Chapter 19: The Laughing Girl

On the sixteenth, Nine made her eat breakfast. He did it by standing in the doorway of her room at dawn with a paper parcel in his hands, and refusing to move out of the doorway until she had taken it. Inside were four little sweet cakes from the bakery by the east gate, still warm, round and golden and stamped on top with the character for luck. "Where did you get these?" "From the bakery by the east gate." "With what money?" "I sang for them," said Nine. "The baker's wife likes a tenor." He leaned on the doorframe in his gray robe, with frost on his shoulders, and looked at her with great severity. "You've hardly slept in five days, Recorder. You've eaten one steamed bun since the trader's house. Your hands shake when you grind ink. I've watched them." "They don't shake." "Eat a cake and prove…