My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 268: The Hand Scale

At the Snake hour of the fourth day, the door to the East Courtyard stood half open.

Xiao Ling came out, her wind hood pulled down to her brows, her hair tucked cleanly beneath the brim so only a strip of chin showed. On her feet were the old shoes Jiang Wan had given her, their soles thick enough that her steps rang louder on the veranda than her own ever had. On the veranda, Huo Qing was practicing that thrust of his against the wooden target, his sword stopped mid-air; he glanced up, then lowered his eyes again. She had already walked past him.

The Medicine Hall's door was open, and a grassy-stale smell mingled with the tang of herbs drifted out. Two stoves sat side by side inside: the one by the door burned charcoal, a red line glowing through the seam of its lid—that was the batch from the first day of the month, due to burn until the eighth. The inner one burned firewood, the fire pressed down beneath a layer of ash.

Cheng Banshan sat on a small stool beside the stoves, his severed sleeve dangling, the wooden fingers of his prosthetic hand exposed at the cuff and resting on his knee. The stove hook lay across the floor by his feet, its tip still warm.

He looked up, first at her shoes, then at her face.

"You're here."

"Elder Cheng."

"The ones up top. Identify them." He lifted his chin toward the herb cabinet.

The cabinet stood against the north wall, shelf after shelf. On the highest shelf sat a single small porcelain vial, its mouth stopped with a wooden plug, no label on the body. The shelf below held a row of herb paper packets, one overlapping the next, dates written on the folded corners. She looked up, hands hanging in front of her, touching nothing.

"Don't touch the top shelf."

"Mm."

"Below, one packet per date. Anything that's been decocted, keep a packet. Keep them for study."

"Study what?"

"Study whether it's gone bad." He nudged the stove hook aside. "When one batch goes bad, the next batch you'll know what went wrong."

"All these were kept because they went bad?"

"What's kept isn't necessarily bad. You watch it go from good to bad, then you know on which day it counts as bad." He paused. "Read the dates on the corners."

She began with the outermost packet, voice low, moving inward packet by packet: "The tenth of the Ninth Month... the fifteenth of the Ninth Month... the twentieth of the Ninth Month..." At the fourth packet, she stumbled. "The twenty... twenty-fifth of the Ninth Month."

"Twenty-fifth," Cheng Banshan said. "Written twenty-five on the paper, written twenty-five in the ledger. When both match, that packet counts."

She read through the remaining packets. The innermost one was gray and dusty, its paper corner blackened.

"This one's from the winter of Alliance Year 298," he said. "Moldy. Keep it."

"Keep it to teach with." She drew her hand back and stepped half a pace away.

Someone ran past the door—Ah Sui. She ran a few steps, then glanced back, but didn't come in. Sweat had already filmed over the forehead beneath Xiao Ling's hood. She wiped it with the back of a finger and tugged the brim lower.

Cheng Banshan dragged a small wooden box from the base of the wall. Old cloth lined the box, and lying across it was a hand scale: a slender beam, a small bronze pan at one end, three lifting cords twisted together, a bronze weight hanging from the beam, a row of star-points marked along its length. He pinched the cords together with one hand and hung them from the nail in the door frame. The bronze pan dropped to half a foot above the floor. With no load, the beam's tail tilted up. He nudged the weight along the beam inch by inch with a finger, eyes fixed, and when the beam settled, his hand stopped too.

"You've got two hands. Hold the scale."

She went over, took the cords down from the nail, held them in one hand and moved the weight with the other. Cheng Banshan took a herb paper packet from the table—dried, crushed plant matter inside—and tipped it into the pan. The beam dipped. She pushed the weight down, overshot, then drew it back half a notch until the beam slowly leveled.

"How much?"

"One mace, five."

"Pour it back. Weigh it again."

She poured the herb back onto the paper, corner folded to her palm, then back into the pan. This time the beam swayed twice more before settling.

"One mace, five again."

"The beam has to be level before you read it. If it's still tilted when you read, the number doesn't count."

"Understood."

