My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 21: The Cloth Bundle Outside the Door

At the Dragon hour, Huichun Hall took down two of its door panels. Sunlight slanted in and washed half the abacus on the counter white.

Bai Xiaoman stood on an upturned empty crate, pulled open the top drawer of the herb cabinet, and began sorting its contents one by one. The charcoal marks scoring the drawer's edge were still there. After each herb, she wiped at them with the back of her hand. They wouldn't come off.

Behind the counter, someone worked the abacus beads, slowly, one at a time, with pauses in between.

The door curtain rustled. She didn't look up. The footsteps were enough: heel first, the sole scuffing the brick.

Cao Hu pressed his hand onto the counter.

"Proprietor Sun."

"Cao-ye." Sun Youfu came out from behind the counter, wiping his hands on his apron. "You're early today."

"Early?" Cao Hu laughed, one short bark. "I didn't sleep a wink last night."

Sun Youfu waited.

"The whole street was watching." Cao Hu said. "Three Chixiao men standing in front of that pot, and some medicine-selling girl interrogated them one question at a time until they had to walk away. That kind of shame, dropped right here in Luoxia Town—there's no picking it back up."

"The girl's got a sharp tongue. She doesn't know any better—"

"Sharp tongue?" Cao Hu's hand came up off the counter and landed again. "Proprietor Sun, think carefully about who Huichun Hall sells medicine to from now on. And don't think Steward Ge doesn't know which way this shop's door faces."

Sun Youfu's abacus beads stopped. They stayed stopped for a while, then started moving again.

"Two packets of Wound Salve," Cao Hu said.

Sun Youfu stood on tiptoe, pulled two packets from the shelf behind him, tied them with hemp twine, and set them on the edge of the counter. Cao Hu picked them up, tucked them inside his robe, and turned to leave. At the door he tilted his head back toward the herb cabinet.

"That apprentice of yours settles accounts faster than our own accounts room."

"A little slip of a girl playing with beads," Sun Youfu said. "Safe travels, Cao-ye."

The door curtain dropped, swaying twice.

Sun Youfu stood there a moment, then bent down and pulled a different register from under the counter. He flipped to the back and wrote in the two packets of Wound Salve, leaving the date blank and the price unwritten. When he finished, he shoved the register back in, deep.

Bai Xiaoman knew that register. Whenever Chixiao people took medicine, it went in there. However many packets were written down, that was how many she portioned out. Not once had she seen a single payment come back. The daily ledger on the counter—she'd been copying that one herself for three years. Not one mistake.

She finished sorting the herb in her hands, tied it off, and placed it in the stack on the left. She counted once. She counted again. Both counts the same.

At the Snake hour, Sun Youfu closed out the counter's accounts, pushed the abacus away, and clicked the beads back into place. He stood, bent down, and pulled a gray cloth bundle out from under the counter.

"Bai Xiaoman."

She stepped down from the crate.

"The shop has no use for you anymore," he said. "Wages paid through today."

He counted copper coins out of the cash box, string after string onto the counter, some strings full, some short.

She walked over, pushed the coins apart with two fingers, and counted the whole pile from the beginning.

"Six wen short."

"When you were keeping outside accounts for that unlicensed stall," Sun Youfu said, "why didn't you think to count what you yourself are eating?"

She slid the coins into her sleeve and reached for the bundle. Sun Youfu didn't hand it to her. He walked around the counter to the door, lifted the bundle with both hands, and threw it out.

The bundle landed on the flagstones in the middle of the street and the knot came loose. A small abacus slid out, struck a stone, and bounced. One bead snapped off, rolled into a crack in the threshold, and stuck there, half of it showing.

Bai Xiaoman stepped over the threshold and crouched below the steps, working her fingernail into the crack to dig it out. The crack was narrow and the bead had sunk deep. Every poke pushed it in a little farther.

She pried three times, then stood, picked up the abacus, and wiped it on the front of her clothes. The brass wire on that row was still intact. It was just empty.

