Chapter 20: What's the Difference

"I laugh," said Ming. Yingning looked at her across the arbor with her chin on her fists. "When?" Ming thought about it. She thought about it honestly, because she had been asked a direct question, and she always answered those. "In the third month," she said. "Two years ago. A clerk fell down the archive stairs." There was a silence in the arbor. Wang Zifu, in the entrance, looked at his feet. Up against the post, Nine had turned his face away entirely and was gazing out across the garden at the peach tree with his shoulders shaking. "Was he hurt?" said Yingning. "He was dead already." Yingning stared at her. Then she put her face down on her fists and laughed until she slid off the bench, and lay on the floor of the arbor with her plum blossom crushed against her chest, kicking her heels. "Two years," she…