Chapter 35: The Signature

She took Han's papers to Lantern Lane that night, because he had said somewhere that isn't this building, and there was only one place she knew of that wasn't. The lane was dark and shuttered at the second watch. Frost glittered on the cobbles. The board over her father's shop, Lin's Paper, was a black shape against a sky full of stars, and below it, smaller, the sign he had painted himself three years ago and never taken down: Dragon Spring White! First in Anping! with the exclamation marks done in red. She had a key. She had always had a key. She let herself in through the shop door as quietly as she could, and stood in the dark among the bales of paper, breathing the smell of size and dust that had been the smell of her whole childhood. Nine stood behind her in the doorway. "Here," she…