People were watching from the street. Across the way, a porter set his carrying pole down. An old woman selling needles and thread stopped her hands.

Sun Youfu didn't come down the steps. He stood just inside the door and spoke to the street:

"Qingya medicine. Huichun Hall doesn't sell it."

Someone asked, "What if Qingya people come to demand it?"

"Doesn't matter who comes. We don't sell it."

Bai Xiaoman tucked the abacus back into the bundle and retied the knot, twice. She looked up.

"Herb cabinet, third compartment. The Gastrodia Tuber and the Aged Tangerine Peel are mixed together. I separated the gastrodia and put it on the left."

Sun Youfu looked at her.

"I sorted herbs for three years," she said. "Never got a single packet wrong."

"The herbs weren't wrong." Sun Youfu said. "The person was."

She slung the bundle over her shoulder and walked toward the Town Gate.

Under the old pagoda tree at the Town Gate, Old Tao's tea stall was set up. The sun had climbed overhead, and the tree's shadow had shrunk to a small patch falling across one corner of the table.

Xu Yan came down the mountain path with an empty cloth sack slung over his back. From twenty paces out he saw the gray bundle—it was resting on someone's lap, two hands folded on top of it, a small abacus between them.

Old Tao was ladling tea. He glanced up.

"Down the mountain again."

"Buying rice." Xu Yan set the sack by his feet and sat down across from the girl.

"Two bowls." Old Tao poured two bowls from the pot and slid them over, without being asked.

Xu Yan counted out four wen and pressed them under his bowl.

The girl didn't move. Her head was down, her fingers working the abacus beads, slowly—one bead, a pause, then another. One row on the abacus was empty. When her fingers reached it, they stopped there, then moved on.

Xu Yan took a sip of tea and waited for her to finish.

She finished, flipped the abacus over onto the bundle, and clicked the beads back into place. The empty row was still empty.

"You lost one," he said.

"It fell into a crack in Huichun Hall's threshold," she said. "Couldn't dig it out."

"So the work at Huichun Hall is done?"

"Done."

"Why?"

"Because of yesterday's reckoning." She raised her eyes, then lowered them again. "Cao Hu walked into Huichun Hall early this morning. When he came out, the curtain swung harder than when he went in. And the proprietor's abacus beads moved faster than usual."

Xu Yan lifted his bowl, then set it down again.

"He won't sell the medicine anymore either," she said. "He stood inside the door and told the whole street. Qingya medicine—Huichun Hall doesn't sell it. Doesn't matter who comes. Doesn't sell."

"Mm."

"You're not asking?"

"Would asking change it?" he said. "I came down to buy rice."

She shifted the abacus on her lap.

"Bai Xiaoman," Xu Yan said.

She looked up.

"I'll lay the accounts out for you."

"Lay them out."

"Qingya owes the Sect Alliance 2,100 low-grade Spirit Stones. Haven't paid in thirty years. This March the debt was transferred to Chixiao. On the ninth day of the ninth month, at the Autumn Evaluation, payment is due before the Rank Evaluator. If we can't pay, the Mountain Gate deed goes to Chixiao. If we fail the evaluation, it goes to Chixiao all the same."

She said nothing.

"Right now, up on the mountain, there are fifty-three stones."

"2,100 stones," she said.

"Mm."

Her fingers took a few steps across the abacus and stopped. "Short 2,047."

"There have to be ten names on the roster," Xu Yan said. "Right now there are two."

"Two?"

"Elders and Servants don't count. But if a Servant pays respects at the mountain and writes their own name, they count as a disciple."

"How many people are up there?"

"Eight." Xu Yan said. "Counting me."

"Who?"

"One Elder in the Medicine Hall. Missing an arm." Xu Yan said. "One in the kitchen. An old man who sweeps the Mountain Gate. Two children, hired help—they're at their fiercest when fighting over the last Spirit Cake. Senior Sister Jiang Wan, Foundation Establishment. That sword training ground in the East Courtyard is hers. Then Shi Po and me."

