Sect Year 5 · third month · night of day 3 · the forty-fifth life: Tallow Hill, her forty-first year
They shut the Loom the day after the funeral. Su tied the bar across its door herself, with a plain rope she didn’t let anyone else touch, and then they walked down the Point road to the slip and crossed back to Sarn by boat. Su sat in the stern without speaking until the lodging lights came up over the water on Sarn’s quay.
The Registry lodging stood above the record room on Sarn’s quay. Lin lay down on the settle under the window, with the sound of the tide below and the lamp unlit. Across the passage Pei’s door stood open a hand’s width. He heard her turn a page, and then nothing. Su’s room was shut. The record box sat in the passage outside it with its strap coiled on top.
Below the window the quay was quiet. A boatman called out at the far steps, a short word that carried over the water, and another answered him from the bar. Lin thought of the Point at dusk, of the lamps going up the slope and the names said in the wind, and of the keeper’s hand opening on the stone. He didn’t think of the cord. He let the thought go the way one lets go of a line at the dock, with the hand still open afterward.
