Sect Year 4 · sixth month · day 10 · Ketch Shoal, the council room on the stilts, then the birth-house
The council sat in the long room at the top of the tallest stilts. There, the floor was made of split planks laid with a finger’s width of gap at every seam so that the tide could breathe under them. A fish-oil lamp hung from a chain above the table. It smoked a little in the draught from the door, and the smell of it got into everything: the wool of the coats, the bread on the sideboard, the damp rope coiled in the corner.
Four household heads sat along one side of the table with their hands folded. The clerk sat at its head with his board open and his pen laid square beside it. He hadn’t slept well, and the grey under his eyes said so.
Lin sat at the foot of the table as the Registry’s witness. The writ lay in front of him with its square seal at the top, and beside it lay the blank form, which asked its questions in a language written for the Registry and not for the stilts. Gao Wen sat on the bench by the door with his bad leg stretched along it. His palms were in clean linen now. The birth-house keeper had changed the dressings that morning, tutting over the blood in the old strips, and then she had said nothing about it at all.
