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Dedication

for Carolyn

Chapter One

The barber paused, flicking water droplets from his razor with a brisk snap of his wrist.

“Well, I once shaved Governor Liu of Qin Province during the processional, and last summer, I stepped in to thread Crimson Bow’s brows when her own barber was ill.”

“Crimson Bow, the actress from Fenghua?” asked Chih with interest, and the barber made a humming noise of assent as he rubbed a little more oil into their scalp. The first slide of the razor against Chih’s head sent a not altogether pleasant shiver through their body, but they took a deep breath and sat as still as it was advisable to sit when a large man held an enormous sharp razor that close to their face.

“Yeah. Her company, the Resplendent Sky-whatever, they were touring up through Vihn. They were doing that play, you know, the one about the marriage of that sect leader in the down-country.”

Chih sat very straight as the barber recounted the plot of The Cruel Wife of Master See, because after all, reviews and criticisms were their own kind of history, but the quick rhythmic movements of the barber’s razor put them into something of a daze. The sharp blade glided over the curves of their scalp as if it intimately knew every bump and hollow, and the tingles that always ran up Chih’s spine and, for some reason, behind their knees, when they got their head shorn gradually took up all of their attention.

It seemed no time at all before the barber whipped the old muslin cape off of Chih’s shoulders, nodding with professional satisfaction.

“—and, of course, I shaved the four Gao brothers, the bandits of the Carcanet Mountains, but that was after they were dead. Give it a feel there, see if I missed a spot.”

Obediently, Chih ran their hand over their head, marveling at the smooth skin that replaced the inch or so of growth that had sprouted since they left the Singing Hills abbey early in the spring. The tent was littered with greasy bits of black hair, and their scalp was silky smooth and perfumed with a touch of jasmine oil.