Sect Year 7 · ninth month · day 4 · Azure Stream Sect, outer gate
The Qingliu road had gone brown while he was away. Lin saw it from the bend above the river pier. There, the valley opened and the sect’s grey wall came up over the terraces. The grain on the lower fields had been cut and stacked. The stubble stood in raked rows, and a fine pale dust lay along the road with the cart-marks of the whole season pressed into it. Every mark pointed the same way, down toward the river. Nothing had come up that road in weeks that had not gone down it first.
The Court’s courier had set him off at the pier with a slate to sign and no other business with him. Lin signed with his right hand. Then he walked, because no one at the pier had been told to carry him and he hadn’t thought to ask. He had started up the valley before light, with the sky going from black to the colour of wet slate over the eastern ridge, and by the time the road bent toward the gate the sun had swung round into the west and lay hot on the back of his neck.
