Sect Year 3 · eighth month · day 18, morning · Azure Stream spring, Shen Mo’s grave
The morning bell had rung over the outer court. But the spring stones were still slick and dark from the night, and every step Lin took along the bank pressed a print that filled slowly with water. He stood at the edge of the flat stone and watched the spring run under it.
The water came up clear from somewhere beneath the hill, slid across the rock in a sheet no thicker than a palm, and went down through a gap between two slabs where he couldn’t follow it. He had listened to that sound every morning since he came up the stream. He couldn’t have said whether it had grown quieter in the night.
Shen Mo’s grave sat beside the flat stone under its short grey marker, which had no carving on its face. Lin had kept the fallen leaves off it since the rain began. He hadn’t decided whether he did that for Shen Mo or for himself, and he didn’t look at the marker for long.
Down the slope the Registry party had made its camp by the guards’ fire. Their voices came up through the wet alders in pieces: a kettle lid rattling, a horse blowing through its nose, the clink of the tin case being set down on stone.
