Sect Year 5 · eleventh month · day 7 · the Lantern’s house, Glass Shelf
The black wall stood open where the panes had been. Nobody had closed it. The Registry had taken the glass in its padded crates and the Lantern’s great book in its cart, and it had taken Veyra Lothe down the road under her grey cloth on the first trip. It had left the old frame behind, leaning against the stone where Lin had set it down. The wood had gone grey and dry in the wind off the sea, and a thin line of salt had dried along its lower edge. The wind came through the gap from the high slit in the cliff and moved the papers on the lamp-house table, as though somebody were turning them with one finger.
Pei sat at the table with a new book open in front of her. It had a plain brown cover and clean pages, and Dewe had carried it up from Hallam Ford in his satchel without saying what he had paid for it. She wrote in it every morning. She hadn’t told Lin what she wrote, and he hadn’t asked. He had seen her hand moving steadily down the first page, small and square, and once he had seen her stop and look at the empty wall before she went on.
