Sect Year 6 · second month · day 11 · the Hanging Reaches, the reading hall
Lin opened the second packet at the reading table with the lamp turned up. He did it slowly. The wax had cracked along one side where the seal had been pressed too hard, and he didn’t want to tear the paper beneath it. The inside was thin. Su had folded a single sheet around a smaller square, and when he drew the sheet open there was one line in her hand across the middle of the page, with room left above and below it.
He wouldn’t give it to me to read, so I didn’t read it. He asked me to send it up in the same bag.
Under the line lay the square of coarse sect paper. It was the grey kind the outer court used for its tallies, cut with a knife rather than torn. It had been folded in four and then in four again until it was no bigger than the top joint of his thumb. Lin unfolded it on the wood. The writing was in a square, heavy hand, every stroke pressed down so hard that the ink had soaked through to the back.
