It began to rain on the road to Qiaotou, and it did not stop for three days.

Zheyu had seen rain before, of course. He had seen it from the hilt of a sword, a dim silver rattle against a scabbard, a patter on a tent roof heard through leather and steel. He had seen it fall on a hundred generations of travellers. But he had never stood in it. He had never felt the first cold drops land on his upturned face and run down his neck, or smelled the green rising smell of wet earth, or heard the whole world turn to one soft hissing voice.

He had stood in the middle of the road with his arms spread and his mouth open, like a fool, until Qinghe had taken him by the sleeve and dragged him under the roof of the nearest rest-pavilion.

"You'll catch a chill," she had said.

"I cannot catch a chill."

"You'll catch a cold, then, and I'll have to listen to it." But there had been no real anger in it. She had wrung out his hair with both hands, briskly, as if he were a wet dog, and he had stood very still and let her, with his eyes shut and the rain drumming on the thatch and a feeling in his chest that he did not dare examine.

That had been the first day.

On the second, the road washed out. On the third, the pavilion keeper, a stooped man with a wen on his chin and a quavering hopeful voice, informed them that the river had risen over the lower bridge, and that nobody would be passing for two days at the least.

"We have an errand," said Qinghe.

"Of course, Guniang."

"A matter of herbs. Mei's aunt is ill. There's an apothecary in Qiaotou who has what she needs, and we've been paid to bring it."

"It's only a mile," said the keeper, apologetically. "Beyond the bridge. But the bridge is under, and the long way round is the ridge road, and the ridge road is," he made a vague, swimming gesture, "mud."

"Then we'll go by the ridge."

"In this?"

"In this."

The keeper looked at her, and at the dripping sky, and at Zheyu, who was standing in the doorway watching the rain with an expression of beatific peace. He sighed. He shuffled off into the back of the pavilion and returned with a single object, which he presented with ceremony.

It was an umbrella.

It was an old one, oiled paper stretched over a ribbed frame of split bamboo. The paper had been painted, once, with a design of cranes, but the colours had faded to ghosts of themselves, and one of the ribs had been mended with twine. It was not a large umbrella. It was, in fact, a very small umbrella. Zheyu looked at it, and Qinghe looked at it, and a silence of some length fell over the pavilion.

"It's all I have," said the keeper, humbly.

"Of course," said Qinghe. Her voice was perfectly steady. "Thank you."

"It's a good umbrella. It was my wife's."

"I'm sure it is."

"You'll bring it back?"

"I'll bring it back."

She took it. She did not look at Zheyu. She opened it with a click and a creak, and held it over her head, and stepped out into the rain. After a moment, because there was nothing else to be done, he followed.

* * *

It was not wide enough for two. He realised it within ten paces.

The canopy spread perhaps a yard across, and Qinghe, who held the shaft in her right hand, kept herself rigidly to the left of centre. He kept himself to the right. For some time they proceeded in this manner, in a state of extreme and elaborate correctness, with a gap of exactly four inches between their shoulders and the rain dripping steadily off the edge of the paper onto both their sleeves.

The ridge road was a river. Brown water ran down the ruts, ankle-deep and cold, and carried with it twigs and petals and the occasional startled frog. Willows leaned over the track, their long branches heavy with wet. Below them, on the left, the valley dropped away into a grey and rolling confusion, from which came the faint far thunder of the swollen river.

"You are getting wet," said Qinghe.

"It does not matter."

"It matters to me. You're dripping on my arm."

"I am sorry."

"Move in."

"I am in."

"You're two inches out. I can see your shoulder." There was a brief, exasperated pause. "Don't be stupid, Zheyu. It's rain, not a plague. Move in."

He moved in.

It was a very small movement. He shifted perhaps three inches to the left, and he felt the heat of her through the damp cloth of their sleeves as their shoulders met, and he felt the whole length of his arm go tight and strange.

They walked on.

He had thought he was prepared for it. He had walked beside her for weeks. He had slept four feet from her, on the other side of a sheet of paper. He had seen her laugh, and fight, and cry into his shoulder, and in all that time he had kept a careful measure of space, a polite and constant courtesy, as one keeps a distance from a fire. This was not the same. The umbrella forced them close, and the closeness changed everything. He could smell her. The scent of rain on warm skin, and sword oil, and the faint sweet bitterness of the herbs she had sorted that morning. He could hear her breathing. He could hear his own.

Each step drew the two of them back together, the gap closing, the edges of their sleeves brushing, the swing of her arm grazing the side of his hand. He kept his own arm rigid. He fixed his eyes on the road.

It is only an umbrella, he thought. It is only a mile.

At the first bend, he noticed that the rain was dripping onto her left shoulder.

She had angled the umbrella a little toward him, he saw. Without comment. Without seeming aware of it, she had tilted the shaft just enough to cover his head, and her own left side was taking the weight of the rain. The dark cloth of her sleeve had gone black with wet.

He did not say anything. He put up his hand, slowly, and with two fingers pushed the shaft back toward her by half a hand's breadth.

She glanced at him.

"You are getting wet," said Zheyu.

