Sect Year 6 · fourth month · day 6 · the Reaches, the gallery lamp
Lin woke before the lamps were trimmed. For a while he lay on the stool with his cheek against the cold edge of the desk and tried to work out where the night had ended. No life had turned in it. He knew that without looking, the way he knew the weight of his own arm. The Wheel had given him nothing since the grade at the end of the gauge-keeper’s life, and his body carried no debt from the dark. It carried only an ache along his left side, which had been cold to the collarbone for longer than he liked to count, and the stiffness of a neck bent over a page too long.
His right hand lay flat under his coat, and it found the card at once. He could feel its corner through the wool, a small hard edge pressed against the folded leaf and the chip of etched glass. He moved his fingers over it slowly. The pen likeness faced outward on the front. The name was on the back, in his own letters, written with the right hand and pressed so hard the ink had sunk into the grain.
