My Sect Is Down to Seven People

The sun on June 22nd climbed over the mountain ridge, bleaching the stone steps a shade paler. Bai Xiaoman had already hauled the cloth bundle off her back halfway up the slope and was carrying it in her arms—hugging it for a stretch, then hauling it on her back for another. The bundle was wider than her shoulders, forcing her to sway with every step, and the abacus inside rattled along, missing one bead, the sound hollowed out where it used to be.

Someone was knocking stone on the steps above. One strike, a pause, then another.

She climbed the last step and stopped.

A few of the steps were newly repaired, darker than the ones beside them, the mortar in the seams not yet washed clean by rain. Shi Po crouched at the edge of the steps, working a piece of blue stone into a chipped corner, pressing down with the heels of both palms. His shoulders dropped, and the stone settled in flush with the ones around it. A trowel lay by his hand, caked with half-dried mud.

"Senior Brother Shi."

Shi Po looked up, gave a nod, pressed the stone down once more, then stood and wiped his hands on his trousers.

"The Sect Master's inside," he said, and bent to pick up her bundle. He lifted it halfway, then set it back down. "Carry it yourself, or should I?"

"Myself." She snatched the bundle back into her arms, walked two steps, then glanced back at him. "Your back all healed?"

Shi Po blinked.

"That day at the fair. Your back slammed into a post," she said. "Half the market saw it."

"Stopped hurting a while ago," he said, and led her inside.

The front courtyard was empty, sunlight striping through the gaps between flagstones. There was noise from the kitchen—an iron ladle clanking against the pot rim, twice, then a pause, then again. Two children crouched by the firewood pile, each holding a piece of Spirit Cake.

A Sui spotted her first, jumped up and ran halfway over before skidding to a stop, then circled her partway around.

"You're the one who does the accounts?"

"Bai Xiaoman."

"A Sui." A Sui said. "This is my brother A He. Why's your bundle so big?"

"If it fits, I carry it."

A He stayed crouched where he was, arms around his knees. "The Sect Master calculates faster than you."

"You've seen the Sect Master do accounts?" A Sui spun around to shut him down.

"I've seen him keep the ledger."

Bai Xiaoman let out a laugh and hoisted the bundle higher. "I haven't kept his accounts for him yet."

Qian Duoduo came out of the kitchen, apron smeared with rice water, a coarse bowl of water in one hand. "Drink first. The Ancestral Hall is behind the Main Hall."

She took it, drank, and handed the bowl back. "Thanks."

"Call Elder Cheng Elder Cheng. Around here, I'm Qian Duoduo." He took the bowl, ran a finger around its rim, and let his eyes land on the bundle in her arms. He opened his mouth, didn't ask, and stepped aside. "Go on in. Everyone's waiting."

The Ancestral Hall was cooler than outside. A row of tablets lined the offering table, tier upon tier, the topmost darkened with age, the lowest one spotless even at its corners. A bronze burner stood before the tablets, incense burned halfway down, the smoke rising straight to the beams before it scattered.

Cheng Banshan leaned against the pillar by the door, wine gourd in hand. Xu Yan stood beside the offering table, wiping dust from a wooden box with a cloth. The inkstone sat at the corner of the table, ink already ground, brush resting on the stone's edge.

"You're here," Xu Yan said, peeling off the cloth and folding it, setting it at the table's corner.

Bai Xiaoman set the bundle down outside the threshold, straightened it, then walked in and stood before a prayer cushion.

"Three steps," Xu Yan said. "First, kowtow to the Founding Patriarch and the past Sect Masters. Then bow to me. Then say, in your own words, that you're willing to come. After that, write your name."

"How many kowtows?"

"Three."

She knelt. The first bow went down solid; she paused on the way up, then went down for the second. All three were slow, one after another. When she finished, she rose and looked over the tablets from bottom to top, all the way to the highest one, then her gaze settled back toward the middle.

She turned, clasped her hands before her, and bent at the waist.

"I willingly join Qingya."

Her voice was not loud, but every word was clear.

Cheng Banshan bit the stopper out of his gourd with his teeth, didn't drink, and pressed it back in with his chin.

Xu Yan drew the wooden box out from under the offering table, lifted the lid, and spread the paper roster open on the desk, turning to the first page without writing. On the page before were two names—one with clean strokes and a sharp finish, the other crooked, its final slash half a beat short.

"Write."

She walked to the desk, wiped both hands on her skirt, picked up the brush, and let her wrist hover over the paper. When the tip touched down, it paused for a beat before moving.

The characters came out small, not a single stroke off.