"So are you."

"I am a ghost. I do not mind."

"You do mind. You get cold. I've seen it. You think I haven't noticed?" She pushed the shaft back. "Keep it over you."

"I would prefer it over you."

"I'd prefer it over both of us. It isn't big enough."

"Then I will take the wet side."

"No."

"Qinghe."

"No." She planted her feet in the running mud, and gave him a flat dark stare, and he was struck, in spite of everything, by how very pretty she looked with the rain on her lashes. "We are not doing this. We're not going to walk a mile with the two of us each trying to give the other the umbrella. It's stupid. It's tiring. We'll split it. Half and half. Whoever's wetter has to complain out loud."

"That is a very strange rule."

"It's a very good one. Hold the shaft."

"I?"

"You're taller. It'll cover more." She pushed the handle into his hand, and his fingers closed around it, and the bamboo was still warm from her palm. "Go on. Walk."

He walked.

He held the umbrella high and a little in front, so that it spread its pale faded cranes above them both, and she walked at his side with her hands tucked into her sleeves. He kept the shaft perfectly central. He did not tilt it. He gave himself exactly half, no more, and he felt the rain strike his right shoulder in a steady cold patter, and he did not complain.

After a minute, Qinghe said, in a very odd voice, "You're doing it again."

"What?"

"The canopy. It's leaning."

"It is not."

"It's leaning toward me." She did not look up. "I can feel the wet on your side. You're soaked through. You've given me about two-thirds."

"I have not."

"You have." She stopped. She reached up, and for one dizzy instant her hand closed over his on the shaft, and she pulled the umbrella back into the middle with a firm and deliberate tug. Her fingers were cold. He felt them against his knuckles, slim and strong and slightly rough. He felt each one distinctly. "There. That's centred. Now leave it."

She let go.

His hand was still burning. He kept it exactly where she had put it. He walked in silence for a while, with the umbrella held at its careful angle, and his whole attention seemed to have narrowed to the one point on the back of his hand where she had touched him.

And then, because he could not help it, he looked at her.

She was staring ahead. Her profile was calm. A drop of water had gathered on the end of her lashes, and as he watched, it trembled, caught the grey light, and slid, with excruciating slowness, down the curve of her cheek. It left a bright thin track. It reached the corner of her jaw. It fell.

He had watched a great many things in three hundred years. Battles, and births, and the slow turning of the stars. He could not remember anything that had held him so completely as that single bead of rain.

Do not look, he told himself. Do not.

He looked.

* * *

They reached the crossroads at the foot of the ridge in the middle of the afternoon.

The road dipped there and met the main highway, a broad paved way that led down to Qiaotou. It was thick with mud and puddles, and a line of carts stood hub-deep in the mire. Drovers swore. A donkey brayed. Down the hill came the rumble of a heavy wagon in a hurry.

"That's the apothecary's," said Qinghe, pointing. "There. With the red door."

"A hundred paces."

"We'll cross here."

They stepped out together. The rain had thickened. It came down in long grey sheets that hid the far side of the road, and the umbrella drummed under it like a taut skin. He kept the shaft steady. He felt her at his elbow, a small warm presence at the edge of his sight, and he felt the strange sweet ache in his chest swell with every pace.

I could walk like this, he thought. For a very long time.

The wagon came out of the rain without warning.

He heard it too late. The thunder of hooves, the shriek of a wet axle. A great dark shape came lurching around the corner, a team of four horses wild-eyed and foaming, a driver hauling uselessly on the reins, and it was bearing straight down upon the place where she was standing.

There was no time. There was no time to speak. There was no time to think about the rules.

He dropped the umbrella. He reached for her.

His left arm went around her waist, hard and fast, and he hauled her bodily against his chest, away from the road, away from the wheels. His right hand caught the back of her head. They spun, together, and the wagon went by with a roar and a blast of wet wind, so close that the iron rim of a wheel scraped the hem of her robe, and a great spray of mud rose and fell and drenched them both.

It was over in less than two heartbeats.

The wagon rattled off down the road. The driver was shouting. The horses were being dragged round. All of that was very far away. He stood in the middle of the highway with the rain beating on his bare head, and Qinghe pressed against him, and his arms wrapped around her so tightly that he could feel every rise and fall of her ribs.

Neither of them moved.

He should let go. He knew that. He knew it with an icy, clear, desperate certainty. The touch took from her. He had learned it, in the road at Greywater: the brightness that poured out of her into him, the cold pallor that came after, the way her whole body had gone thin as paper. I will not touch you again, he had said. He had meant it.

But she was warm. She was alive in his arms, with her heart going hard against his chest, and he could feel the wet cloth of her robe, and the curve of her back under his hand, and the rapid shallow whisper of her breath on his throat. He could feel her hair. It had come loose. A long dark strand of it lay across his wrist like silk.

His own heart was slamming so violently that he thought she must feel it.

Let go, he told himself. Let go. Let go.

His arms tightened.

