Sect Year 3 · eighth month · day 16 · the Azure Stream spring, below the grave
The rain came up the valley a little before noon, as the rider had said it would. Lin saw it first as a darkening on the far terraces, a grey veil drawn slowly across the hillside from the west. Then he heard it on the roof of the spring-house, a patter that thickened into a steady fall.
The spring rose a little under it and went brown at the edges. He carried the jade halves in their grey cloth into the spring-house and set them on the shelf above the bench, away from the open door. Then he sat on the bench with his back to the wall, and he waited.
The spring-house was no more than a roof on four posts. At one end stood a plank table that the Outer Court had carried up the terraces years ago, for the old man’s letters, and had never carried down again. The roof edge ran out past the threshold over a flat stone that the water could not reach. Lin had sat under that roof edge on the first grey evening after the Wastes. He had watched the drips fall from its edge the way he watched everything now, for the place where they would stop.
