Sect Year 3 · ninth month · day 7, morning, then night of day 7 · Azure Stream Sect, the Lower Market, the grain tower with the blue door. Then the east well
The Lower Market woke late, as markets did on the terraces where the carts came up from the river in the dark. Shutters came down one at a time. A salt-carter swore at a mule in a yard that smelled of wet rope, and somewhere a bell rang twice for the carts to move on.
Lin walked down the market street with his hood pushed back and linen wrapped around both palms. He didn’t have to ask for the grain tower. Its door was painted blue, and the paint had been put on by someone who had taken care over it.
A notice had been nailed to the wall beside the wagon drivers’ trough, at the height of a man’s eyes. Its heading read Water by purpose. Its lines were set out in the square hand of the Registry’s copyists, with a blank at the foot for a household’s name. Nobody stood in front of it. Lin read it all the same, and then he walked on.