"On this beam, the big stars are bigger and the lower ones smaller." He tapped the beam twice with a finger. "Mace are read on the big stars, fractions on the small. If you misread the stars, the whole batch of medicine goes wrong with you."

Du Xiaochuan came in from the back wall carrying a basket of charcoal, set it by the stove, glanced toward the plank bed, and left without a word. Xiao Ling stepped aside to make way, her hood dipping a little lower.

"From this batch, weigh out ten portions. One mace, five per portion." Cheng Banshan pushed the stack of herb papers on the table toward her. "One mace over and the person drinking it runs a fever in the night. One mace short and an entire market's worth of money is wasted."

Ten sheets of herb paper spread out across the table, the first laid beneath the bronze pan. By the second portion, she reported the number while the beam was still tilted. Cheng Banshan didn't turn around, his eyes still on the red line at the furnace door.

"Beam's still tilted."

She shifted the weight back half a notch, then a finger's width more, and the beam came level: one mace, five. From the third portion on, she paused before reporting, checked the beam, then spoke.

A gust of wind lifted a corner of the papers on the table. Cheng Banshan pressed it flat with his formation hand and held it there, motionless. She glanced at the wooden hand, shifted the weight down a notch, and didn't ask. He didn't explain where the hand had come from either, only drew it back and rested it on his knee again.

Ten portions weighed, arranged in a row, all paper corners facing the same way. He pulled one from the middle, tipped it into the pan, and weighed it himself: one mace, five. Then poured it back and returned the packet to its place. He said neither good nor bad, only: "The batch comes out tomorrow morning. Watch."

"Watch."

"Don't touch the furnace door." He added, "Watch. No hands."

"And the herb cabinet?" she asked. "Will I be able to climb up and arrange it?"

"Once you know the herbs on the lower shelves by heart," Cheng Banshan said. "If you don't, anything you put up there poisons the next batch."

That night, Xu Yan sat in the Accounts Room writing ten labels. Each carried one line reading "Qingya" and a second reading "Fifth Day, Eleventh Month." He pressed them flat on the desk when done.

The fifth day, before dawn, the Kitchen's lamp was the first to glow. Qian Duoduo stood at the doorway, voice hushed as he called to Du Xiaochuan: "Don't rock the buckets." The two of them split a whole pot of spirit meal into two shoulder-pole loads. The poles went onto their shoulders, bucket bottoms hanging half a foot off the ground on their ropes, one behind the other, heading for the Mountain Gate. Xu Yan and Shao Ming passed through the Mountain Gate at the Mao hour.

At the hour of the Dragon, the lid came off up on the mountain.

When the firewood stove's lid lifted, white steam surged up and cleared faster than smoke. Ten small porcelain vials stood in a row on the table. Cheng Banshan pinched off the flame at the furnace door with one hand and waited for the steam to settle, then set each vial in place. After the tenth was filled, he tipped the remainder onto a sheet of herb paper, folded the four corners, pressed one edge down, smoothed it flat, and the brush tip marked a date on the corner.

Xiao Ling stood at the end of the table, watching how he folded. The paper turned once in his palm and came out a triangle, two edges perfectly even, the writing pressed along the fold line. She took a blank paper and folded it the same way; the first attempt wasn't aligned, so she unfolded it, and the second came out right.

"Write it here, and it won't smudge when it sits," he said. "Write it in the middle and one rub blurs it."

She smoothed out the one she'd folded, folded it once more, and set it back on the corner of the table.

Qi Qi arrived, dipped the ten labels in rice starch, and pasted them one by one onto the shoulders of the vials. When all ten were done, he wrapped them in cloth and tucked them against his chest, then ran from the Medicine Hall's doorway all the way to the front courtyard. She watched him run from inside the door, her hood dipping lower again.

The Market opened its doors at the Dragon hour. Xu Yan kept the market ledger behind the counter; Shao Ming watched the scale at the entrance. The fair was colder than last time, and people on the street walked with their collars up. Rogue cultivators came one after another, setting spirit herbs, old bronze, and a few broken formation stones onto the scale pan. Xu Yan moved them on, moved them off, called out the numbers, recorded each line.

