My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 265: Under the Fence

At Mao hour on the first day of the Eleventh Month, Cheng Banshan loaded the furnace with the batch of alchemy materials he'd bought on the thirtieth of the Tenth Month. The formation hand lifted the furnace lid, and he shook the materials in pinch by pinch, then used the iron hook to push the furnace door shut and hung the hook back on the nail in the wall. The seam of the furnace door glowed like a thin line; until dawn, that line stayed red.

Before lamp-lighting time, Du Xiaochuan rolled up his bedding from the West Wing and carried it to the outer room of the Medicine Hall, spreading it on the plank bed against the wall, head toward the interior, feet toward the door. During the night he added charcoal twice—once around Hai hour, once around Chou hour. Each time he got up without lighting a lamp, felt his way to the stove, pulled the furnace door open a crack, pushed in two pieces of charcoal with the iron hook, and slid it shut again. The moment the charcoal crackled in the firebox, he was fully awake; he'd sit and listen for a while until it settled, then lie back down. The Eleventh Month rations were in the vat in the kitchen, and the extra pot of spirit rice cooked on the thirtieth of the Tenth Month was in the vat too, a wooden board over the vat's mouth with a brick weighing it down.

On the morning of the third day, before dawn, he woke. It was cold on the plank bed; the part of the quilt touching his face was icy. The fire in the charcoal stove had burned low, only a single layer of red left, and the charcoal at the furnace mouth was half white—still hot when he reached near it. He sat up, shoved his feet into his shoes, and felt his way in the dark to the back wall for charcoal.

The reed mat was held down by bricks at all four corners. He lifted one corner; frost had formed on the mat, cold and wet to the touch, and the charcoal beneath was black—grabbing a handful meant a hand full of ash. Outside the back wall the ground was crusted with frost; his footstep cracked through it, shattering a patch. He gathered an armful of charcoal and straightened up.

And in that moment, he saw that something was wrong near the old herb garden.

The fence ran north from the Medicine Hall's back wall, enclosing the herb garden—woven of locust branches, its leaves long gone in winter, just bare forks and sticks now, strung through with two strands of old straw rope, both rotten and useless. A section in the middle had collapsed years ago and never been righted, leaving a gap; the sticks on either side of the gap leaned askew, and the soil below that section had been recently turned. And there, at the base of the fence in that section, something was huddled in a ball.

His first thought was a wild animal. There were foxes on the mountain; when they got hungry enough before or after a snow, they'd come down and dig through the herb garden. He stopped, shifted the charcoal against his chest, and took two more steps forward.

The thing shuddered.

It didn't shudder like an animal—it was a tremor that ran from the shoulders down, again and again, pausing and starting over. He slowed his steps and crouched down three or four paces away.

It was a person. Knees hugged to the chest, head buried against them. A layer of frost covered her; her hair hung loose over her shoulders and back, white with frost too. One shoe's sole was worn clean through, her toes exposed at the front, the mud on the top of her foot dried and cracked into plates; from the ankle up, her trouser cuffs were caked with black mud, stiff as shell.

"Hey," he called.

She shrank further into the fence, shoulder blades rising, face buried deeper.

"Don't be scared," Du Xiaochuan said. The moment he said it, he realized it was the wrong thing—maybe he was exactly what she was afraid of. He set the charcoal on the ground, rested his hands open on his knees, and stayed crouched, still.

Her face lifted slightly from her knees. Hair hung over it, but where it parted, her forehead showed. At her temples, two knobs of bone jutted out—not large, round, sheathed in flesh and skin, sitting out of line with the surrounding bone.

Du Xiaochuan's breath skipped a beat. He'd run the same way that night he crossed the ridge, three torches behind him, stumbling with every step—it was Qi Qi who'd hauled him up onto the ridge at the halfway point.

He didn't shout, and he didn't stand. He backed away two steps, retreating to the Medicine Hall's back wall before he turned around.

Xiao Ling went pale when she saw her.

That morning, Third Miss was making her way alone through the back mountain. The Qingya Sect's territory was long and narrow; beyond the back wall of the back mountain was Chixiao Sect's territory. She knew the way. Every corner, every border, every ditch and ridge.

She followed the mountain path, past the woodshed, to the back of the mountain. At the ridge mouth, a cold wind blew. She crossed the mountain spine and looked down.

She saw the Chixiao Sect's people.

They were setting up poles on the slope, dozens of them. With bamboo and wood, with ropes, with stone blocks. They had not started to break ground, and they had not set up a stone pillar. They were just marking boundaries, hammering wooden stakes into the frozen ground, raising fences.

The fence was a foot high. Just a foot high.

So low, a person could step over it. So low, it was as if they hadn't built a fence at all, as if they just wanted to draw a line.

Not a wall; a line. It didn't matter whether it was a foot high or a zhang high. It told you: beyond this, you don't come.

A line was easier to hurt people with than a wall.

A wall is blocked; a line is not. A person can step over a line, but once he steps over it, he is in the wrong.

Xiao Ling thought of the back mountain of Qingya, also with a fence. The fence was also just a fence. But the fence was inside the mountain, not between two sects. A fence in your own garden was a fence; a fence on the ridge was something else.

She watched from the ridge mouth for a while. No one on the Chixiao side cared about her. She turned and went back.

By the time she came down from the back mountain, she saw the Sect Master. He was standing in the back courtyard, beside the old well. He was holding a thin ledger.

