Sect Year 6 · third month · day 2 · the Hanging Reaches, the gallery lamp
The courier came up the last stretch of the stair with a grey bag over one shoulder and an apology ready. He was a young man with a raw face and a Court cap pulled down against the wind that always blew at the top of the Reaches. The wardens at the stair foot had held one of his packets back, he explained. They had broken its seal to check it against the Court’s list, and then they had broken the seal of a second check, for good measure. That was why he was late. He was sorry for it.
“You had no part in it,” Lin said.
The courier unbuckled the bag and drew out a single letter in a grey cover. The Court’s closed wheel had been pressed into the wax of its flap, every spoke whole. Beneath the Court’s wax was a second seal, small and round and pressed in pale green. Lin would have known that seal in the dark. Su had cut it herself, and she had never once let anyone else hold it.
“Is it true the lamps don’t warm up here?” the courier asked, glancing at the lamp on its hook.
