Sect Year 3 · eighth month · day 22, dusk · Azure Stream Sect, outer court gate
Gao Wen was sweeping the gate flat stone slabs when Lin came up the last of the road. He didn’t look up. He held the broom in front of him in both hands, his weight on the good leg and the other held stiff beside it. Each stroke went out across the stone in the same short arc.
Lin remembered the night in the cookhouse back room in the fifth month. He measured out the counter-poison to the nail-scratch on the cup from the old physician’s notes. Then he held Gao Wen by the shoulders through the long shuddering seizure. Meanwhile, the draught and the poison fought through his joints. Gao Wen had come out of that night with the stiffened knee and his own life, and neither of them had spoken of it since. The sweeping said enough.
“Gate’s swept,” Gao Wen said. “Don’t track on it.”
“I have not tracked anything on it for a month.”
“You’re tracking the road on it now.” The broom went out again and came back, and grey dust drifted off the edge of the flags into the gutter. “Scrape your boots on the iron. Not on my stones.”
