Sect Year 9 · third month · night of day 30, to dawn of the fourth month’s first day · Azure Stream spring
Su lit the first lamp at dusk and set it on the flat stone beside the record. The basin turned from gold to grey and then to a blue that was nearly black. Below the cliff the terraces went dark one by one as the lower households banked their fires. The Outer Court’s lamps came up in a scatter of small points, the nearest of them so far down that they might have been stars. The water at the top notch took the lamplight and gave it back, so that the gauge seemed to be cut into glass.
Pei had brought up a blanket and her own coat. She sat at the stone’s edge with her back against the rock and drew the coat over her knees without a word, and Lin did not say anything about it either.
Su opened the first bound book. It had a plain grey board cover and a paper label brushed in her hand, and the label was still readable: Who Lin Cang Is, and under it the day the book had been begun. The leaves had gone soft at the corners from years of handling, and the ink had browned on the early pages the way old tea browns the inside of a cup.
