Chapter 29: Two Men

Mei put two coppers in his hand and closed his fingers over them. "Wages," she said. "You're behind. You gave the whole string to a dyer's boy." Fish looked at his fist, and then at her. It was the morning of the twenty-eighth, and Lei's thunder had rolled again at dawn out of a clear sky, and nobody at Willow Crossing had slept well, and here were two coppers as if it were any morning. "I'll have to start again," he said. "From nothing." "Everybody starts from nothing," said Mei. "That's how you know it's yours." She tied her own string back on her belt. "Put them somewhere safe. You'll want them by the fifth." She was still holding his fist shut with her own. His hand wasn't as cold as it had been, and she let it be a second longer than a wage takes. "For what?" "I don't…