Sect Year 9 · fourth month · day 7, morning · Azure Stream Sect, Outer Court flags
The flags had been swept every morning of the sect’s life by someone who was not thinking about the flags. Lin was thinking about them now. He stood on the west side, where Gao Wen had said the stone was worst, and held the broom as Pei had shown him on the first evening, with the grip lower on the left. That way, the weight of the straw came round even and did not drag. The wet had gone off the stone in the night. Grit lay in the seams in pale lines, and the first strokes raised a small dust that hung in the early sun and then sank again. The handle was worn pale where other hands had gone before his. He didn’t count the strokes. He had stopped counting them on the morning he came back from the spring, and the flags had not seemed to mind. Beyond the wall a cart went down toward the Lower Market, and its wheel squeaked on the turn long after the cart itself had gone out of hearing.
He had swept these flags for a winter he couldn’t remember. He had lost that winter with the thirty-second life, and he had told Su so in the record room, one line at a time. She had written it under the word rest with the others. He knew the flags now by the feel of…
