Sect Year 4 · eighth month · day 20 · Serai, the post-house, morning
The Serai packet came in on the morning tide, and the post-house keeper laid it on the counter in its oilcloth as though it might spill. He was a narrow man with ink on his cuffs and a salt-burn across the backs of his hands. He had handled Lin’s letters for a month without once looking at the direction. Lin was grateful to him for that.
“From the south,” the keeper said. “Came up the coast road in the night. Wet on the outside, dry in the middle. You’ve been lucky with your sea.”
“I haven’t been lucky with anything.”
“No?” The keeper slid the packet across the counter. “Then you’re due. Sign for it.” He glanced at the left hand, which hung at Lin’s side, and then looked away again, politely, the way the post-house people always did.
Lin had walked to the post-house over the canal bridge, the long way round by the salt-pans. That was because the short way ran past the Vault’s back wall and he had found he couldn’t pass that wall without listening for the cords. The pans lay flat and white on either side of the road, with rakes standing upright in their crusts and the sea-smell coming off them in the cold.
