Sect Year 8 · first month · day 3 · Azure Stream Sect, record-room doorway
The mist had not yet lifted from the lower terraces when Lin came to stand in the record-room doorway. He had slept a little, and eaten a little, and the silent week lay on him like a coat that was not quite his size. From the step he could see the path that climbed past the Outer Court toward the spring, grey and wet, with the stone gutters running alongside it. Below, the east lane was already awake. He could hear a crank winch turning somewhere down there, and the slow knock of a cart backing into a yard, and a dog that had given up barking for the morning.
He leaned on the frame and waited. He didn’t know exactly what he was waiting for, except that it would come up the path from the well, because everything that came up the path in the morning did.
Pei came up it as the mist began to thin, with the yoke across her shoulders and the bucket swinging from one end of it. She had been at the east well since before the lamps were out. Her hair was pinned up at the back with a bit of cord, and there was a dark line along the hem of her coat where the path had soaked it. She walked steadily now, with her eyes on the stones ahead of her and each foot placed where…
