Sect Year 7 · tenth month · day 4 · Azure Stream Sect, record room, then the outer gate
The record-room door slammed behind Lin as it always did, hard enough to shake the lamp chimney on the table. Su did not look up. She had the record open under her left hand and her pen in her right, and she let the sound finish before she spoke.
“You slept,” she said.
“I slept.”
“Then sit down and tell me what you saw.” She dipped the pen. “Start with how many.”
He took the chair by the window. There, the grey light fell on the page and not on his face. His right hand went to his left cuff without his meaning it to. His fingers found the knot Su had sewn there, and he let them rest on it. He didn’t pull the thread.
“Forty,” he said. “Forty bowls on a shelf that runs the length of a drying-shed wall. Every one of them mended.”
“Mended how?”
