Sect Year 3 · tenth month · day 2 · Azure Stream Sect, Registry room in the guest court
Pei climbed the ridge path before the sun had cleared the pines. Lin heard her before he saw her: the quick scuff of her boots on the wet stones, and the small hard breath she took at the last steep turn, which she would have denied. She came into the cave mouth with the grey light behind her and stood there with dew to the knees, holding a folded sheet out in front of her as though it might bite.
“From Su,” she said. “She’s at the ration table. She said to give it to you before you went down, and to say nothing about it on the way.”
“Did she say what it was?”
“A sheet.” Pei shrugged. “She said I wasn’t to call it a letter.”
He had slept on the ridge since the packet came up the lane on the twenty-fourth. He always slept on the ridge. Each morning since, he had walked to the cave mouth before the bell and looked down at the guest court. There, the Registry room’s door stayed shut and the crates stood stacked against its wall. The door had opened two days ago, when a Ministry porter cart came up the lane and went away again full. Lin had watched it from the top of the ridge path, and had counted its wheels without meaning to.
