Sect Year 5 · ninth month · day 3 · the Lantern’s house, Glass Shelf
Grey light came through the high slit, and Lin lay still on the cot with the feeling of having counted something in the night and not set the figure down. It sat in him like the last figure of a column, carried over and waiting. He tried to find it, and found only the cold rail under his hand and the grey light coming through the high slit. The lamp beside the cot had burned down to a hand’s width of oil, its flame lying low. Dewe was gone from the stool he had kept beside it all night, and only the lamp was left to keep watch.
The panes were humming. The note came up through the boards, and there was a gap in it at the wall beside the frame, as there had been since the morning before. Lin turned his head.
A grey cloth lay on the glass floor, some way out from the wall. It was drawn over a shape that did not move, and the shape was the length of a tall woman lying on her back.
Pei was in the doorway at the head of the black stair. She sat on the top step with her back against the stone and the Lantern’s great book shut on her knees, and her face was the colour of the glass. She hadn’t gone to bed. Lin could see it in the…
