Sect Year 5 · ninth month · day 1 · the Lantern, the black room
The stone was cold against Lin’s cheek, and for a while he didn’t move, because the cold was the first thing he knew and it seemed to be enough. The panes were humming. The note came up through the floor and into his teeth, as it had every morning since they climbed the shelf road in the rain. It was lower than he remembered, or he was tired enough that it felt lower.
He opened his eyes on the black floor. The grey light came thin through the high slit in the cliff wall and lay across the stone in a long pale bar. Pei sat against the rock at the far side of the room with her knees drawn up and her back to the cliff. A hand lamp lay in her lap. Its flame was gone, and its brass was the only bright thing in the room.
“It went out at the last watch,” she said.
Lin pushed himself up onto one elbow. His left hand would not close all the way on the stone. It stopped halfway, as it always did, and it shook when he leaned his weight on it. He looked at it until it was still. Then he sat up. His knees ached and his back ached. The body was his own, and it had come back to him the way a coat comes back after rain, heavy and…
