The Market of Faces wasn't a place. It was a seam, stitched from doorways the law pretended not to know about. Even as the law bought its wigs and false eyebrows from their very stalls.
Here, a barber over a noodle shop could turn a child sweet with bowls of broth and cut off his hair while the parents cried downstairs about the price of rice.
Here, a lacquer man could paint a bruise over a birthmark or a birthmark over a bruise. A seamstress could unpick a boy and sew him into a girl, and if you didn't know the shape of the stitch she used, you'd walk past her work without ever noticing it.
But Yan Luo knew every stitch. Each one of these men and women were his people, whether they accepted that or not.
He went first to the wig-mistress in the Yellow Street. She eyed his sleeve with professional appreciation and fear.
"Too early," she said, hands already moving to lift the lid off a basket that looked like it held laundry but didn't.
