Sect Year 5 · second month · day 6 · Ninth Knot Point, the upper room
The evening after the wedding the upper room of the Loom was warm from the stove below, and the lamp on the table burned steady in its glass. The room had one shuttered window against the wind off the Point and one narrow bed, which Su had made up with a grey blanket and left untouched. Lin had sat on the edge of the bed since dusk.
Pei had brought up a bowl of broth and set it on the doorstep without a word. A message had come up with it from the knot-room, given by the boy who carried the stove wood: the stove was lit in the back room, and the Witness was welcome to it. Lin had not gone down. The broth had gone cold beside him.
Su had set the record open on the table, the page for his name at the top. She sat with the pen capped beside her hand and her other hand flat on the page, as she had kept her hand on the cord that morning. She had kept this record since the second year at the sect, when she first wrote down who he was, and her hand had not changed in all that time.
