Sect Year 2 · first month · the twenty-third life: the river village far to the south, Qiao’s seventy-first year
Little Quan crossed the roof-walk without hurrying. He stopped in front of Qiao and looked down at him. His eyes went first to the scorched sleeve of his own coat, as though he were checking it against a list, and then to Qiao’s face. He didn’t ask whether Qiao was hurt. He bent and set the roll across Qiao’s knees, and its weight pressed the breath out of Qiao’s chest.
“Take it south,” Little Quan said. “Don’t read it on the road.”
“The Master—”
“Don’t.”
Qiao closed his mouth. Little Quan’s face was coming back to itself as he stood there, plain and closed, the way a shutter comes down over a window at dusk. The blankness had gone out of it. What was left was the same face that had checked Qiao’s letters line by line all through the copying, and had never once raised its voice to him.
“We go at dark,” Little Quan said. “The goat track goes down past the north quarry. Nobody watches it at night.”
“Where are you going?”
