Location: The Terrace — the Temple seat, Radiant Realm
Date: 5 Emberwane 9943 AZI, Grindday, first light to evening
Realm: Upper Realm
The pins went in one at a time, each with a small dry click against the comb beneath, and Sharlin read between them.
There were two women behind her. There were always two. One held the pale gold of her hair up off her neck in a twist that had to be kept exactly as it was for the better part of an hour, and the other set the pins, and neither of them spoke, because in the first year either of them had worked for her they'd learned that the hour was for reading. The light came in low across the terrace and through the long window and lay on the paper in her lap. It was cold. The air up here was always thin first thing, and it smelled of stone and of the lavender the women washed in, which was the smell of the Temple's linen in every house it kept in three realms, and she had stopped noticing it some thousands of years ago.
