Chapter 15: Her Father's Cough

The Quiet Courtyard smelled of camphor and old ink.

Master Feng sat propped against the cushions with a blanket over his knees, and his hands lay in his lap, shaking.

He did not look at the three people who came in.

He looked at the wet black banner Zhaoxue carried, and at the mud on her robe, and at the scrape along Linxia's collarbone.

"Close the door," he said. "All of it."

Mo Zhenhai pulled the shutters across himself, grunting.

"Now," Master Feng said. "Zhaoxue. Tell me what you saw in the cellar. Then tell me what you saw before you woke up."

Zhaoxue knelt on the mat in front of him.

She did not tell it the way she had told Linxia, with half of it hidden and half of it shaking.

She told it flat and in order.

Master Feng stopped her only once, at the lock.

"Whose key?" he said.

"I did not see the hand, Father. Only that it never shook."

Then the seventh crest on a ceiling in a burning hall, and a man's voice shouting a name that was not true.

She was careful about one thing.

She said that Mo Zhenhai had never been in the yard.

"It was a stranger's voice, Father. I thought it was Salt Tide, and I was wrong."

Nobody spoke.

Mo Zhenhai had sat down heavily on a stool, with his hands on his knees.

"You thought I burned your house," he said.

"Yes, Master Mo."

"You thought my daughter helped."

"I thought she would be there."

"And you gave her the Seal anyway."

Zhaoxue's face went hot.

"I gave it to her so that if she was going to kill us, she would have to do it knowing she had it."

Mo Zhenhai stared at her.

Then he put his big head back and laughed, one startled bark, and it turned into something wet.