Chapter 20: The Fire and the Rain

The fire burned until dusk, and the lane stood on its roofs and watched.

The Hengtai records room went up.

The counting hall beside it was saved by a bucket line of boatmen, silk winders and clerks in their shirtsleeves.

Mingshan was seen by the printer's apprentice, slipping out of the back door of the bank with a lamp can in his hand.

He was gone before the bucket line reached the door.

The station head came down the lane at sunset on foot, with the sergeant behind him, still in his bandage.

He stopped before the shuttered Tingsong and looked at its paper seals.

Then he looked at the flat leather case on Qiao's arm.

"Madam Pei," he said. "I'm told you have brought me something."

Ruolan handed him the first twenty pages without a word.

He read them standing, by the glow of the burning bank, and his lips moved over the figures.

When he came to the end of the page, he took the seal in both hands and tore it from the door.

The paper ripped with a loud dry sound.

"A harbouring charge needs a theft that stands," he said. "I do not think this one stands. Go in, landlady. Light your stove."

The sergeant said nothing at all.

He took his cap off, put it back on, and went to stand guard in front of the case.

By nine o'clock the rain came.

It began as a few drops on the roof tiles and grew to a steady drumming.

The red glow over the northern roofs deepened to a smoky orange.

Auntie Hu put Ruolan to bed in the annex with a hot brick and a blanket.

She said that anyone who woke Ruolan before dawn would be eating their own boots.

Jinyu went up the back stair with a lamp, and Qiao came behind her.

The back room over the kitchen was warm from the stove below.

The cot was still there, and the sacks of winter tea, and the low window onto the roof.

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