Sect Year 6 · first month · day 9 · the Hanging Reaches, the head of the stair
On the ninth morning Su packed the record at the head of the stair. The Court’s runner waited for her at the desk with his hands tucked in his sleeves. He shifted his weight twice, and then a third time, and looked at the stair as if it might be persuaded to go down faster if he watched it closely enough. He was a young man with a Court badge on his collar, and he had been told to walk her down as far as the lower landing. There, the packet men would take her the rest of the way to the coast. He hadn’t looked at Lin once. The clerk behind the desk had not looked up either.
Below them the stair dropped away into the cloud. The steps were cut into the mountain’s face, each with its tally scored into the edge, and the first of them was already grey with mist. Pei had counted every one of them aloud in the eleventh month, and Lin had counted them again at the top. He couldn’t now have said where the count had stopped being his.
