“Now, you’ll want to wear a scarf or a hat over that. It’s not used to the sun anymore,” the barber recited, and Chih nodded.

“I know, thank you. But what were you saying about the four bandit brothers?”

“They tried to poison some imperial inspector, and she tricked them into eating the poison instead,” the barber said dismissively, glancing over through the open tent flap at a shaggy man carrying a load on his back. The short woman accompanying him, her own hair impeccably coiffed despite her traveling clothes, made a hurry up gesture, and the barber nodded to her.

“Right away, ma’am,” he said.

Chih found themself gently pushed outside the tent where a rufous-striped bird hooted gently from a nearby hitching post and fluttered over to settle on their shoulder.

“There,” Almost Brilliant said with some satisfaction. “Now you look like a proper cleric again.”

“I’m exactly what a proper cleric looks like. Do you know anything about the Gao brothers, bandits in the Carcanet Mountains? Ate poison they intended for a female imperial inspector?”

“I cannot say that I do. Should you go back for the story and to have your brows threaded as well? They’re getting rather—”

“I’ll go back when he’s less busy, and my brows are fine. Anyway, I’d rather spend my money on some lunch than on the privilege of crying in a barber’s chair.”

“If I had eyebrows, they would be perfect arches, just like the doorways of Singing Hills,” Almost Brilliant grumbled. “But I suppose you must have your treats.”

“Your eyebrows would rival the path of the moon itself,” Chih said gallantly, heading for the inn that they had spotted coming in to town.

“Flattery, cleric,” Almost Brilliant said primly, but she didn’t protest when Chih pushed open the curtains that hung over the door of the Running Fox. Unlike the timbered buildings on the street, the Fox was built up from stone, and Chih wondered where the stone had come from, whether it was scavenged from some other place or if it was a remnant older than the rest of the village.

Inside, the Fox was clearly undergoing some kind of renovation. There was a pair of workmen in the scaffolding leading up to the roped-off loft section and a layer of sawdust coming down to cover everything that wasn’t sheltered under a suspended cloth or being aggressively wiped down by the waitress.

“Over there under the tarp, please, cleric,” she said. “We’ve got tea and fried bread for now, and if you wait just a little, we’ll have some chicken chao as well.”

“Tea for now, and I’ll have the fried bread with the chao whenever that’s up, please.”