A few moments later, he held up his parchment.
“What do you think, Teacher?” he asked.
MeiMei inspected it like a royal inspector might review a forged seal. “Congratulations. You’ve mastered ‘dog.’” She grinned. “Maybe tomorrow we can try wolf.”
He glanced down at the parchment again, then at the girl beside him. “Who taught you to be so strict?”
“Everyone.” She shrugged. “When you live in a caravan, you learn from anyone who has time to stop and show you something.”
There was pride in her voice. A sense of belonging. Of being part of something that moved and breathed together.
Before he could answer, she hopped down. “I have to go now. Bye-bye!”
“Wait,” Alexander called out. “Where are you going?”
She whirled around, tassels swinging. “Back to my parents. I want my afternoon snacks.”
He rose. “I’ll walk you home. A little thing like you fits easily into a grain sack. You’ll be halfway to the border by the end of the week if you’re not careful.”
The girl scoffed. “I’ve been here two weeks and already know the market like the back of my hand. And I don’t trust strangers either.”
“But . . .” She paused, forefinger on her chin. “Ididget kidnapped last year. I suppose you may keep me company.”
Alexander’s brow furrowed. “Kidnapped? You?—”
But she was already darting toward the steps. She stopped at the base, turned, and waved at him impatiently. “Are you coming?”
He followed her quickly before someone waved a meat bun under her nose and carted her off.
They joined the market crowd, where savoury steam curled from baskets of dumplings and a peddler balanced pickled lotus on his head while shouting prices for salted crab. Children darted between stalls, sugar-glazed plums sticking to their fingers, and somewhere nearby, someone was frying sesame pancakes with cinnamon—the scent so fragrant Alexander nearly stopped to savor it.
He moved through the crowd, and the crowd flowed around him, but not without notice. Heads turned. Eyes lingered. A few whispers trailed in his wake. Bold. Cautious. His height, his colours, the foreign lines of his face—all marked him unmistakably as ‘other.’
But it wasn’t fear he sensed. It was curiosity, and something quieter, hungrier.Hope.
A foreigner in their capital, walking freely, was a long-awaited signal thatchangewas already beginning.
It meant borders were opening.
It meant the Nine Kingdoms hadn’t forgotten them.
It meant foreign trade would one day flourish again. A promise that the golden days of the empire were still ahead of them, not behind.
He nodded politely at those who stared. At his side, MeiMei chattered on, blissfully unaware—or simply too young to care—that her companion was a sign of anything at all.
As they continued, the market’s chaos began to thin. The road widened. The rhythm shifted. Noise gave way to hush.
Here, shouting vendors were replaced by attendants in embroidered robes who bowed to passing clients. Carved wooden signs gleamed under gold leaf. The awnings here were not patched burlap but silk, their colours subdued—midnight blue, antique jade, saffron trimmed in bronze. Even the air felt different: less pungent, more perfumed, carrying the scent of sandalwood and old paper from a nearby bookshop.
“There,” MeiMei said finally, pointing.
At the corner stood a merchant house of cream-coloured brick and green-tiled eaves. Painted characters arched above the entrance, and two paper lanterns flanked the doorway—one emblazoned with a crane, the other with a coin.
In front of the shop stood a woman in a light grey robe with a charcoal belt, her posture taut. A jade comb caught the light from where it held back her sleek, ink-dark hair. Her face was composed, striking even, but the quick dart of her eyes betrayed her tension.
She spotted the child immediately.
“Oh no,” MeiMei muttered, taking a step back. “She saw me.”