Sect Year 3 · ninth month · day 24 · Azure Stream Sect, outer court gate
Lin came down the north path in the middle of the afternoon, when the shadow of the gate lay across the outer court flat stone slabs like a board laid flat. He had walked the ridge road without stopping, and the rope-marks in his palms had opened again on the climb and stuck to the linen. He hadn’t decided to come down. He had woken at the turning of the light with the feeling that someone had said his name at the gate. When he listened he heard nothing but the wind in the pines, and he got up anyway.
Pei waited at the gatepost. The bucket stood on the stone beside her, square on its base, with the iron band still on it. She had carried it up the lane from the crank winch that morning, by herself, and she didn’t say so, and Lin did not ask. The stave that had split at the lip was bound now with a length of soft wire, twisted tight in three turns. The wire had been pulled so hard that its ends bit into the wood.
