Sect Year 9 · fourth month · day 6, dawn · Azure Stream Sect, outer-court gate
The outer gate was oak gone black from handling, banded with iron, and whoever had hung it had expected to be obeyed. At first light the wicket stood open on its hinges. Gao Wen knelt on the step beside it with a short hammer and a flat stone across his knees. The new pin lay on the stone by his hand, bright at the point where the smith had filed it. He set the pin into the upper hinge and tapped it twice to seat it. Then he struck it once, hard, with the face of the hammer. The note went flat and clean across the flags and died against the wall of the Outer Court kitchens.
“Holds,” he said.
“Yes,” said Lin.
It was the word for a thing that had been tested and had not given way. Lin turned it over and did not fit it to himself, and he let it stand for the pin.
Gao Wen swung the wicket on its hinge. It came round without a sound and stopped square in its frame, and he grunted once, as if the silence were a small insult he had decided to accept. He got up in stages, one hand on the gatepost and the bad leg out to one side, and he stood a moment getting his weight to agree with him.
