Chapter 4: A Wedding at Midnight

The first case came the next day, on a strip of red paper, and Registrar Han read it out in the outer hall like a laundry list.

"A marriage tonight. Fox to fox. In the old Pan mansion off the canal road." He held it at arm's length; his eyes had been dead three hundred years and it showed. "The Bureau witnesses and enters it."

"And?"

"And a complaint. Filed by the ancestral tablets of the Chu family." He squinted. "Eight gold wine cups, missing from a sealed box."

"Missing since when?" said Ming.

"Since this afternoon."

"Stolen?"

"Borrowed," said Nine, from Bao's desk, where he had taken up permanent residence. Bao had moved his ink to the other side. "Foxes don't steal for a wedding. It's bad luck. They borrow, and return before the cock crows."

Han lowered the paper and looked at him.

"Is that so," he said.

"Rule forty. A bride's family must serve the wine in gold. If they have no gold, they borrow gold."

"And if they can't borrow it?"

"They postpone." Nine opened his fan. "The Chu family cups are the finest in the county. Everyone knows that."

"Everyone," said Han, "who is a fox." He handed the red paper to Ming. "One line, if you close it. Don't come back with eight cups and a bride. Come back with an entry."

They went out at the first watch.

The new moon was a thin bright thread over the hills to the west, too thin to light anything, and Anping's market street was shut up for the night. The shutters were down on the noodle stall, the cloth seller, the medicine shop with its jar of dried seahorses in the window. Red paper lanterns hung unlit from the eaves. The only light came from the canal, which held a little of the moon and passed it along.

Ming had brought her seal case, a writing box, and a fresh roll of entry paper. Nine had brought his fan.

"You'll be cold," she said.

"I am never cold. I am a fox."

"You were cold last night. You were curled up so small your tail was over your nose."

"That," said Nine, "is a dignified position with a long history."

They stood under the eaves of the cloth seller's and waited. Ming's breath smoked. Down the street a dog began to bark and then thought better of it.

Then the flutes started.

They were thin and sweet, a wedding tune she half knew, and they came from the east end of the street where there was nothing but dark. A light came with them. Then another. Then a whole procession turned into the market street and came toward them down the middle of the road, and Ming forgot to be cold.

There were lanterns shaped like lotus flowers, pink and white, carried on poles. There were drummers in red who did not seem to be drumming, although she could hear the drums. There was a sedan chair hung with red silk, carried by four tall young men in matching jackets, and behind it a long line of guests in fine robes, laughing and calling to one another, carrying gifts wrapped in red paper. They walked through the sleeping street and nobody woke. Not a single shutter went up.

The lantern light fell on the shutters as they passed. And on the shutters, black and sharp, went the shadows. Not of young men and girls in silk. Of foxes. A long line of foxes, walking upright, carrying lanterns on poles, their tails swinging.

"Oh," said Ming.

"Don't point," said Nine.

"I wasn't going to point."

"Your hand was rising. Rule two. One does not point at a wedding procession."

"Why not?"

"It suggests one is counting the guests to estimate the cost of the gifts."

She put her hand down.

"Bow when the chair passes," Nine said in her ear. "Not too low, you're Bureau. Not too high, it's a wedding. About to here." He touched her elbow, lightly, to show her the angle. "And whatever happens, don't say congratulations."

"Why not?"

"Because it's a human word, and you'd be telling them you know what they are."

"They know I know what they are. I'm the Bureau."

"Yes, but it's rude to say so," said Nine, scandalized, and then the chair was passing and she bowed to about there, and a little hand drew back the red silk and a girl's face looked out at her, round and curious and crowned with a headdress of blue kingfisher feathers that shone in the lantern light.

The girl smiled at Ming. Then her eyes went past Ming to Nine, and widened, and the silk dropped shut.

The old Pan mansion had been empty for twenty years, ever since the last of the family moved to the capital and the ghost stories moved in. The gate stood open. The garden was all weeds, high as Ming's shoulder, and the paths had vanished under them.

