Sect Year 3 · eighth month · day 20 · the stream path below the spring, first of three mornings
The party left the spring at first light. Meanwhile, the frost still lay white on the flat stone and the alders stood grey and dripping over the water. The guards went first with the tin case slung on its pole between them. They were two men in Registry grey who changed their hold every hundred paces without a word to each other.
Behind them came the porter with the packs, and behind him the Registrar on a grey pony, his cap pulled down against the damp and his register buckled inside his coat. Tang did not look back. He hadn’t looked back once since the grave. The guest court below the Outer Court gate was a short walk down the stream path, and the Ministry’s courier would find them there.
Jiang walked at Lin’s side. She had said on the first evening that the Registrar had instructed her to walk beside the one she audited. She said it in the tone a clerk uses to report an assignment he has no particular quarrel with. Lin had not asked whether she wanted the job. He suspected that the answer would have been as exact as the rest of her, and that he wouldn’t have liked the exactness any better.
