Sect Year 4 · sixth month · day 3 · Ketch Shoal, the Bell tower and the mud below it, at dawn on the low water
The Bell began again after dark. Where it had rung for the form, one clean note for each oath, it now rang on and on, the sound leaking out through the crack and never quite finishing. The flats had no name for the sound. Lin sat on the gallery boards through the whole of the night with his back to the post and his knees drawn up. Each time the note changed he lifted his head and listened to it go out over the water.
Mothers came out of the stilt houses at the first ring. Lin saw them through the louvre, small figures with shawls over their heads, standing on the ladders of the lower houses with their feet in the rising tide. Nobody called to them, and they didn’t call to anyone. They stood with their faces turned toward the tower and their hands on the rungs, and when the sound changed they didn’t look at each other.
Gao Wen slept. He had gone down against the gallery post a little after dark with his bad leg out straight and his wrapped hands in his lap. His breathing had slowed by degrees until it was the slow breathing of a man who has spent everything he had. The strips of Vosk’s shawl were dark across the palms. Lin let him sleep. Once…
