Sect Year 9 · third month · day 6, dusk · Azure Stream Sect, the spring, then the terraced path down
The sun went behind the cliff a little before the lamps on the lower terraces were lit. It went without any fuss. The light lifted off the water in a long grey tide, first from the far bank, then from the gauge, and last from the flat stone where Lin sat on the mat with his hands on his knees. The cold came up out of the spring the moment the light left it. He felt it in the stone under the wool, and then in his shins, and then at the base of his skull. There, the day’s tiredness had gathered. Su’s lamp burned on the rim. It was the only warm thing in the basin.
Pei had come back up at dusk with a clay cup in her hands and a stoppered flask tucked under her arm. She set the cup on the flat stone without a word, as she set down anything she had carried a long way. Then she went back to her place at the edge of the basin and folded her hands.
Jiang opened the grey book again. Her coat was buttoned to the throat, and the breath she let out hung for a moment in front of her face before it thinned away. “The thirty-eighth,” she said. “The Court has it as the Debt-Clerk.”
