Sect Year 4 · sixth month · day 21 · Ketch Shoal, the birth-house ladder, the morning the sea-road packet comes in
The Registry runner came along the raised stone road at the turn of the morning tide, with an oilcloth satchel strapped across his chest and his cap pulled down against the spray. He asked first for the Registry’s witness. Lin lifted a hand from the top of the birth-house ladder. Then, the runner looked past him to the curb below, where Gao Wen sat with his leg out and his palms in their linen, and asked for the sect’s officer in the same flat voice. Gao Wen lifted one hand off his knee, as though someone had offered him water.
Lin counted while the runner came up the ladder. He couldn’t stop himself. The report had sailed from this coast on the eleventh day of the fifth month. Nineteen days to the Qingliu pier, a day up the valley to the sect, and a day for Su to answer. Then nineteen days back across the water. The sum came out at the twenty-first day of the sixth month. It was exact, and he found that he didn’t like how exact it was.
