Sect Year 8 · first month · day 30, dusk · Azure Stream Sect, record room, then the Azure Stream spring
The light in the high window went from gold to grey while Su held her pen above the page. Nobody lit a second lamp. Jiang sat with her hands folded over the black book and did not look at the window. Lin stood against the plaster and watched the shadows lengthen across the floor until they reached the foot of the desk and climbed the leg of it.
Su put the pen down.
“No,” she said.
She said it from her chair, without rising. She didn’t push the record aside or turn toward the door. She simply looked at Jiang across the width of the desk, and her face did not change at all.
“I have one life,” Su said. “I would like to live it.”
Jiang opened the black book then. She found a clean page near the back, uncapped a short pen, and wrote, slowly and in a small clear hand. Lin could see the nib move and could not read the words. Su watched the pen the whole time, the way she had once watched a copyist’s hand at the Azure gate, when a list was being read and a name might be spelled wrong.
