Sect Year 3 · eighth month · day 12 · Azure Stream Sect, the spring below the cave residence, at dusk
The light went out of the terraces slowly, as it does in the mountains. The high rock above the spring stayed pink for a long time after the valley below had gone to grey. Lin sat on the bank with his right hand flat on the flat stone and listened to the water run beneath it. The sound was steady. It hadn’t changed in all the mornings he had come down to kneel here, and it didn’t change now. Even so, the air had turned cool and a few midges hung above the pool in a thin, shifting cloud.
Pei sat a little way along the bank with her back against a rock and the notebook open across her knees. She had been writing since the sun touched the ridge. She wrote the names in order, as she always did. The forty-one came first, from the first bed in the row to the last, each one with its stroke.
Then Ketu Ban, who had died on a road in the war with his hands open. Then Gerit Lo, who had gone up off the rim with the last of his breath spent on a child’s message. She checked each name against the page before she wrote it, and where she wasn’t sure of a spelling she left a small gap and came back to it.
