My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 11: The One Who Carries Stone

Past the River Bend, the dirt road angled upward, and the white on his shoe tops grew a layer thicker. The gray dust at the foot of the hill still hung in the air, rising higher than the rooftops, settling halfway before the wind knocked it sideways again. From inside that dust came the sound of stone striking stone, dying down, then starting up again.

The slope was a half-carved face. Chisel marks ran across the cliff wall one beside the next, horizontal bands up to a man's waist. Below them were rows of wedge holes, the stone splintered where iron wedges had been driven. At the base of the slope, broken rock lay piled higher than a man's head. A plank was laid against the pile at an angle, and the stone carriers walked down it. The top of the slope was a platform, and on the platform stood stacked flagstones, pile after pile, with wheel ruts worn between them. A mule cart was parked beside one stack, and the carter squatted by the wheel, eating.

From base to top there was only one path, beaten down by feet, narrow, with broken stone on either side.

There was someone on that path. A boy was walking up with a flagstone on his back. The stone jutted out wider than his shoulders on both sides, a hemp rope cradling its lower edge. He gripped the rope ends with both hands, pushed his shoulders forward, and bowed his back. The stone pressed him down so he could not raise his head; his face was hidden, only the back of his skull visible, and a section of neck. The neck was caked white.

The steepest stretch was halfway up the slope, and he did not slow when he reached it. At the top, he braced the stone with his knees first, then slackened the rope and let it rest against the stack without a sound. An old man sat at the top of the slope, raised his head, then lowered it and scratched a mark into a bamboo slip on his knee. The boy turned and came back down.

Xu Yan sat on a large rock at the base, his back basket set beside his feet.

The sun moved from the eastern ridge to the shadow above the midway slope, and he counted to twenty-one. The boy never ran on the way down. He came loose-shouldered to the bottom, glanced at how many stones remained in the pile, and picked another. The biggest one at the corner of a pile had gone untouched, so he bent over, studied it, threaded the rope beneath, and hoisted it on.

Not everyone on the work site carried stone that way. Most worked in pairs, running a pole through rope, one man on each end, calling out a work chant with every step. Two men carrying one stone needed a quarter hour from base to top. One mule cart held twelve stones, and when full it was driven off. Before noon two carts had gone, and the third was only half loaded.

"Shi Po, come give a hand."

An old craftsman called from up the slope. The boy set his rope down and went over. Together they flipped a large stone that lay tilted on its side. When they turned it, the boy held up the upper half by himself while the old craftsman wedged stone beneath. When it was done he came back, re-threaded his rope, and carried up the big one he had chosen.

By the time the sun neared its height, the boy had gone up thirty-one times. The pair carriers together had made eleven trips.

The wind shifted, and dust blew onto his paper. He felt for a small stone by his foot and pressed down a corner of the page, set the two counts side by side, and studied them for a while. One stone from base to top counted as one trip. How much a trip was worth in wages, he did not know. Who kept that account in the accounts room, he did not know either. What he knew, he wrote down first; what he did not, he left beside it.

There was no bell on the slope. At the cook shed, someone struck an iron striking bar against the rim of the pot. When the sound came, all the stone carriers headed behind the slope.

Behind the slope, a half wall of stone with a thatched roof made the eating place. The stove was built of piled rock, one big cooking pot, a wooden bucket beside the rim. The bucket held vegetable broth, a few leaves floating on the surface. An old woman ladled out the food, one scoop per man, set it on a wooden platform, and whoever reached for it took it.

The boy came in last. He carried a clay basin, big enough to cover half his chest. When the old woman saw him, she swirled her ladle twice around the pot and scooped three times.

"He eats in one meal what I eat in three days," a craftsman squatting by the wall said.

"He eats a lot, so he's strong," said another. "You eat three portions and you still couldn't carry what he carries."

"Couldn't carry it."

The craftsman laughed, glanced over this way, then lowered his head and returned to his food. The boy squatted on the stone platform, silent.

Xu Yan set two copper coins on a stone beside the stove platform.

"The broth's free," the old woman said.

"One bowl a day, thirty bowls a month. Firewood isn't free."

The old woman looked at him, took the coins, and added another half scoop from the pot for him.

"He eats three portions," Xu Yan said.

"It's in the ledger, docked from his wages at month's end."

"How much?"

"That's for the accounts room."

Xu Yan took his bowl, walked to the spot opposite the boy, sat on a stone footing, pulled a flatbread from his back basket, broke it apart, and soaked it in the broth.

The boy buried his head over the basin and ate, one mouthful after another, his jaw low. He did not eat fast, but he did not stop either.

Halfway through, he looked up.

"You've been here since morning," he said.

"Mm."

"Not carrying stone, not asking questions."

"Counting."

"Counting what."

"Your trips up the slope."

The boy swallowed what was in his mouth and tapped his ladle against the basin rim.

"Thirty-one," he said.

"The pair carriers, eleven."

"Mm."

He lowered his head and ate again. Xu Yan studied the clothes on the boy's back. The back of his shirt had worn through in one spot. The skin beneath was crusted with dust, sweat seeping up from below, cutting the dust into streaks that dried at his waist.

[Debit: Heritage, 1 point.]

Nineteen points, minus one, made eighteen. The last time he had spent points like this, he had audited himself.

[Audit: Shi Po. Root Bone: Vajra Womb Bone, Unopened.]

Xu Yan read "Unopened" twice. He raised his eyes to the boy: the shoulder blades moved beneath the skin, and with each movement the crusted dust on his back split into fine cracks. Beneath lay a patch of blue-red flesh.

