His house has been so quiet without the volume of Tang Fan's life filling it, these last days.

It is the sacrilege of it all, maybe, he thinks: men like him are not meant to lay eyes on the Son of Heaven like this, in the quiet moments he strays too close to human.

Susan and the man in black make a palaver.

Ding Rong, in his narrowed dagger-keen focus on his task, is unsure of the time when he is first made aware of Wang Zhi’s approach. He knows only by the dark of his workroom, dim-lit by his low-burned candle, that it is well into the evening. He knows only that it is no other visitor but Wang Zhi, circling into his periphery, portended by a flutter of draping fabric, because no other but Wang Zhi would dare to come unannounced.

Nathan is there in the kitchen, waiting for him, unwrapping his hands.

Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Irving gets pissed on and has the time of his life.

"You would not hurt me," is what he says, careful, caged in. "You could never hurt me."

This, they have argued to a stalemate of irreconcilable disagreement; could so continue to press in unwinnability until the Heavens broke open overhead and the mountains crashed down astride them. But Sui Zhou serves to live as much as a man as he does a blade, and in that he is long intimated with the lay of blame for a tool in the wield of a hand.

Ding Rong has walked himself through five vivid calculations of Wang Zhi’s death at his hands in the carriage before Wang Zhi speaks.

“I’m in need of a second,” he says.

Hockstetter knows all the best places to hide. What else are friends for?

Festive hotel room assignations with Fletcher and Neiman.