Sect Year 7 · first month · day 3 · the far shelf of the Reserve
The middle bell rang far above them, through the stone and the gallery and the long grey cut of the slope, and the sound came down to the water thin as a wire. Lin heard it finish. He had been kneeling on the warm shelf for a long breath, with his right hand flat on the stone beside the founder’s weight and the third Wheel in his palm. He hadn’t moved since the bell began.
Pei sat behind him with her book open on her knee and the pencil still in her fingers. She hadn’t written since the bell. She hadn’t spoken either. Every so often he heard her breathe out slowly, as if she were putting something down a little at a time so that it wouldn’t spill.
The founder’s weight lay at his knee. It had no edges. It was no longer cold, and it was no longer heavy. It was only there, light and still, the way a coat lies over the back of a chair when its wearer has gone out into the rain. Lin did not touch it. He kept his palm on the stone next to it, and he felt the warmth come up through the rock into his hand.
