Chapter 9: Forty Steps of Hand

"I want to go to the night market," Lanzhou announced, on the first free evening in three weeks.

Hu Qiaoling had flown back to Beijing for a sponsor meeting, and the hotel suite had never felt so much like a prison break.

"You can't," said Yao. "Forty million people know your face."

"Forty million know the glacier." Lanzhou put on a black cap and a black mask and a very large puffer jacket. "Nobody knows this."

He stood in the middle of the carpet with his arms out.

He looked like a nervous, extremely tall penguin.

"That's worse," Yao said.

"Come on, Assistant Qin."

"Is this an order?"

"It's a plea." The mask hid his mouth, but his eyes were crinkled. "I have never once bought my own food at a stall."

Yao pulled on his hoodie and followed him out the service door, grinning.

The Hengdian night market ran down the whole length of a lane, under strings of yellow bulbs and clouds of smoke.

Lanzhou stopped in the entrance and looked at it with his mouth slightly open behind the mask.

"Everything smells like lamb," he said, reverently.

"Everything is lamb. Eat."

He ate like a child at a festival.

He had a skewer in each hand, then a bag of fried dough twists, then a paper cup of sweet potato with syrup.

He tried stinky tofu, held his breath, and gave a small gasp of joy at the first bite.

"Yao," he said, and stopped.

It was the first time he had used the short name.

He seemed to notice, and his eyes flicked up, then away.

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