Sect Year 1 · third month · day 12 · Azure Stream Sect, Inner Court
The stair up the north ridge had been cut into the rock by someone who wanted it hard to climb, and he had got his wish. The survey sheet in the Outer Court’s records chest drew it as a row of small ticks with a figure written beside them, and the figure was ninety-one. Lin had learned the sheet by heart on the walk up from the lower gate, the way he learned anything he expected to be asked about later.
He counted the steps as he went. At the first landing he stopped with the writ in his sleeve and his breath short, and he counted again from the bottom, touching each step in his mind with the toe of his new boot.
Ninety.
He counted a third time to be certain and got ninety again. The rock did not change its answer for him. He went on up with the wrong sum sitting in his chest like a stone he had swallowed, and he didn’t like it, and he didn’t stop.
The cave at the top was a shelf of grey stone with a cot against the back wall, a plank table, and a fire bowl on three iron legs with two live coals in its ash. The door was old planks hung on iron hinges. Someone had tried to scrape the paint off it and given up halfway, so the boards wore…
