Sect Year 7 · ninth month · night of day 27 · Azure Stream Sect, Outer Court
The lodging room had one window and one door, and Lin could not lie still in either. When the last of the lamps along the stair had burned down to a wick, he got up, pulled his coat over his shoulders and went down without a light. He knew the treads by feel. He had known them since the first year, when he had climbed them with nothing but the clothes he stood in and a pain in his back that kept him bent.
Outside, the night was cold and clean. A wind came down off the mountain and moved the dry leaves along the terrace wall with a sound like someone turning pages in a room next door. Below the Outer Court the lower terraces lay in darkness, and the Lower Market was a handful of lights at the foot of the hill. Above him the sky over the Azure Stream was black, with a few stars pricked through it. He didn’t look up at them.
The flat stone slabs ran from the foot of the lodging steps to the gate. He had swept them in his first year, and in every year since, and he knew without looking that they were uneven where the frost had lifted them. The sixth from the steps had a crack across it like a hair. He stood on the first flag and began to count.
