Sect Year 4 · twelfth month · day 4 · Azure Stream Sect, the record room and the Inner Court hall
Su wrote the water before the bell, as she had written it every morning since the spring. The east well stood a finger below the mark she had cut into its stone lip in the fifth month, and the count matched yesterday’s. Forty buckets to the Outer Court kitchen. Twelve to the lower terraces.
Six to the sick room. None to the gate, because the gatekeeper drew his own from the water tank at the head of the lane and would not be told otherwise. She set the figures in their columns and ruled the line beneath them, and then she looked at the page below.
Under the heading Who Lin Cang Is the page was blank. She had written the heading at the start of the year, in the same hand she used for every entry she didn’t yet know how to fill. Some pages took a long time to fill. She had learned to wait for them without writing anything else on the sheet, because a record made to look finished before its time was worse than a blank one.
