Sect Year 4 · sixth month · day 27 · the salt-train, the Ketch Shoal raised stone road
The salt-train was waiting at the raised stone road head when the light came up grey over the Reach. Twenty-two cars stood chained nose to tail on the packed shell of the road. Each was a flat wooden box on iron wheels, with a brake-wheel at one end and a canvas hood over the load, and the drovers moved between them with lanterns they hadn’t yet needed to light.
The tide had turned in the night. Water lay on either side of the raised stone road in long sheets the colour of pewter, and where the planks dipped, the sea came up through the cracks. Then it ran over the toes of his boots.
Lin paid his fare to a clerk at a folding table and took a ticket of thin paper with a stamp on it. He didn’t study the stamp. He folded the ticket into his coat with the summons and the coppers, turned round, and found that Gao Wen had come out along the raised stone road after him.
Gao Wen had not said a word on the walk from the stilts, which was unlike him. He stood at the landing with his stick planted in the shell and his bad leg taking less weight than the good one, and his breath came short from the climb.
