Sect Year 5 · fourth month · day 3 · Kettle Bend, the inn kitchen
The range was ticking as it cooled. Lin lay on the cot beside it with the blanket drawn to his chest and let the room come back to him one piece at a time. Someone had banked the fire with ash before dawn. The kitchen smelled of wet wool and scorched barley and the cold yard air that came under the back door: the copper pans on their hooks, the flour bin with its lid askew, the window above the sink gone from black to a dull pewter.
His left hand lay on the blanket. He lifted it. It closed as far as the middle of the palm and no farther, and when he tried to bring the fingers in the rest of the way they trembled. That fine shake ran up into the wrist and stopped there. He had stopped expecting it to change. His right hand, when he lifted it, was still.
A hand came to his shoulder and rested there. It was warm, and it didn’t move.
“Don’t sit up yet,” Pei said. “The cot will creak and wake the cook. You’ve been lying still since before the bread went in.”