On the name page of Xu Yan's ledger, at that same moment, the same characters appeared—just as small, just as steady.

[Balance: Registered Disciples: 3.]

Cheng Banshan leaned over, peering down from behind her shoulder. "Small writing."

"Paper's expensive," she said.

"Small saves paper." Cheng Banshan straightened, hooked the gourd back at his waist. "Write it as you write it. Don't go back and touch it up."

She set the brush down beside the inkstone, stepped back two paces, and looked at her own name on the page for a long while. At the doorway, A Sui and A He poked their heads in side by side. A Sui clapped twice, loud. Qian Duoduo clapped along from outside.

Jiang Wan leaned against the doorframe, one hand hooked over the top, the mouth of her sword sheath resting against the threshold.

"Another bookkeeper," she said.

Bai Xiaoman turned around and smiled at her. "Senior Sister."

The room went quiet, inside and out. A Sui's hands froze mid-air. Cheng Banshan's finger tapped once against his gourd.

Jiang Wan's fingers twitched on the doorframe, drew back, and she turned and walked away. Her footsteps crossed the front courtyard, growing fainter. It was a long while before the sound of a sword came from the East Courtyard—two strikes, and then nothing.

"Is Senior Sister always like that?" Bai Xiaoman asked.

"Usually there's even less of her than that," Qian Duoduo said in a low voice.

Xu Yan closed the roster, placed it back in the wooden box, and slid it under the offering table. "Third room in the West Wing. Shi Po carried the bedding out to air this morning."

"Second room's mine," Shi Po said from the door.

"Third one's empty," Xu Yan said.

By the time they left the Ancestral Hall, the sun was scorching. Qian Duoduo herded the twins toward the kitchen; A Sui walked a few steps, turned back and hollered "Senior Sister Bai," then burst out laughing at herself. Shi Po went to the front courtyard to keep working on the steps, the knock of stone carrying over one strike at a time.

Xu Yan walked up beside her, reached into his robes, and pressed something into her palm.

A bead. Black, warm from being held, with a ring of worn-white marks around it.

"Huichun Hall's threshold," he said. "Worked it out of the stone after buying rice. Used the awl from the ledger strings. Took three pries."

She held the bead up to her eyes, looked it over, then closed her fist around it. She held it a moment before speaking. "You were crouching there yesterday?"

"Crouched for a bit."

"You didn't say."

"You didn't ask."

She tucked the bead into a hidden pocket in her skirt, hoisted the bundle onto her back, and headed for the West Wing. After a few steps, she turned around. "Sect Master."

Xu Yan looked up.

"I'm keeping a record of this one."

The third room of the West Wing held only a plank bed, an old cabinet, and a low stool. The bedding was folded square, still carrying the smell of sun, with a patch at one corner—coarse stitching, sewn by a man's hand. She opened her bundle, put two sets of clothes into the cabinet, and took out the small abacus from the bottom, setting it on the bed.

One column of the abacus was empty, the copper wire still intact. She crouched down, fished the bead from her hidden pocket, measured it against the empty column, pushed aside the beads above, and worked it up the wire bit by bit until it clicked into place at the bottom.

She lifted the abacus and gave it a shake. The beads touched beads, ringing clear.

At noon the kitchen's pot lid came off with a rush of steam that tilted the lantern hanging from the beam. A pot of mixed-grain rice with wild mushrooms from the Back Mountain. Qian Duoduo took the big ladle and turned the rice from the bottom, twice, then pressed the ladle against the pot rim to drain.

Bai Xiaoman stood behind him holding her bowl. His ladle came over, heaping it high.

"That's enough, really."

"That's the rule up here." Qian Duoduo rapped the ladle against the rim. "First meal, you eat your fill."

Shi Po sat on the threshold, working through his bowl fast. A He and A Sui bickered over who'd spotted the new Senior Sister first, and midway through, both stuck their spoons in at once to scrape the last bit from the pot. Qian Duoduo cracked each of them once with the back of the ladle.

Bai Xiaoman ate slowly, glancing up at the stove after every couple of bites, then at the rice jar.

"The rice jar's empty," she said.

Qian Duoduo's chewing stopped. He rested his bowl on his lap. "Been scraping bottom for three days. Short three dou."

"Three hundred sixty wen."

"You know the prices?" Qian Duoduo's eyes lit up.

"I kept accounts for the shops Huichun Hall dealt with in town. I've been through the rice brokers," she said, nudging a mushroom to the side of her bowl. "Three dou won't last to the end of the month. At this rate, you'll need another dou on top."

