My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 33: A Hand at the Wharf

The cart office's mule was tied under a willow, its tail flicking back and forth at the flies. Only half the shed had shade; the other half was bleached pale by the sun. The smell of axle grease mixed with the river breeze.

"To Linchuan, how much?" Xu Yan asked.

The man from the cart office was crouched on the ground, greasing axles. He didn't look up. "Two spirit stones one way, four round trip. Leaves at Mao Hour, arrives at Shen Hour. Eighty li of official road, one stop for the animal at the Watering Point."

"How many seats?"

"Three side by side. Four if you squeeze."

"Room in the back for a load?"

The man glanced up at him. "Up to two loads behind, no extra charge. If it bounces and breaks, don't come looking for me."

"Break it and I won't," Xu Yan said. "Carts run every day?"

"They do." The man tucked the oilcloth further under the axle. "Give me a day's notice and I'll hold one for you. The mule cart doesn't enter the city gate—it stops at the carriage yard outside. You walk in yourself."

"From the carriage yard to the market in the north of the city, how long's the walk?"

"Under half a shichen." Only now did the man catch on. He lifted his eyes. "You hauling goods into the city? They'll ask at the gate. Two wen per question."

Xu Yan filed that away too: two wen.

"And the return trip?"

"First day back, give word at the carriage yard. Same Mao Hour departure, Shen Hour arrival at Luoxia Town." The man wiped his hand on his sleeve. "If you get rained on along the road, the mule won't hold pace. Adds half a day."

"Adding half a day—costs more?"

"No. Just means half a day of waiting." He lowered his head back to the grease. "If you're in a hurry to get back and mind the mountain gate, don't pick a rainy day."

Xu Yan tallied the figures in his head: on the way there, he'd ride the cart. On the way back, the cart would carry three more stones. Three stones, three hundred spirit stones—that was the account for this trip. Cart fare, four spirit stones—that was the road. Road money went out first; accounts settled later. The ledger showed four hundred fifty-five stones. Subtract the stones, one hundred fifty-five remained. A month of rice came to forty-eight.

Three knotted hemp ropes still sat at the corner of the accounts desk. Once he reached Linchuan, he'd have to wrap them around the stones one by one for measuring.

He took out his ledger, flipped to the last empty pages, dipped his brush, and wrote a line: Luoxia Town cart office, mule cart to Linchuan, round trip four stones. Mao Hour out, Shen Hour in.

He tucked the brush back into the spine of the book, said thanks, and headed for the wharf.

From the cart office to the Luoxia River was one street. The flagstones were more than half broken, grass pushing through the cracks. A water carrier passed, two wet trails spilling from his buckets. At the end of the street a man crouched scaling fish, scales stuck to the stone slabs, glaring bright in the sun.

A boat sat against the riverbank, a gangplank laid from its bow, water right beneath the plank. The boat was stacked with salt sacks, a white frost across their tops. Stevedores came up the stone steps one after another; the moss on the steps had been worn away in patches by their feet, exposing white stone beneath.

At the head of the gangplank was a small table where an old man keeping count sat recording each load, dipping his brush often to wet it. Above the steps crouched the foreman. In front of him was an iron box holding copper coins. He held half a bamboo tally in his hand; every trip a man made, he carved a notch.

"How many sacks left?" someone on the boat called.

"Nine." The foreman counted the tallies. "Settle once it's all off. Thirty sacks, two wen per sack, sixty wen total, split ten ways—six wen each."

Xu Yan stood at the edge of the stone steps, weighing those numbers against the four spirit stones from earlier: one spirit stone exchanged for ten taels of silver; one tael was one thousand wen. Four stones of cart fare meant forty taels, forty thousand wen. An entire boatload of salt—six hundred and some sacks—was worth barely enough to cover one cart trip to Linchuan.

He set that thought aside and looked up at the men.

The man at the bottom of the steps was slowest.

The others hoisted a sack and crossed two steps at a stride, their feet landing solid on the stone. This man carried one sack too, braced on his left shoulder, his left hand gripping the corner of the sack. One step, then he stopped. Each time he paused, he hefted the sack upward with a little bounce, using that momentum to climb two more steps. His right arm hung at his side. With every step, that hand swung once, then went still again. Both arms looked the same thickness. That one just wouldn't work.

Brine seeped from the bottom of the sack and ran down his face. He had no hand free to wipe it.

A porter heading down passed him and said, "Out of the way." He angled sideways against the stone railing. The salt sack scraped it, leaving a white streak.

"One trip for you, two for the others," the foreman called from above. "One sack of salt, and you make it look like three."

The man didn't answer. He shifted the sack to rest on the step edge, then straightened up.

"What's that on your back?" The foreman pointed with the bamboo tally. "Carrying salt and wearing a sword. What do you think this is?"

Slung across his back was a sword in a wooden sheath, the mouth of the sheath worn pale, the cloth wrapping on it gone black. He said nothing. He didn't take it off.

An old porter adjusted the sack on his shoulder and looked back. "Come over and hand up sacks. I'll take them on. Passing sacks up—that doesn't tax the hand."

The man looked at him, shook his head, and turned to fetch the next sack.

Xu Yan asked the foreman, "He's slow. Why do you still let him work?"

"The embankment doesn't know faces. It knows sacks." The foreman tapped the bamboo tally against the iron box. "Short on hands today. We won't be tomorrow, and he won't need to come back."

"Half a workday—how does that pay?"

"A full day is six wen. He did half a day's work; he gets three." The foreman said it without hesitation. "I don't cheat him, and I don't feed idlers."

