Chapter 49: Unregistered

The old woman who swept the temple courtyard looked up when they came out of the back hall. It was the middle of the morning, the thirteenth of the eleventh month, and the sun had come out over the snow. The great ginkgo stood bare and black in the middle of the front courtyard, every twig outlined in white, and the flagstones under it were swept in a neat circle, and the old woman leaned on her broom at the edge of the circle and watched them come across. She had never looked at Nine. Not once, in six weeks of mornings and evenings. He had walked past her a hundred times at Ming's back, and she had gone on sweeping. She looked at him now. She looked at the young man in the thin cotton robe, with his black hair loose and his breath smoking in the cold and…