"A hundred twenty wen a dou." Qian Duoduo's voice dropped. "Four dou, four hundred eighty wen."

"How much copper does the mountain have total?"

"Copper? Just a few loose coins the Sect Master carries." Qian Duoduo said. "There's two taels of silver in the cash box, but the Sect Master says that doesn't move."

She nodded, finished her last bite, left not a single grain in the bowl. "I'll mark this one down."

Qian Duoduo stared at her with his mouth open for a moment, then suddenly jammed the ladle into the pot and stood up, wiping his hands on his apron. "Then I'll pull the Spirit Rice accounts together too. You free tonight to compare?"

"I'm free."

In the hour of the Goat, the sun slipped behind the slope beyond the Medicine Hall. The hall's door stood open, bitter herbal smell drifting out, mixed with charcoal air that hadn't cleared from the furnace.

Cheng Banshan sat on a low stool just inside, arms crossed, watching her come in without a word.

Three winnowing trays lay on the floor of the hall, all of them heaped with mixed medicinal herbs—leaves pressing on roots, roots pressing on bark. The herb cabinet stood against the wall, drawer after drawer pulled halfway out, all of them a mess.

"Sort," he said, lifting his chin.

Bai Xiaoman crouched down, rolled her sleeves past her elbows, scooped up a double handful, and spread it across her palm to look. Then she placed it into the empty compartments to the left, one kind at a time. Her fingers moved faster than her eyes—she'd pluck a herb, rub it once, bring it close to sniff, and set it down.

Cheng Banshan didn't move, just watched.

"Gastrodia and aged tangerine peel can't go together," she said. "Gastrodia absorbs scent. Leave them together and it takes on the tangerine smell—bad for both looks and potency."

"Go on."

"The astragalus has gone damp." She pinched up a slice and held it toward the light at the door. "It's in the bottom drawer, closest to the ground. Astragalus hates moisture. It needs to go higher."

Cheng Banshan's fingers tapped against his arm.

She picked out another piece from the tray, brought it to her nose, and frowned slightly. "Raw pinellia. Raw's toxic. It has to be processed with ginger."

"Bought it over three years ago," Cheng Banshan said. "No one's processed it for me."

"I have." She set the pinellia aside in its own little pile. "Huichun Hall processes it twice a year. You need mature ginger, sliced, boiled until the water's reduced away and the pinellia's soaked through to the center. That's when it's done."

Cheng Banshan raised his gourd and took a drink, then wiped his mouth.

"Huichun Hall didn't teach you alchemy?"

"He wouldn't let me near the furnace."

"Why not?"

"The furnace burns charcoal," she said. "Charcoal costs money, and the fire needs someone watching the whole time. He calculated a ruined batch costs more than a month of my wages."

"He wasn't wrong," Cheng Banshan said.

"He calculated right." She separated out the last handful of herbs. "He just missed one entry—if a batch was ruined, I'd pay for it myself."

Cheng Banshan watched her for a moment, then let out a short laugh.

Xu Yan stood at the Medicine Hall's door, brush in hand. Since morning he'd been calculating this entry: one batch of Qi-Gathering Powder needed six pieces of herbs; before the Double Ninth the hall could produce ten-odd batches; one batch made ten bottles, one bottle sold for three—six into thirty. After that, the herbs would come from the Back Mountain, saving those six, leaving the herb column empty. He was halfway through the calculation when he heard that laugh from inside. The brush tip tapped once on the ledger's margin, and he crossed out the figure at the end of that column.

"Sorts finer than I do," Cheng Banshan said. "These hands of mine, grab three things, drop two."

Bai Xiaoman didn't look up. She separated out the last pile of herbs, stood, and her knee cracked. "Elder Cheng, can I rearrange those drawers? Arrange them once, and you won't have to dig through them for three years."

Cheng Banshan didn't answer. He rose from the stool, walked to the corner, and picked up a herb hoe leaning against the wall.

The handle was jujube wood, polished bright by handling, fresh mud still wet on the iron head. He lifted it and tossed it to her, handle-first.

Her arms dropped under the weight, and she caught it, the momentum rocking her back half a step. The handle stood taller than her shoulder, the wood pressing against her chest.

"Tomorrow, you come with me to the Back Mountain."

"Digging what?" she asked, holding the hoe.

"See how many you can recognize." Cheng Banshan walked toward the furnace, pulled the door open with one hand. Sparks scattered, landing and dying on the floor. His back to her, he worked the fire tongs in and stirred. "Mao hour. Late, and you split your own firewood."