He looked up and saw her.

"Have you been to the back mountain?" he asked.

"Yes."

"What's to the north?"

"The Chixiao Sect has put up a fence."

"Hmm." He nodded and went back to looking at the thin ledger.

Xiao Ling found Jiang Wan in the kitchen and helped her fold vegetables.

"I went to the back mountain," Xiao Ling said.

Jiang Wan did not even raise her head. "You saw it."

"You knew."

"I knew."

"What are we going to do?"

Jiang Wan took a long time to answer.

"Nothing," Jiang Wan said.

"Nothing?" Xiao Ling raised her voice, then lowered it. "They are marking land. That slope is ours. I know it's ours. The boundary stone is at the foot of the slope. They're on the upper side of the slope."

"The upper side is theirs," Jiang Wan said. "The lower side is ours. The spine of the mountain is theirs. The foot of the slope is ours. A fence on their side—what's it to us?"

"It's not just a fence," Xiao Ling said. "It's a fence on the spine. They're saying the spine is theirs."

"The spine has always been theirs," Jiang Wan said. "Look at the boundary map. Look at the old map. The line runs along the foot of the slope."

"Then why did our people gather herbs on the upper slope?" Xiao Ling asked. "Why did they cut firewood there? Everyone knows the back mountain is bigger than the map."

"Everyone knows," Jiang Wan said, "is not the same as anyone can prove."

At noon, Shao Ming came in from the city. He carried two sacks, not his own; someone had given him a ride on a cart to the foot of the mountain. He came up the mountain with the two sacks on a carrying pole. He had a black eye and a cut at the corner of his mouth.

"What happened to you?" Du Xiaochuan asked.

"I fell," Shao Ming said, and would not say another word. He set the sacks down in the kitchen.

There was rice in the sacks, and dried vegetables, and a small jar of pickled vegetables. There was also a letter. It was from the Sect Master of the Bixi Sect, or so the cover said.

Xu Yan opened it.

It was an invitation to a feast. On the eighth day of the Twelfth Month, the Bixi Sect would hold a winter banquet. The letter listed the sects invited: the Jade Spring Sect, the Azure Brook Sect, the Ink Pool Gate, the Cloud Terrace Sect, the Willow Bank Gate, and the Qingya Sect. It added that one person per sect would be enough, that the banquet would be simple, that there was no need for gifts.

"A winter banquet on the eighth of the Twelfth," Xu Yan said. "That's three days after the winter solstice."

He folded the letter and put it away.

In the afternoon, it began to snow. Fine snow, almost like mist. The first snow of the year.

By the next morning, the yard was white. The roof of the kitchen was white. The back mountain was white. The fence was white.

It snowed for two days.

On the fifth day of the Eleventh Month, when the snow let up, there was half a foot on the ground.

The furnace in the Medicine Hall was still burning. The windows were white with steam on the inside and frost on the outside.

The formation master had stopped sleeping. He sat in the alchemy room day and night. He did not eat with the others. A He passed the door and saw him. He was sitting bolt upright on the floor, the formation manual open on his knees, his eyes closed. The furnace behind him was hot. The room smelled of melted snow and burnt herbs.

"Don't go in," Cheng Banshan said. "He's listening."

"What's he listening to?"

"The fire."

At Mao hour on the sixth day, the furnace was opened.

There were six pills, dark green, the size of small beans. Cheng Banshan looked at them for a long time, then said, "Good. Better than the last furnace."

The formation master sat down on the threshold and fell asleep on the spot.

The next morning, there was a sound at the mountain gate. Someone was knocking, a heavy, steady knock, not urgent. The gatekeeper went down and came back with a man in a dark gray robe.

The man gave his name: Sang Jun, a steward of the Apricot Flat Gate.

At the main hall, with a cup of tea in front of him, Sang Jun said he had not come for business. He had come with a private message.

"The Apricot Flat Gate," Sang Jun said, "is a new sect, not yet rated. We have no grudge against Qingya Sect, and Qingya Sect has no grudge against us. But we have heard that Qingya Sect has a grudge against the Chixiao Sect. We have also heard that Qingya Sect is in disputes with the Chixiao Sect over the back mountain, over the mountain gate, over the quarry, and over the Luoxia Municipal Market."

He paused.

"We have also heard," he said, "that the Chixiao Sect is preparing to make a case against Qingya Sect before the Dongzhou Branch."

"And if they do," the Sect Master said, "what then?"

"That depends," Sang Jun said, "on Qingya Sect's side of the story. The Luoxia Municipal Market is a small market. The Dongzhou Branch is far away. When a case goes to the Branch, the Branch has to send someone to investigate. Before they send someone, they have to decide if it's worth investigating. Before that, they have to decide if it's worth recording. Before that, they have to decide if it's worth hearing." He took a sip of tea. "We have a friend in Linchuan. We can make sure the Branch does not hear it too quickly, and does not decide too quickly."

"What is your price?" Xu Yan asked.

"No price," Sang Jun said. "A favor. When we need one."

The Sect Master looked at him.

"The Chixiao Sect is not the only one who wants the back mountain," Sang Jun said. "What you call the back mountain, the Apricot Flat Gate calls the same mountain, only from the other side. One day, the Chixiao Sect will build a wall where it has put up a fence. We would rather it did not."

He finished his tea and left.

By nightfall, the snow was falling again.