate toward the Qingliu flats, and on it, very small, the forty-one stood where they had been left.
