Sect Year 4 · second month · day 5 · the drum tent, hill shoulder, first light
Jiang broke the seal at first light with a clerk’s knife. She did it at the drum-pole, sitting on the felt with her back against the post and her legs folded under her. She made one cut along the fold and another along the edge of the wax, slowly, so that the seal came away whole and could be laid on the felt without a crack.
Lin and Su sat across from her. The stove in the tent was unlit, and the cold had got into the wool of the walls. Each time Lin let out a breath, it hung in front of his face and then came apart.
Inside the packet was one sheet of heavy paper folded in three. The hand was the Court’s formal hand, small and black and very even, every stroke as straight as a ruled line. Jiang read the top of the sheet without lifting it from her knee. Her face did not change. Lin watched it closely, the way he had learned to watch faces in the Registry’s rooms, and saw nothing move in it at all.
