My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 266: A Winnowing Basket of Dry Grass

"Come inside first," Cheng Banshan said.

He lifted the lantern down from its perch on the fence, nudging the iron ring that held it upward as he did. The flame guttered sideways, then steadied. He didn't reach out to help her, only raised the lantern toward the two paper-covered windows of the Medicine Hall: "Follow the light."

She braced herself on the fence and stood. Her knee cracked audibly, and she swayed; her hand pressed down on the lowest strand of old straw rope. The rope was long rotted—it gave way under her grip, and the crumbled bits fell onto the frost. Du Xiaochuan stepped forward half a pace, arm starting out, then pulling back—she didn't take it.

The three of them walked back to the Medicine Hall. Xu Yan stayed over by the gap and didn't follow. Frost crunched underfoot, step after step. The dawn light spread across the Front Courtyard to the base of the wall, picking out uneven tones in the old plaster. The door to the Medicine Hall stood ajar. On the stone steps before it lay half a fallen leaf, edges curled, whitened by the night.

Inside the outer room, a layer of coals still glowed red in the charcoal stove, a thin line of light seeping through the seam of the stove door. Cheng Banshan set the lantern on the corner of the table and tilted his chin toward the plank bed: "Sit. But not too close to the stove. Someone chilled to the bone—heat hits them too fast, their hands go numb first."

She sat on the edge of the plank bed, feet dangling, two or three paces from the charcoal stove. The cloth strips were wound around her shoe uppers; she tugged at them twice but couldn't get them loose—frozen stiff. Cheng Banshan crouched down for a look but didn't reach out: "Untie them yourself. Take it slow." She bowed her head and worked at them for a while. The strips loosened; her shoe came off, and the sole dropped with it, knocking against the stone floor. The frostbite cracks across the top of her foot ran every which way; her toes were swollen, skin broken in two places, the flesh beneath showing white.

"Set them over by the stove. Not right against the fire door," Cheng Banshan said.

Du Xiaochuan added two sticks of charcoal and pushed the stove door back to a seam. The fire brightened through the gap, and the red glow caught the cracks on the top of her foot.

The door pivot creaked. Qian Duoduo came in from outside, holding a bowl of porridge in both hands, steam rising off it. He walked steadily, stopping only when he reached the plank bed. His eyes paused at her forehead—the two points of bone didn't hold back the hair that had come loose, and the light showed them plainly. The bowl wavered in his hands; porridge sloshed up to the rim, then settled back without spilling.

"Hot. Drink it slowly." He set the bowl down beside her hand.

Then he turned and went out. A moment later he came back with a wooden spoon and set it beside the bowl, still not asking anything. He bent over to look at her feet and clicked his tongue: "There's hot water on the stove. I'll bring a basin."

"Hold off," Cheng Banshan said. "There's mud on her feet. Wash the mud, water goes cold, she suffers worse. Let her eat first."

Qian Duoduo went out again. From the direction of the Kitchen came the sound of water being ladled, then the stove door being poked open.

Cheng Banshan turned her wrist over and pressed three fingers to it. He didn't look at the wrist; his eyes stayed on the seam in the stove door. He held the pulse for a while, then moved and pressed again. "Qi Condensation First Layer," he said. "Starved, and frozen."

She lifted the bowl. It was hot; she held it in both palms for a moment before drinking, then lowered her head and drank it all in one go. The bowl came down, its bottom knocking once against the wood of the plank bed.

"Enough?" Cheng Banshan asked.

"Enough."

Qian Duoduo returned with a basin of hot water and set it on the floor beneath the plank bed, steam curling off the rim. Cheng Banshan told her to rub the mud from her feet first, then change the water when it cooled. When the second basin came, a layer of black mud had settled at the bottom, bits of broken grass floating on the surface. He scraped half a spoonful of herb powder from the medicine grinder, mixed it with water, and smeared it over the two broken places on the top of her foot. When he was done, he nudged her feet toward the stove: "Keep them like that. No walking today."

He got up and went to the foot of the medicine rack, bent over, and dragged out a bamboo winnowing basket. It was half full of sun-dried grasses mixed together—leaves, stalks, and roots all tangled up, some long, some short, pressing down in the basket. "Collected over three market days. No time to sort them until now." He slid the basket over to her knees, its bottom scraping across the stone floor. "Sort these. Your hands will warm up."

