Sect Year 1 · third month · day 21 · Azure Stream Sect, Inner Court north ridge cave
The fire bowl had been cold since the morning of the thirteenth. Lin had not lit it and had not let himself wonder why. On the twenty-first he still did not light it. The cold had stopped being an insult and had begun to be a fact he could work in. He had woken before the light with the arm stiff to the elbow, and had lain there counting his fingers, which were all there. The water jar by the door had a skin of frost on its rim. He broke it with a knuckle and drank, and the water went down into him cold and clean.
He worked in the cold through the early afternoon with his breath showing, sitting on the cot with Master Feng Qiao’s form sheets spread across his knees and sorting them into the order the Cloud Breath demanded. The cold made the lines of the characters sharper. He didn’t know whether that was true or whether he wanted it to be.
The packet had lain on the table for two days. He had slept both nights on the cot with his back to it and had not touched it. He noticed that he had let it stay there, which was longer than he meant to leave anything in this cave. A thing left on a table is a thing somebody has decided you will find. He…
