Sect Year 4 · eleventh month · day 1 · the Vault of the Scale, Serai
The judges came for the receipt on the first morning of the eleventh month, in a closed cart with its shutters pinned back and two riders in dark blue at its wheels. Lin heard them before he saw them. Their boots rang on the flags of the canal bridge. The sound came up the stairs of the inn by the salt wharf, where he had lodged since the open entry bound him to Serai and where no one had yet told him he might leave.
He had spent the days since the tenth month walking the salt wharf in the mornings and watching the carts come in from the pans. Every morning he counted them. Every morning the number was the same, and he found that the sameness steadied him more than any answer the Vault had given.
The senior judge was a heavy man with a clean collar and a writ in an oiled case. He didn’t sit when he was shown into the Vault’s anteroom. He stood by the window and read the writ aloud in the even voice of an officer who expected to be interrupted and did not mind. It had come from the Qerrin office under the Registry’s seal, and at its foot was a name Lin knew from the cover of the copy in his coat: Jiang Ziyue.