With that, he waved the man off: "Go on, get out. Counting you for half a day."

He counted out three wen from the iron box and set them on the stone step. He didn't hand them over.

The man looked down at the three coins, bent over, picked them up one by one with his left hand, and tucked them into his shirt. Before leaving, he turned back, straightened the half-carried sack, folded the bag corner under, and nudged a loose stone at the step's edge back into place with his foot.

The foreman spat at his back: "One hand, and he comes to unload salt."

Xu Yan stood at the edge of the steps and watched until that figure turned the corner into town. Then he turned and went into the tea stall at the mouth of the wharf.

Three low tables. A big clay pot sat on a long bench. The old woman tending the stall had a worn cloth draped around her neck. Xu Yan set down two wen, took a bowl, and sat at the innermost table.

At the next table sat three porters, their clothes soaked to the waist. One propped his foot on a rock.

"That one today—the one with one hand. Where's he from?"

"Since early morning, on the embankment asking for work," another said. "Who knows where he slept last night."

"That's him." The third man covered his tea bowl. "Kicked out of the Heavenly Sword Sect."

"The Heavenly Sword Sect?"

"Word's all over the road. The Heavenly Sword Sect drove someone out—one hand ruined, still wearing his sword, heading south. You didn't see the one on his back? Bundled up like treasure."

"Hand's ruined. What's he doing with a sword? Sell it for rice, wouldn't that be better?"

"Who'd buy it." The man with the covered bowl tapped it against the table. "Who in town would buy a sword? The stone workshop only takes stone; the grain shops only take grain."

"A place like the Heavenly Sword Sect," said the one with his foot on the rock, "how they throw someone out—how would we know."

"Knowing wouldn't help." The one with the covered bowl said, "A boatload of salt is sixty wen. The Heavenly Sword Sect's business—sixty wen won't buy a single word of it."

Xu Yan held his bowl and said nothing.

He turned over in his mind what the carter at Old Tao's tea stall had said yesterday: one hand ruined, sword still on his back, walking south for half a month, saying he'd come to Dongzhou. Back then Xu Yan had only asked when it happened. The carter said, even if it was true, it was a hundred li away.

The hundred li had been walked. The man was sitting right there on the embankment by that boat, slowest on the stone steps.

The old woman came to collect the bowls and said offhand, "That man just now—bought three flatbreads from me. One wen each. Spent all three wen. Not a single one left."

"Mm." Xu Yan pushed his bowl over.

"A hand like that, still carrying a sword." The woman stacked the bowls. "We don't get sword-wearing salt-haulers around here."

The sun slanted west. One by one, the porters left. Xu Yan sat at the low table and drank his tea until it went cold. In the meantime the boat finished unloading and pushed off; another moored in its place. This one unloaded rice. Rice dust rose and caked onto people's faces.

That man didn't climb the stone steps again. He sat on the stone edge of the river embankment for half the afternoon, sword lying across his knees, sheath and all, one hand pressing on it. He never drew it. He watched the boats, the water, the sacks of salt going up. When the sun pressed down onto the rooftops across the river, he got up and headed out of town.

Xu Yan set down his bowl and followed, thirty or forty paces behind.

West out of town ran a dirt road, fallow fields on either side. The fields held no water; they were cracked open, last year's unharvested stalks drying on the ridges. Past three willows, their branches hanging low enough to brush a man's shoulder.

The Earth God Shrine stood at the end of the dirt road.

One room, three stone steps at the door, the threshold worn down a whole notch. One door panel leaned against the wall; the other still hung, crooked. Inside, an offering table, a clay idol so caked in dust you couldn't make out its face. Three cold incense stubs stood in the burner—some year or another.

The man stopped below the steps and looked back once at the road he'd come from. From town to here, that was the only time he looked back.

He went in. He took the sword off his back, sheath and all, and set it against the wall. Then he went behind the shrine and came back with an armful of dry hay. With his left hand, he spread it in the corner at the base of the wall—one layer, tamped flat with his foot, then another. There was a small pebble pressed into the hay; he picked it out and tossed it past the threshold. Wind poured through the doorway, so he shifted the hay half a foot closer to the wall.

He sat down on the hay and pulled a flatbread from his shirt. He broke it—with his left hand. His right hand rested on his knee, fingers spread, as if he'd forgotten how to close them. He held half the bread up to his right hand. The hand rose halfway and fell back to his knee. It rose again, fell again. The third time, he stopped trying. He put the bread back in his left hand and ate, bite by bite, very slowly.

Three flatbreads. He ate one and a half. The remaining half and the untouched one went back inside his shirt.

When he finished, he reached to the wall and moved the sword to his feet, then to his head, so that when he lay down, one reach of his hand would find it. As he moved it, his left hand brushed the worn-pale mouth of the sheath—two strokes, then he pulled his hand back. Then he lay down, facing the shrine's door.

Xu Yan stood outside the door. He didn't go in.

That hand rising and falling—he'd watched it three times.

There was no fire in the shrine, no other sound. The sword had made one sound against the dry hay when it was moved. After that, nothing.

He stood for a while, then turned and walked to the bend in the dirt road. He opened his ledger. Below that last line, he added another: Earth God Shrine, west out of town, past three willows, dirt road to its end, door half-collapsed.

The brush paused. A new line: One man inside, right hand ruined, a sword on his back.

He closed the book and walked back the way he'd come.

When he reached the main road, he looked back once: the shrine's doorway was dark, not a single fire lit. That sword was probably still there by the hay, sheath mouth facing the door.

Three names on the roster. Seven more to go.