She glanced up at him, didn't ask which was which, pulled the basket onto her lap, and bent to work.

Her fingers were still stiff. She tried with two fingers and couldn't hold the grass, switched to three. First she separated them by general type—broad-leaf, fine-leaf, jointed stalks, hairy roots—one pile each, arranged on the plank bed. Then within each pile she sorted leaf with leaf, stalk with stalk, root with root. The grasses formed five or six small heaps, a finger's width of space between them, all the roots aligned in the same direction.

Du Xiaochuan crouched by the stove watching, mouth opening once. He looked at Cheng Banshan's expression and closed it again.

Cheng Banshan poked at the fire with the furnace hook. A few sparks jumped out, landed on the bricks, and died. After a pause, he leaned over, picked a thin stalk from one of the inner piles, and moved it onto a different pile.

She didn't look up. She reached over, picked that stalk back up, returned it to its original spot, and tidied two others beside it. Cheng Banshan took a look and didn't try a second time.

Footsteps outside. Xu Yan came in carrying a chill, a faint mist clinging to the front of his robe. He sat down at the other end of the plank bed, looking first at the little grass piles on her knees, then at the basket.

He took a thin booklet from inside his robe and opened it. The paper was old, frayed at the edges. To anyone else it would have looked blank—Cheng Banshan was by the stove, facing away; Du Xiaochuan was on the floor poking at the charcoal. Neither of them looked over.

Three lines appeared, one after another:

\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=

\[Debit: 1 point of Heritage.\]

\[Audit: Xiao Ling. Root Bone: Half-Demon, deer demon bloodline.\]

\[Audit: Strengths, Heaven-Born Healing Dao.\]

\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=

He read the last line twice, closed the booklet, and tucked it back inside his robe. He'd seen entries like this before—Shi Po's entry read Vajra Womb Bone, Bai Xiaoman's read Formation-Suited, Shao Ming's read an old poison in his dantian. This one read "Heaven-Born Healing Dao." What those words could mean in this Medicine Hall, he couldn't say. All he'd seen was a basket of grass gathered over three market days, and the moment she touched it, she sorted it.

"How far along is the basket?" Xu Yan asked.

"This much." She pointed to a small pile near the side. "This one kind I don't recognize. Smells bitter, a layer of white fuzz on the root. When you break it, the inside's yellow."

"That one's from this mountain," Cheng Banshan put in from his spot by the stove. "There's none to the north."

Xu Yan didn't answer that. He looked at the piles of grass on the plank bed for a while, then spoke: "Do you want to stay?"

Her hand stopped on the rim of the basket.

"If you stay, you're one of Qingya," Xu Yan said. "That means paying respects at the mountain, and writing your name."

She kept her head down, eyes on the grass still left in the basket, not answering at once. The fire flickered in the stove door seam. Somewhere outside, a bird called twice and went silent.

"I do," she said.

"Your name, you write it yourself."

"I know how."

"Tomorrow, Dragon hour, the Ancestral Hall." Xu Yan stood. "Don't go anywhere today. Keep those feet off the ground."

She nodded once and gathered up the remaining handful of grass into her lap.

At Snake hour, she was leaning back against the wall, head dipping lower and lower, a single stalk still pinched in her fingers. Cheng Banshan came out of the inner room with an old robe, shook it open with one hand, draped it over her shoulders, and covered a corner of her exposed feet too. Du Xiaochuan added two sticks of charcoal and pushed the stove door nearly shut. Only the sound of fire remained in the Medicine Hall.

Footsteps came from the direction of the Old Herb Garden, soles scraping twice on the threshold before entering. Qi Qi saw the person on the plank bed, and the words died in his throat.

"Sect Master," he said, voice kept low.

Xu Yan walked to the doorway. One man stood inside, the other out.

"Nothing beyond the pass," Qi Qi said. "Frost settled on the shoulder of the North Slope. I stepped on stone the whole way, didn't touch the pine needles."

Xu Yan nodded.

Qi Qi glanced toward the interior: "The one on the plank bed—"

"At lamp-lighting," Xu Yan said. "Dry your shoes first."

