Chapter 31: The Healer

"I'm working on them," said Ming. It was true. It was true in every word. She heard it come out of her mouth in the outer hall, in front of Han and his open ledger with its two empty spaces, and she recognized it at once. It was a careful sentence. Inspector Zhou had told her what kind of clerk wrote those. Han looked at her over the ledger, and then past her, at the windowsill. Nine was sitting there as he always sat, with his knee drawn up and his fan closed in his lap. The morning light came through the lattice behind him and went on through robe and folded hands and shoulders alike. Only his face was still entirely there, and a little of his throat. Han looked at him. Ming watched the Registrar's thin, tired, three-hundred-year-old face understand. He closed the ledger. "I see," he said.…