Yizhen tilted his head.
"A woman with a red fan," he mused, as if tasting a fruit he might or might not like.
He filed the color away beside the smell of the rope, the cadence of the woman's vowels, the way the river had sounded in the dark when they walked past the shuttered docks earlier.
A shape began to sketch itself in his head—not a face yet, but posture.
Xinying's attention had shifted three degrees toward the back wall.
A draft there meant a door; a door meant traffic; traffic meant records if anyone smart had built this place. A map lives anywhere men move more than once.
"Inner room has shelves," Yizhen murmured, catching her thought the way he caught knives: by letting it come to him. "Ledger-boy lives on more than one page."
"And someone always forgets to burn the first copy," she returned.
