Sect Year 1 · third month · day 11 · Azure Stream Sect, Inner Court
Lin had been in the Inner Court often enough now to know what the builders intended. Five seats stood on a dais of black timber in the Elders’ hall, and its floor had been polished until the lanterns hung in it upside down. Anyone standing on that floor would feel the seats were higher than they were, and would feel it most keenly when he was asked to speak.
Sect Master Gao Tingjun presided from the centre seat, in grey-blue silk with his hair pinned under a plain cap. Elder Xu sat on his left, the brass foot of his staff laid across his knees. Gao Shun sat on the Sect Master’s right with his hands folded, and the two leftover Elders sat on the far wing. Lin knew one of them only by the stitched cranes on his sleeve. The other wore no ornament at all, and Lin suspected that was his ornament.
Lin stood at the foot of the dais on the bare boards. He had put his boots back on for the hall, and one of them let in water at the seam, which seemed to him a fair description of the afternoon. Gao Wen knelt to his left with two Outer students standing behind him, their hands at their sides. Hou Meng stood on the right with the bell-rod under his arm, looking at nothing.
