Luo Pei's response came on the fifth day.
It arrived not through the intermediary I had expected, but through Fang Wen's hands directly — apparently Luo Pei had contacts in Jiangnan as well, and had chosen the more expedient route once he knew I was in the city. I should not have been surprised. A man who made his living tracking information understood that the fastest path between two points was often not the most obvious one.
I read the letter in Fang Wen's study, with the door closed and the others waiting outside.
It was longer than I had expected. Luo Pei was usually concise, but this time he had written three full pages in his small, careful hand, and at the end he had added a postscript in a different ink, as though he had returned to add something after he thought he was finished.
The man I was looking for was not named Chen.