Qi Qi left his shoes outside the doorway, walked barefoot toward the West Wing, and after two steps looked back once. He asked nothing.

Around Horse hour, Jiang Wan came over from the East Courtyard and stopped outside the threshold of the Medicine Hall, the sword sheath tucked under her arm. She looked in—at the person on the plank bed.

"How long has she been asleep?" she asked.

"One shichen," Cheng Banshan said.

Jiang Wan's gaze drifted down to the shoes beneath the plank bed: the soles had separated, the fronts gaped open, the cloth strips hanging off the uppers.

"Those shoes are done," she said.

"They are," Cheng Banshan said.

She stood at the door a moment longer, then turned and went back to the East Courtyard. From the yard came the soft sound of a sword sheath being set down on the stone steps.

At Wei hour she woke, opened her eyes to check the stove first, then her hand—still holding that stalk, a little dampness of sweat at the pinched spot. Cheng Banshan set a bowl of broth on the table: "Drink. Herbs from the Old Herb Garden. For driving out cold. Bitter."

She picked it up and drank it down, one sip after another, her brow never creasing.

"Bitter?" he asked.

"Bitter."

"The kind you couldn't name—don't be in a hurry to learn its name," Cheng Banshan said. "Remember where it grows. What grows in the cracks of stone isn't the same as what grows on the shaded side."

She finished the sorting that had been left from the morning. Cheng Banshan wrapped each sorted type of grass separately in oiled paper, one hand doing the wrapping, and set the packets on the second shelf of the medicine rack, packet mouths facing outward, with the date written on each wrapper.

In the afternoon, Xu Yan returned to the Accounts Room, spread the ledger open on the desk, and turned to the Daily Ledger page—the last entry was still the purchase of the Eleventh Month rations on the thirtieth of the Tenth Month. He pulled out the Order Paper tucked between the pages and read it through: before the Beast Tide arrived, Qingya would watch over the pass; if the Beast Tide reached beyond the pass, report to the Branch clerk. There were no demons beyond the pass. There was one more person on the mountain, and not a single line of the order said to report that. He folded the Order Paper back the way it had been, tucked it between the pages, closed the ledger, and let his hand rest on the cover for a moment.

At lamp-lighting, the table was set out in the central room of the Main Hall. Qian Duoduo grabbed a handful of chopsticks and laid them out pair by pair, then counted again: fourteen pairs, thirteen people seated. A Sui was the first to pick up a bowl. She carried it around the Front Courtyard and set it on the threshold of the low hut by the Mountain Gate, then came back and sat.

Xu Yan didn't touch his chopsticks.

"Her name is Xiao Ling."

She reached up and swept the loose hair from her forehead back behind her ears herself, and the two knots of bone showed plainly in the lamplight. A Sui stared, chopsticks stopped midair, and even when A He tugged her sleeve, she didn't pull her gaze back. Shi Po looked up once, then lowered his head and went on eating.

"She's a Half-Demon," Xu Yan said. "The Sect Alliance has a bounty on her head. I'm taking her in. Tomorrow, Dragon hour, the Ancestral Hall."

The only sound at the table was chopsticks against bowls. The flame of the oil lamp jumped against every face.

Qian Duoduo was the first to speak: "Then... if the bounty hunters come up the mountain?"

"We'll deal with it when they do," Xu Yan said. He paused. "No one's asking about her down the mountain, so no one mentions her."

She kept her head down, stirring at the rice in her bowl, not lifting it to her mouth. Shao Ming pushed the dish of vegetables a little closer to her, then went back to his own food.

Cheng Banshan pulled the stopper from his Wine Gourd, poured half a bowl for himself, and raised it: "Daytimes, she'll be with me in the Medicine Hall." He drank it down and set the bowl aside.

Qian Duoduo circled around from the stove and stood beside her: "I'll add an extra handful of rice to the porridge."

Her chopsticks started moving. She ate fast; the bowl emptied quickly. She set it down and placed both hands on her knees, reaching for nothing more. Qian Duoduo scooped another half-ladle into her bowl, tapped the ladle once against the rim of the pot, and went back.

Jiang Wan set down her bowl: "She sleeps in the East Courtyard."