She ran the names through her mouth silently, her lips barely moving.

"What about grain?"

"This month's running dry. Short three dou."

"Three dou." She filed that away. "Three hundred sixty wen."

"Mm."

"Rice prices go up after autumn," she said. "Buy early if you can."

"Noted."

Old Tao came over with the pot, tossed the two bowls of cold tea out onto the tree roots, and refilled them. He set the pot back on the stove without a word.

"What about medicine?" she asked.

"Cut off."

"If it's cut off, we find our own."

"There's an old herb garden out back. Gone wild."

"How many years wild?"

"Even the old-timers on the mountain can't remember."

"Three years wild and the roots are still there." Her voice was flat, like she was reading stock off a shelf. "Gastrodia grows back after digging. Astragalus fears waterlogging—pick the upper slopes. Which side of the Back Mountain is yours on?"

"The slope behind the Medicine Hall."

"That'll do." She finished and sat thinking for a while, saying nothing more.

Xu Yan didn't interrupt.

"Your accounts room," she said after a moment. "Who's running it?"

"Me."

"Would that be all I'm doing? Keeping accounts?"

Xu Yan pushed his bowl aside a little.

"Qingya needs someone who can keep accounts," he said. "I became Sect Master, and now I can't keep up with them."

She heard that and didn't answer right away.

"How much does it pay?" she asked.

"Can't pay right now," Xu Yan said. "Before the ninth of the ninth, every Spirit Stone on the mountain has to go into that 2,100."

"Meals?"

"Included."

"All you can eat?"

"All you can eat." Xu Yan said. "There's a Senior Brother on the mountain who eats a lot."

"The one who stood in front of the pot yesterday."

"Shi Po."

"Doesn't it hurt?" She shifted the abacus again on her lap. "His back hit that pillar. That was no light blow."

"He says it doesn't hurt."

"Should go in the books," she said.

"Noted."

"Is there somewhere to sleep on the mountain?" she asked, after a long pause.

"There's an empty room in the West Wing. The bedding's old, but one day in the sun and it'll do. One room per person."

She nodded, very slightly.

"What about writing my name?" she said. "I can't write pretty characters."

"Even crooked ones count," Xu Yan said.

She picked up the abacus, tucked it into the bundle, pushed it all the way to the bottom, pressed two changes of clothes over it, pulled the straps tight, and hoisted it onto her back. The bundle sat wider than her shoulders.

"Tomorrow I'll go up myself," she said. "Today, I'm going to tell my mother at her grave."

She left through the Town Gate and started down the dirt road to the west. The sun fell on the gray bundle, its corners worn pale. With every step, the little abacus inside sound one click, off-rhythm.

Xu Yan sat and watched her walk to where the road bent, then turn the corner and disappear.

Old Tao gathered up the bowls. "She sat here since after the Dragon hour. Didn't touch her tea once."

Xu Yan drained his bowl, hoisted the empty sack, and headed for the grain shop. The shop hand recognized him, hefted the weight and set it down again. "Two guo?"

"Two guo."

Eight low-grade Spirit Stones went on the counter. The shop hand measured the Spirit Rice into his sack, scraping the measure level. Xu Yan tied the mouth tight, spread the ledger open on the counter by the door, and wrote: June 21, Spirit Rice, two guo, eight stones.

When he finished he read it over, closed the book, and shifted the rice sack to his other shoulder.

The road up the mountain passed Huichun Hall's door. Two panels were up. Sun Youfu worked his abacus behind the counter, head down. Xu Yan walked past the steps, slowed, then stepped back and crouched.

The bead was still in the threshold crack, half visible, a tiny dark speck. He took out the thin awl he used for threading account books, angled it into the crack, and pried three times. The bead rolled out, landed on the flagstones, spun twice, and stopped.

He wiped it in his palm, blew the dust off, and slipped it into his robe.

The rice sack settled back onto his shoulder, and he headed for the Town Gate. The uphill road lay ahead; the sun lay across the dirt path in one flat layer.