Chapter 30: At Her Desk

"Yes," said Ming. The word was there before Lianxiang had finished asking, as her father's name had been there under her finger three years ago, and the red brush in her hand before she knew she'd picked it up. Behind her, in the doorway, Nine's fan stopped tapping. Lianxiang nodded slowly, unsurprised. "Then you understand," she said, "why I'm asking you to write it." The ghost went first. She asked to. She said she didn't want to be in the room for the joining, and that if she was going to go, she wanted to go while she still had the nerve. She sat on the edge of the scholar's bed in her white burial dress with her full sleeves folded in her lap, and Ming knelt on the floor beside her and filled out a blue petition by the light of four braziers. Natural causes was blue. A fever…