Sect Year 1 · sixth month · day 21 · Azure Stream Sect, Inner Court north ridge
Su set the black book on the low table. Her pen beside it, and then, after a moment’s thought, she set the lamp down too, so that the light fell across the open pages and not across his face.
Lin sat on the floor with his back to the cave wall and his hands open on his knees. He had decided in the night that he would say all of it. He had made the decision on the cot, with the cold in his arm and the lamplight lying across the boards, and in the morning it was still there. He took that as a good sign, although he had no idea yet what it was good for.
“Begin with what you want to know,” he said.
“I want to know where it starts.” Su uncapped the pen. “Start where you’d start for a stranger.”
So he began at the grave.
He told her about the spring up the terraced path above the Outer Court, and the stone house beside it, and Shen Mo’s grave with the water running past its edge. He told her how the jade slip had cracked in his palm, along its grain, as if it had been struck from the inside, and how the voice had come after. A voice with no face and no breath, which had asked him whether he would turn. He had said yes…
