Sect Year 4 · tenth month · day 3 · the Vault of Serai, the brass pans
Lin reached for the name, and his hand closed on nothing.
He knew where it should be. He knew the shape of the place, the way a man’s tongue goes to the gap of a tooth that was pulled years before. He began with the first half and found the sound of it, soft and rounded, like water going over a stone. He reached for the second half, which had a river in it, and there was a river, but it was only a river. It had no name. It ran past a city. The city had wells.
He tried again. A river city with wells. He could see the wells. He could see a lane of red boards and a seller of boiled water, and the grit lines in the jars, and a girl with a tally stick measuring them each morning. He could see all of it and still not say what it was called. The thing he had carried up the whole length of the coast road was gone, and in its place there was only a river city with wells, the kind of place that might have been any city on any map.