One rogue cultivator's spirit herbs had gotten damp; the moment the cord loosened, the leaves sagged. Shao Ming spread the herbs out on the edge of the scale platform and gave them two shakes. "Weigh it wet and all the extra's water. Air them out and come back, I won't cheat you on it." The cultivator crouched and picked them up piece by piece, then hugged the herbs to him and moved toward the wall. Xu Yan recorded the transaction in the market ledger, adding a line: "Wet herbs, not weighed." If anyone came asking later, the scales couldn't stand on empty words alone.

What the cultivators at the scale talked about most was the cold. One said the stone steps by the river had iced over in the morning, and he'd slipped hauling water. Another said he'd slept in a ruined temple outside town and woken frozen twice; he rubbed his hands together while waiting for the scale, the backs of them cracked open. Little else was said. Someone mentioned firewood had gotten dear. Someone said two fewer carts were coming down from the north. Someone asked if the Eight Great Sects' mountain gates were still shut, and the man next to him said they were, and with that the subject changed. No one mentioned the bounty, and no one asked who had newly appeared on the mountain. Xu Yan listened, moved the packet of spirit herbs to the side of the pan, and asked nothing.

The old flatbread seller squatted by the stall edge talking to Qian Duoduo, saying the fair had fewer people than last time, saying flour was hard to come by. When he finished, he broke his half hard flatbread in two and passed half over. Qian Duoduo took it, chewed, and nodded.

A rogue cultivator bought two vials of Qi-Gathering Powder, squatted by the wall, and held the labels to the light for a long while. "Fresh this morning?"

"This morning," Xu Yan said.

He nodded and tucked both vials into his sleeve.

At the other end of the stall, one pot of spirit meal sold to the bottom by mid-Snake hour. The ten vials of Qi-Gathering Powder arrived at the Snake hour as well, at the usual price. The fair broke up at the end of the Snake hour. Qian Duoduo shouldered the empty buckets and walked a few steps toward the grain shop, stopped at its door, studied the wooden sign there, then turned back—the Kitchen still had a pot of spirit rice left over from the thirtieth of the Tenth Month, so nothing new was added this fair. He shifted the shoulder pole to his other side.

The Market shut its doors at the end of the Horse hour. Qi Qi delivered the market box into Xu Yan's hands, Shao Ming pulled the two door panels shut and locked up. Out of town at the Wei hour, back at the Mountain Gate at the Monkey hour. Nie Bo was sweeping inside the gate; seeing them return, he stepped half a pace aside without stopping his broom.

By the Dog hour, the lamp was lit in the Accounts Room. Xu Yan turned out the Eleventh Month page and wrote one line: Fifth day, market fair, one pot, ten vials, income seventy spirit stones. The furnace log lay spread atop the ledger, and he added a line: Eleventh Month, fifth day, Qi-Gathering Powder, ten vials, one sample retained.

When he finished writing, he took his lantern to the Medicine Hall to look at the retained sample. The front courtyard was dark, and the northern cliff top was empty, nothing at all.

The light was still on in the Medicine Hall, the door pushed half open. On the nail in the door frame—where the hand scale hung by day—now hung her wind hood, brim facing inward. Du Xiaochuan had already lain down on the plank bed, an old cloth over him, the fire banked at the furnace door. Xiao Ling sat on the small stool by the stove, folding the herb papers on the table into triangles one by one, slower than she had that afternoon, the edges aligned, no writing on the corners. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, and the two spots at her temples showed in the lamplight.

The inner room's curtain was not drawn. Cheng Banshan stood beneath it, speaking—which herbs didn't grow in winter, and which, even if they grew, never amounted to medicine. She recited them back, got a few wrong, and he repeated them again.

Xu Yan didn't go in. He only took the retained sample from the shelf to look: on the corner was "Fifth Day, Eleventh Month," the writing pressed along the fold line. He put it back, backed out, and pulled the door to.

The wind hood on the nail swayed once, lightly.