She had not pushed him away. That was the thing he could not understand. She was not struggling. She was not stiffening, or drawing back, or doing any of the thousand small things she usually did to put space between them. She was standing quite still, with her forehead tipped against his collarbone, and her hands, her small strong rough hands, were curled loosely in the front of his robe. He did not know whether she was holding on or only holding still.

"Qinghe," he said. It was a sound without much voice.

"Yes."

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

"The wheel. It struck your,"

"It missed." A pause. She did not lift her head. "You're shaking."

"Am I?"

"Quite a lot."

"I thought," he began, and could not finish. His throat had closed. I thought it would hit you. I thought I would be too slow. I thought I would stand there and watch. He had not known it was possible to be so afraid. It was not the old fear, the fear of the dark. It was something worse. It was sharp and bright and entirely new, and it had gone through him like a blade.

"I'm all right," she said. Her voice was muffled. "I'm all right. You were fast."

"I broke my word."

"You what?"

"I said I would not touch you."

"Zheyu." He felt, rather than saw, the ghost of a smile against his chest. "You saved my life. I don't think I'm going to hold you to it."

His hand had come to rest, without his permission, against the back of her neck. He felt the pulse beating there, light and quick. He felt the fine cool hairs along her nape, and the soft damp warmth of her skin. He had never been so close to another human being. He thought, with great clarity: This is the most dangerous thing I have ever done.

He thought: I do not want to stop.

And then she shivered.

It was only a very slight movement. A tremor, a ripple, passing from her shoulders to her spine. But he felt it, and his blood ran cold, and he knew at once what it meant. The warmth in his hands. The strange brightness gathering in his chest. The thin, faint, dreadful draining of a cup poured into another.

He let her go.

He did it slowly, a hand at a time, as if he were setting down something made of glass. He stepped back. The rain struck him in the face, cold as a slap. He saw her sway, once, and recover, and her eyes came up to meet his, wide and dark and slightly dazed.

Her face was pale. Not deathly pale. But the colour had gone out of it, in the same slow dreadful way that it had at Greywater, and her lips were a shade too pink against the white.

"I am sorry," he said.

"Don't be."

"I took too much."

"You didn't."

"You are cold."

"I'm soaked. Of course I'm cold." She drew herself up. She was shaking, a little, from head to foot, and she held her chin high and her arms rigid at her sides as if daring him to remark on it. "It's nothing. I'm fine."

She bent, stiffly, and retrieved the umbrella from the mud. It had lost a rib. She shook it out, with a short hard motion, and held it up, and the faded cranes drooped from the broken frame.

"Thank you," said Qinghe.

It was a stiff, flat, formal little speech. It was the voice she used for strangers who had held a door. She did not look at him as she said it. She turned her face away, toward the red door of the apothecary, and added, in the same wooden tone, "I'll go ahead. You can keep up."

"Qinghe."

"I'm fine, Zheyu."

"I know."

"Then stop looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like," she bit it off. A muscle was working in her jaw. "Like you're sorry. Like I'm something you broke. I'm not. I'm here. I'm standing up. I'm going to buy the herbs." She drew a ragged breath. "Please. Just. Let me be all right."

He stood motionless.

He did not understand her. That was the truth of it. She was trembling, and she was white, and she had stood in his arms for the space of ten heartbeats and not once drawn away. But she had spoken to him now with a kind of terror. He heard it underneath the stiffness, a thin high frightened thread. It was not the fear of him. It was a fear of herself.

She is afraid of what she wanted, he thought. As I am.

"As you wish," he said gently.

She nodded, once, sharply, and walked away.

* * *

He followed a pace behind her into the apothecary's, and stood quietly by the door while she haggled over a bundle of dried roots, and then they walked back up the ridge road in the thinning rain. She carried the herbs. He carried the broken umbrella. They did not speak. Between them lay a gap of four feet, then five, exactly as measured as a rule.

It was dark by the time they reached the pavilion. The keeper had lit a lamp. A pot of something sour and onion-scented was bubbling over the fire, and a single mat lay by the hearth, and the old man glanced at their faces and, with unusual tact, said nothing at all.

Zheyu sat down on the floor with his back against a post.

He sat for a long time in the lamplight, turning the umbrella over in his hands. The twine on the broken rib had come loose. The paper cranes had been torn across one wing. It was an ugly, humble, useless thing, and he held it as if it were a holy relic.

He had learned something, in the road. He did not like it. It sat in him like a stone.

It was not the pain of the thread. He knew the pain of the thread. It was not the cold, or the draining, or the hunger of the binding. He had borne all those things for centuries. He knew every sort of ache.

It was the moment when she had stepped back.

I hated it. The thought came quietly. It had no heat in it. It was only a fact, as plain as the rain. I hated stepping out of her arms. More than the pain at ten paces. More than the dark. More than any of it.

He lowered his head.

Across the room, by the fire, Qinghe lay on her side with her back to him and her cloak drawn up to her chin. She was not asleep. He could tell by the rhythm of her breathing. She lay with her shoulders stiff and her hands tucked close, as if she were holding something against her chest.

He did not go to her. He did not speak.

But he did not put the umbrella down, either. He sat holding it, a small broken thing in the guttering light, and listened to the rain.