Sect Year 3 · tenth month · day 7 · Azure Stream Sect, the Elders’ hall
The Elders’ hall had been built to be heard in. Its roof sloped up over the benches so that a voice pitched at the floor came back from the beams with the edges taken off it. This morning the voices were pitched at the floor, and the beams were returning them smoothly, and Lin. They sat at the back with his shoulders against a post, could hear every word the conservative Elder said about the Registry’s offer.
“Two days of water,” the Elder said. He was a thin man in a grey robe, with a cough that came exactly at the points in his sentences where he disagreed with them. “For the outer court. Two days, in exchange for a signed name in the sect’s name on a purpose we have not read. I have read it. It is a purpose for the Registry’s roads.”
“Then don’t read it aloud,” said someone from the reformists’ benches. “We all know what it says.”
The cough came on schedule. Two of the younger Elders looked at their knees, and a third looked at the ceiling. There, the lattice threw squares of thin morning light across the floor.
