Sect Year 4 · eleventh month · day 5 · the south packet, off the salt-pans of the Serai coast
The packet cleared the delta on the morning ebb, and by the time the sun had lifted clear of the water the Serai landing was only a row of grey posts behind the stern. Lin stood at the rail with his collar buttoned to the throat and watched it go. He didn’t look for the Vault’s tower. He had looked at it from every side that mattered, and he knew how quickly the glare off the flats took the shape out of anything a man was trying to see.
Inside his coat he carried what he had gathered since the post-house table. The Vault’s receipt lay folded in three, with mercy at its head and unpaid beneath the stamp. Jiang’s copy of the Registry’s writ was pressed flat against his ribs, its grey-brown board edged hard against the bone. Su’s letter was there, and Pei’s, and together they made a soft thickness that rose and fell with his breathing.
When the packet lifted on the first swell he put a hand to his chest and felt each one through the cloth, the way a man checks his purse on a crowded road.
