Sect Year 1 · sixth month · day 15 · Azure Stream Sect, Inner Court
The cold in his left arm woke him while the cave was still dark. It lay where it had lain since the spring, from the elbow down, a slow, steady weight that did not shift when he did.
Lin lay still and let it work. The cave was dark except for a grey square at the door. There, the planks stood a finger’s width apart and let in the first of the morning. He knew the room by its shape. The plank table. The fire bowl with its ash set and cold. The shelf above his head. There, the two halves of the jade slip sat in their grey cloth. The iron hinge on the door, which he had tapped a hundred times. He knew all of it, and the knowing had the flat, certain feel of a thing read off a page, not a thing he had lived in.
He reached for his own name as a man pats his sleeve for a purse before a journey.
Three answers came up at once. The first was round and slow in the mouth, a name a mother might sing at the end of a lullaby. The second was quick and sharp, and belonged to someone who counted coins twice before he trusted them. The third was the one he had worn for three years in the Outer Court. It sat at the back of the…
