Wu asked, her voice a frustrated hiss as she struggled with her samfu. Wu’s fingers were trembling so much that she could not thread the tog-buttons through their holes. Without answering the question, Qwo gently pulled Wu’s hands aside and began fastening the samfu. The gray-haired servant studiously avoided the eyes of her mistress, a sure sign that she disapproved of Wu’s intentions. “It distresses me when you are sullen,” Wu continued, letting her hands drop to her sides. “Please say what you are thinking.” Qwo finished closing the samfu, then stepped back and studied Wu with watery eyes. Though not yet sixty, the servant appeared much older. Her gray hair was thin and coarse, and her doughy skin was fallen and creased with age. She had the hunched back and stooped shoulders of a woman twenty years her senior. The two women were in Wu’s sleeping hall. The samfu Wu had not been able to fasten was her black one, the one she had been wearing when she had surprised Batu and knocked him unconscious.
