Sect Year 1 · fourth month · day 16 · Azure Stream Sect, Outer Court kitchen
Lin came down the Outer Court path in the middle of the afternoon with the north ridge’s ration ticket folded inside his sleeve. He hadn’t walked this way since the writ moved him up the mountain, and his legs had not yet decided whether the slope was an insult or a kindness. They told him so at every step.
The flat stone slabs were the same. Someone had swept them, and the broom had missed the cracked stone at the bend where water stood after rain. He stepped over it without thinking, and that surprised him more than the climb had.
The kitchen door was propped open with a split log. Steam came out of it in soft grey lumps, carrying the smell of boiled barley and lard and, under those, the sharper smell of the lye Liu Mai used on the coppers.
Somewhere inside a man was singing a song about a goose that would not come home. He got as far as the second verse. Then he heard Lin’s step in the yard and stopped, and the silence that followed had the careful shape of someone who had never once been singing at all.