[Audit: Strengths: Carrying.]

That line was the shortest. He stirred the ladle once through his broth and stopped.

The boy finished eating, scraped the last grains from the basin with his finger, gathered them together and ate them, then felt inside his shirt and brought out half a flatbread. He broke off a piece, then broke it back together and returned the bread to his shirt.

"Not eating the bread," Xu Yan said.

"The night's long."

"So you'll be hungry at night."

"There's work at night. The material yard has to be watched." He picked up the basin and set it by the wooden bucket, the basin rim knocking against the bucket's edge with a sound.

The afternoon sun was brutal. The stone carriers stripped off their shirts and draped them over their heads. Their backs were coated white, and as sweat ran down, the white muddied. The boy did not strip.

Xu Yan climbed to the top of the slope. The old man sat on an overturned stone trough, a dozen or so bamboo slips spread across his knees. The slips were notched at the top, the notches of varying depth. When someone came up, he raised his head for a glance, then lowered it and scratched a mark on that man's slip, the sound of his thumbnail scraping bamboo faint.

"How do you mark his?" Xu Yan asked.

The old man drew one slip from the bottom. "Full." He drew another. He had bound the two together with twine and hung them from the rim of the stone trough. The new one was already etched a third of the way up.

"Most days, a man fills one slip."

"He fills two." The old man tapped the trough rim with his finger. "Thirty-plus men on this site, and he's the only one who's made it to a second slip."

"How is his work recorded?"

"The site counts him as two men's work."

"Wages?"

"Wages aren't my business." The old man straightened the slips on his knees. "He snapped a chisel last month. So they won't let him do the stone-splitting work anymore. He just carries."

"How much is a chisel?"

"That's for the accounts room."

"Where does he live?"

The old man lifted his chin toward the stone wall. Behind the stone shed stood half of a stone hut, piled with materials. Someone had to watch it at night.

"He asked for that himself?"

"He asked for it himself." The old man flexed his fingers. "Watching the materials at night means he can sleep a whole night through. That's what he said."

Xu Yan stood at the platform's edge and looked down. People moved at the base of the slope, flagstones stacked in piles, loaded mule carts leaving one after another. How many stones this place turned out in a day, he could count. How much money those stones became, he could not. He wrote the two figures separately on the paper, drew a short horizontal line between them, and left the space below blank.

"Are you here to buy stone?" A craftsman came up carrying a water jar and glanced at him.

"Just looking."

"Looking at stone. Never seen a man look all day."

The craftsman poured out the water and went down.

The sun drifted a little. A loose stone rolled down the slope, bouncing all the way. At the edge of the rubble pile squatted a skinny child, picking stones into a basket. The boy came over from that direction, kicked the rolling stone aside with his foot. The child never looked up, and the boy never stopped, heading up the slope again.

By the Monkey hour, the mule cart at the base was full. The carter pulled the ropes tight and drove toward town. Xu Yan shouldered his back basket. His shoes were full of dust. He shook them twice, and white puffed from the openings. He walked to the water vat at the base of the slope.

The boy was just coming down. He hung his rope over his shoulder, grabbed the wooden ladle from the vat's rim, scooped water, and drank with his head tilted back. He drank for a long time, his throat working, then set the ladle back and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Shi Po."

He turned. When he looked at a person he did not flinch, and he did not stare. His eyes landed on a face, held for a moment, then drifted to the side. The men on the site called him by that name, and he answered quickly.

"Yesterday at the end of the Market, there was a table set up. Qingya Sect recruiting."

"I heard."

"People say Qingya is about to fall apart."

"It hasn't yet."

The boy tapped the ladle lightly against the vat's rim.

"Do you want to cultivate?" Xu Yan said.

His hand stilled on the rim of the vat. The dull pounding on the slope never stopped, leaking through the dust, one stroke at a time pressing down on a man's chest. The wind blew the dust over, settling on his shoulders, and on Xu Yan's shoulders as well.

"I've had my spirit tested," he said. "Nothing."

Xu Yan said nothing.

"Everyone on the site knows." The boy looked down at his hands—short fingers, thick knuckles, white embedded in the creases that would not wash out. "If nothing shows, you're a mortal. Mortals carry stone here."

He rubbed his hand against his trouser leg.

"People have run." He spoke again. "Left their wages, left in the night. The steward says the debt still stands. A man can run, but the debt can't."

"I still owe the site money. Can't go anywhere."

"How much?"

Shi Po shook his head.

"The steward says what it is. That's what it is."

Xu Yan did not ask again.

He started down the road toward town. After walking a while, he sat on a rubble heap by the roadside and spread his account book across his knees. Under Expenditures he added a line: two copper coins, one bowl of broth. At the edge of the page he consolidated what he had saved: twenty copper coins, eight copper coins, two copper coins—thirty copper coins in all, and after it, as before, he wrote, "Not yet a full tael of silver. Saving."

On a new line, he wrote: June 6, Quarry, Shi Po.

Beneath that line, he left half a line blank. In that blank, he wrote a single character: "debt." The amount below it, he left unwritten.

The dust on the slope rose in another gust and swept across the paper. He pressed his sleeve over the page and wiped. The page's corner smudged a little white.

He closed the book, shouldered his basket, and walked toward town. A dozen or so steps out, he looked back at the slope. The one carrying the flagstone had just reached the steepest stretch of the midway path, shoulders pushing forward, and he had not slowed.