Chapter 37: Written Down

It was the seventh, her morning off. Her father would be expecting her on Lantern Lane with noodles, proper ones, less salt. She went to the Bureau instead. He came with her, because he had to be within a hundred paces of her desk. He didn't sit on the windowsill. He stood at the far end of the outer hall, by the door to the back hall of the temple, with his back against the wall and his hands in his sleeves. She measured it with her eyes when she sat down. It was a long way. It was nearly a hundred paces. She could barely see him from her desk: a pale shimmer against the wall, like heat over a road in winter, which isn't a thing that happens. She sat at her desk and ground her ink and kept her eyes off the far end of the room.…