But the main hall was lit. Every lamp in it was burning, and the hall had been swept and hung with red, and long tables had been laid with bowls of jade and dishes piled with food. The procession poured in through the gate and up the steps, laughing, and the weeds closed behind them.

A man was asleep on the floor of the upper terrace, the one that looked west toward the moon.

He lay on a straw sleeping mat with a stone under his head for a pillow, a young man in a patched scholar's gown, and he was snoring with the effort of someone who was not asleep at all. One eye was slightly open.

"Who," said Ming, "is that?"

"A student, I should think. They're always students." Nine leaned on the balustrade and looked down at the man with great tolerance. "Someone bet him a dinner that he daren't sleep a night in a haunted house. He's come to collect."

An old gentleman had come up the stairs behind them. He was white-haired and upright, in a robe of dark red brocade, and he bowed to Ming before he bowed to anyone else.

"Recorder," he said. "We are honored. The Bureau has never yet come to one of our weddings."

"The Bureau has never been asked," said Ming. "I'm here to witness the marriage and enter it."

"Of course. Of course." He turned and looked at the snoring student and sighed. "And this one, I suppose, must be honored too." He lowered his voice. "One cannot have a guest at a wedding who has not been invited. It would be the worst of luck."

He went over and knelt beside the student and touched his shoulder.

The student opened his eyes at once, pretending to be startled, and sat up. His name, he said, was Yin. He was desperately sorry. He had not known about the wedding. He had brought no gift.

"Your presence," said the old fox, "will keep away anything unlucky, and that is gift enough." He helped Yin to his feet with elaborate courtesy. "Come and drink with us."

Yin came. He looked at Ming and Nine as he passed, and Ming saw him decide, in a blink, that they were guests too, and that it was none of his business. She liked him a little for that. He had the kind of face that had never had enough to eat and had decided to laugh about it.

She had never been to a feast like it.

The wine came round in cups of gold, deep and heavy, each one engraved with a band of cranes. Ming counted them without meaning to. There were eight. The groom arrived to flutes and lanterns, a slender boy of about seventeen with a face so beautiful it seemed like a mistake, and the old fox brought him first to bow to Yin, and then to Ming.

Nine spoke to her the whole time, in a murmur only she could hear.

"Don't eat the duck before the host does. Rule nineteen."

She put the duck down.

"Take the cup with both hands. Both. Thank you."

The bride's procession was forming behind a curtain at the end of the hall. Ming could hear the ornaments chiming.

"Don't look at the bride directly when she comes out," Nine murmured. "It implies you're assessing the bride price. Look at her mother, the one in pale gold."

"You know a lot about fox weddings."

"I have been to a great many fox weddings."

"As a guest?"

"As a stray," said Nine. "The strays get invited to everything. It's considered generous." He drank his wine with perfect manners, and did not look at the bride's mother at all.

The bride came out on her mother's arm, her ornaments chiming. She sat beside the boy, and the old fox raised his cup, and everyone drank. Ming unrolled her entry paper on the table, between a dish of pickled lotus root and a bowl of eggs, and began to write. A marriage, the first watch of the night, the second of the tenth month. The old Pan mansion, off the canal road.

Across the table, the student Yin put his head down on his folded arms. He began, again, to snore.

His right sleeve was resting against his gold cup. Then the cup was not on the table any more. And his sleeve hung a little heavier than before.

Ming's brush stopped.

She looked at the sleeve, then at Nine, and found that he was already looking at her, and at the sleeve, and at her again. One of his eyebrows went up a hair. Yes, it said. I saw.

She wrote one more line on the entry paper, in small characters in the margin. Cups: seven.

At the head of the table, the bride's mother had risen to pour the wine. She came down the table with a gold jug, filling cups, and stopped beside Nine, and bent to fill his.

The wine stopped.

She was looking at his face. The jug tilted and a little wine ran over the rim of his cup and onto the table and she didn't notice. Her hand was shaking. Across the hall, the old fox had put down his own cup, and was looking at Nine too. So was the bride, from under her kingfisher feathers. One by one, all down the long table, the guests in their silks were turning their heads.

"Ninth of the Hu house," said the bride's mother, barely above a whisper. "We heard you'd been sold."