Sect Year 7 · ninth month · night of day 28 · Azure Stream Sect, lodging above the Outer Court
The boards of the lodging floor were cold through his coat. Lin lay on them with the coat bunched under his head and his eyes open, and he listened to the Outer Court settle for the night. A dog barked once down by the Lower Market and then thought better of it. Someone crossed the flags below with a lantern, and the light slid across the beams of the ceiling and was gone. Under his left ear, through the wool, the cloth-wrapped weight of the third Wheel lay quiet, as it had lain since the Reserve. He didn’t touch it.
His left hand rested on the boards beside him. It had stiffened that afternoon, when he tried to hold the Court’s pen and found that the fingers would stop there and go no further. He had let them stop. The right hand he kept on his chest, where he could feel it rise and fall, and that helped a little, though he couldn’t have said why.
Hou Meng had come up to the lodging at noon with the quota roll under his arm and asked whether Lin had slept. Lin had said no. Hou Meng wrote no in the margin in small, careful strokes, as he wrote down everything, and went away without another word. The Sect Master would hear of it by evening.
