Sect Year 6 · fifth month · day 2 · the Reaches, the reading hall and the gravel slope below the gallery
The silent week was long behind him. Lin woke on the stool with the reading hall’s lamps burning low, and before he opened his eyes he reached for the Azure gate.
He had done it every morning since the ford, though he hadn’t yet told anyone. It was a test of the kind he gave any metal that might hide a flaw. He reached for the outer gate of the sect the way a man in the dark reaches for a rope he has tied himself. The posts came first, grey wood gone dark at the foot, damp rising from the stone in spring. Then the hinge. It was Gao Wen’s hinge, the one that sang when the wind leaned on the gate, and Su had written about it twice now, keeping count. He could feel the iron warm under his palm. He could hear the note it made.
Then the latch. An iron bar with a ring at one end, and through the ring a pin that held the bar in its keeper. He could feel the bar, and the ring, smooth where a thumb had rubbed it for years. He reached for the pin.
