At mountain noon, little warmth reached the narrow cobblestone alleys of the lower cantonment.
Perched along the eastern slope of the Upper Citadel, the district was a maze of drooping roof edges, peeling lacquer screens, and secondhand bookstalls smelling of silverfish and damp mulberry paper.
Lu Chen pushed through the ragged reed curtain of an unheated tea shop.
He took an empty pine bench in the corner, set his travel sack on the floorboards. Then he dropped a copper coin on the greasy table.
“Boiling well-water,” Lu Chen said. “A large clay pot bowl.”
The proprietor, a stooped man with flour on his apron, took one look at the stained wolf-skin cloak and the notched twelve-pound butcher cleaver before hurrying back with a steaming bowl.
Lu Chen unbuckled his canvas travel pack.
He reached inside and pulled out a solid block of cured beef animal fat. The fat was pale yellow, dense as soap, and crusted with coarse gray salt.
