Sect Year 3 · eighth month · day 17, night · the Azure Stream spring-house, below the grave
Night came down under low cloud, and a fine wet haze came with it. It hung in the still air the way dust settles on a table. That way, the lamp under the roof edge made a small gold room in the wet, and beyond its edge the hollow was only the sound of the spring and the soft tick of water on the pine needles.
Lin sat on the spring stones at the water’s edge with his back to the rock. Across the water, a little above the flat stone, Jiang Ziyue sat on a low squared block the Outer Court had once used for splitting kindling. The lamp stood on the flat stone between them, its horn shade turned so that the light fell on the page of her book and nowhere else.
She had been writing for some time. She wrote a line, and then she sat with the pen lifted and did not look up, and when she had settled on an answer she wrote it beneath the line, in the same small upright hand. Only then did she raise her head.
