Sect Year 3 · tenth month · day 9 · Qingliu pier, then the Wide Sea
The Carried Hour lay against the pier with her two masts already bare and her canvas loose along the yards. She was a Registry junk, broad in the beam and painted the grey of the Ministry’s paper, with the Board’s sign on her stern in white. Thirty-one people worked her. Lin counted them from the pier while the porters carried the sect’s boxes aboard. He counted them again as the last box went down the hatch, because the number was easy to hold and he liked to know it hadn’t changed.
Su stood at the rail with her record wrapped in oilcloth and tied at the spine. She hadn’t let anyone carry it. Her hair was pinned flat under a grey scarf against the wind off the water. Her face had the look it wore over the ledger when a column had come out right and she didn’t yet trust it.
Jiang stood on the deck above the hatch with the black book in her coat. She had two pencils behind one ear and a third in her hand, and she was reading the Ministry’s orders for the second time since the porters had come aboard. Lin could see her lips move over the lines.
