Sect Year 8 · second month · day 5, dawn to the Council · Azure Stream Sect, record-room hall, then the Council hall
The record-room hall was cold at dawn. The night’s damp had settled into the stone flags, and the window at the far end showed a grey sky that had not yet decided on a colour. Pei sat on the bench beneath the window with her knees drawn up and her book open across them. It was small and cheap, the kind the Lantern issued to its apprentices, with a pencil tied to its spine by a loop of string. She didn’t look up when Lin came out of the room. She had been there, he thought, since before the bell, and she had the look of someone who had watched the light come along the hall one flag at a time.
“You’re up,” she said.
“I’ve been up.”
“You’ve been asleep on that mat with your mouth open, and Su stepped over you twice.” She turned a page. “What did you wake with?”
Lin leaned against the wall beside the window. He could still feel the weight of what Berand had held in both hands, the ink drying on the page. The empty leaf at the back of a book that someone would have to take up.
