Sect Year 9 · third month · day 4, late afternoon · Azure Stream Sect, the spring
Late in the afternoon a long dark bar of cliff-shadow lay across half the basin, and the part of the spring still in sunlight had gone the colour of old pewter. Lin sat on the mat at the foot of the flat stone with his back against the rock. His coat was folded on the stone beside him, and the third Wheel was still in its inner pocket, wrapped in grey cloth. He hadn’t touched the coat since morning. He didn’t look at it now.
The gauge was cut into the rock at the water’s edge, a column of short grooves running down into the spring. The thaw had been running off the cliff all week, and the water had risen to the top notch and stayed there. Su had written the height at dawn and again at midday, as though the first entry might have been a mistake. Now every groove was under the surface, and the highest one showed only as a thin line of wet darkness on the stone.
Su sat at the rim with the record open across her knees. It was the first bound volume she had kept since the winter he first told her what the Wheel had said, worn soft at the corners. Its title still stood on the cover in her hand: Who Lin Cang Is. She had lit her lamp against the coming dusk…
