Chapter 8: Ink on Her Fingers

There was no time to think, so Jinyu did four things at once.

She shoved Qiao's glasses into her apron pocket.

She pulled a blue headcloth over Qiao's cropped hair and tied it under the chin.

She dragged the black ledger out of the satchel and ran it down the back stair to the kitchen.

And she shouted for Auntie Hu.

Auntie Hu came out of the annex in her nightdress with a rolling pin.

"Flour," Jinyu said. "The big bin. Under the bottom sack."

Auntie Hu looked at the book for exactly one breath.

She lifted the lid of the bin and pushed the ledger down to the bottom.

Then she heaved a sack of white flour back on top of it.

"If a man wants to look in my flour," she said, "he'll get a face full."

The constables pounded on the front shutters.

By then Qiao stood at the counter in a blue apron, with a cloth over her shoulder and a tray in both hands.

Her eyes were wide and blurred without her glasses.

"You're Little Qiao from Suzhou," Jinyu whispered. "My cousin's girl. You're slow with the cups and you don't talk."

"I'm slow," Qiao whispered back. "I'm very slow."

"Good."

The sergeant came in with six men and a paper from the magistrate.

They went up the stairs.

Drawers banged, the winter tea sacks were slit with bayonets, and the cot in the back room was overturned.

In Jinyu's bedroom, someone threw her quilt on the floor.

Jinyu stood in the hall with her arms folded.

She watched the sergeant sit down at his corner table again.

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