Sect Year 9 · third month · day 5, morning · Azure Stream Sect, the spring
Morning came over the rim of the cliff in a thin band of light. It touched the top of the rock first and worked downward a finger’s width at a time, and where it reached the water the spring went from grey to a pale green and then to something close to silver. A small brown bird came down out of a crack in the rock, drank at the edge of the basin, and flew back up without any fuss. Lin watched it. He didn’t know its name, and he thought he had known it once.
The morning was colder than the one before, and Lin kept his coat closed at the throat against it. Su had brought the lamp up from the lodging unlit. She held it by its iron ring in her left hand, and her right hand lay flat on the open record. Every so often the ring knocked faintly against her knuckle when her fingers shifted. She hadn’t set the lamp down since she came up the path. Lin did not think she meant to.
Jiang sat on the flat stone with the grey book open on her knee. Pei stood at the far rim with her hands folded, and the morning light lay across her shoulders and made her look younger than she was. The mist had gone off the water. The basin was clear to its floor, and…
