Sect Year 4 · eleventh month · day 4 · the Serai post-house, at first light, the south packet waiting on the tide
The tide had turned over the water gate before dawn. Lin heard it through the shutters, the water finding the boards with a slow pull, and then the lanterns along the road went out one after another as the keeper walked the posts with her snuffer. By the time he had tied his pack, the sky over the delta had gone the grey of wet paper, and the flagged yard below the landing was full of the sound of men loading salt.
He sat at the post-house table with the shutters open and broke Su’s wax.
He looked at the date at the head of the sheet first. It said the ninth month. He read it again, and understood that she couldn’t have known. She had written it before the packet sailed, before the pans had come level in the Vault, back when the name was still his to spend or keep. Nothing he had done at the table of brass could have reached her in time to change a word. Her letter had crossed the sea to find him, and it had said only what she knew when she wrote it.
