Sect Year 4 · fifth month · day 4 · the birth-house loft, Ketch Shoal
The packet reached the raised stone road at noon with the Qerrin post-runner. That thin boy in a wet cap would not give it over until he had his mark in the book and his copper in his hand. Lin paid him. He signed with his right hand and held the book flat with his left, and the left hand shook the whole time, so the letters came out crooked.
The boy looked at them and said nothing. He had seen worse on that raised stone road. The tide was making behind him, and the stilts of the lower houses stood in grey water up to their cross-beams, with mothers on the ladders calling their children in from the mud.
The packet had been wrapped twice in oilcloth against the sea. The Registry’s square seal was pressed into the outer fold. Under it, in a small square hand Lin would have known anywhere, the direction read: Witness Lin Cang, Ketch Shoal, by the Qerrin post. The seal had been whole until his thumb broke it. The letter inside was dated the fifteenth day of the fourth month, at the sect, and he counted the days before he could stop himself.
