Sect Year 9 · third month · day 4, morning · Azure Stream Sect, the spring
The record lay open on the flat stone, its corners weighted with four smooth pebbles from the edge of the basin. The light had reached the lip of the cliff by then, and it came down the rock in a thin gold line that stopped short of the water. The gauge caught it. For a moment the top notch shone like a fresh cut in new wood, and then the light moved on.
Su had not read the header of the page. Lin could see that from where he sat with his legs folded on the mat. Her finger lay beside the first line, not on it, and she was waiting the way she had waited in the record room for a year, without asking him to go faster. In the winter she first kept the record, he had sat across the table from her and given her the purpose lines one at a time. She had copied each one as he said it, and asked him to say it again when she had to ask. The ink on the first page had gone brown. The words were still exact.
