Chapter 17: The Drinking Companion

"There's a form," said Ming. Registrar Han looked at the petition on his desk. It was the morning after the trader's house, and she had not slept, and she had written it out three times before the strokes stopped wobbling enough to satisfy her. A Petition for the Correction of an Entry. Entry: Hu, third sister, of the north hills, confined on the eleventh of this month. Correction: the being confined is the fourth sister. Confined in error. To be released. "I thought," said Han slowly, "that entries don't get unmade." "They don't. This isn't unmaking it. It's correcting it." She stood straight in front of his desk. "The third sister is in the second gourd now. Confined properly, on evidence. The Register can't hold the same fox in two gourds. One of the entries is wrong. There's a form for that." From the doorway, where Nine was leaning, there…