My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 45: Fifteen Mid-grade Stones

By early Dragon hour on August 8, people were already waiting at the head of East Row Three.

First in line was a porter from the freight warehouse, a sweat towel slung over his shoulder. He said he'd spent half the night unloading sacks and had come first thing to wait for the pot to open. Behind him stood the woman with the baby; the child was draped over her shoulder, eyes still shut. Farther back, two men squatted against the wall. One balanced a bowl on his knee and clutched four Spirit Stones in his hand.

Qian Duoduo lifted the pot lid half a foot, and white steam surged up toward the eaves. He reached for it, pulled his fingers back an inch shy of the rim, and only managed to get the lid off by gripping it through his apron.

"Rice in?" Xu Yan asked.

"In."

"Water same as the batch on the seventh?"

"Exactly the same." Qian Duoduo dragged the ladle around the bottom of the pot. "Sect Master, today's line—I counted to thirty and stopped."

"Use the tallies."

At Snake hour, the first bowl went to the porter. Tally 181. He tucked it into his belt, squatted against the wall to eat, and looked up after two bites. "Thicker than the place across the way."

The line never broke after that. By Horse hour it stretched to the mouth of East Row Four. In Monkey hour it wrapped past the pickled-vegetable stall, and the sewing-goods vendor nudged her setup half a foot inward to open up space for two more people to stand. Three people in line asked about Qi-Gathering Powder, and Xu Yan answered each one the same way: sold out back on the third. The third man lingered after the answer. "Bring some next time. I want five bottles."

"Noted," Xu Yan said.

Shi Po hauled water back and forth, washed bowls, stacked them in two neat piles on the worktable. Whenever he had a spare moment he returned to stand in front of the stall, always half a step behind Qian Duoduo.

By the time the first pot hit bottom, the rice for the second was already soaking.

By Monkey hour all three pots were sold out. The last two bowls went to a pair of men in short jackets who'd waited at the tail end most of the day. They packed up, lifted the pot off the stove, stoppered the firebox with stones and doused it with water. Qian Duoduo dumped the bamboo tallies from the bucket onto the table and laid them out one by one to count. At fifty he lost track and started over.

"Sixty," he said. "Twenty per pot."

"August 8: three pots, two hundred and forty stones," Xu Yan wrote in the ledger. "Materials: eighteen. Balance on hand: one thousand seven hundred and six."

Qian Duoduo broke into a grin, every tooth showing, still clutching that bamboo tally in his fingers.

Before dawn on the ninth, people were already sitting on the ground in line. They lit the fire early and opened at Snake hour—tallies running upward from 241. Before Horse hour was even over, the tail had rounded the Market Gate again.

Around midday, a man in gray silk pushed into the line, trailed by two shop hands in short jackets. He stepped up to the stove and looked at the pot first, then the tally bucket, then the wooden box on the table.

"Twenty bowls a pot," he said. "Six stones a bowl. I'll take all of it."

Qian Duoduo's ladle froze on the rim of the pot. He looked back at Xu Yan.

"What's in the pot goes to the people in line first," Xu Yan said.

"I'll pay six."

"They're paying four too." Xu Yan shifted the tally bucket toward the corner of the table. "One tally per person, one bowl per tally. Where are you in line?"

The man in gray turned and looked at the line snaking all the way around the Market Gate, then smiled faintly. "Every kitchen in Linchuan City buys whole pots to haul back. It's how it's done."

"We can't manage that," Xu Yan said. "If I sell the whole pot, twenty people in line wait all day for nothing."

The man slipped a small lump of silver from his sleeve and set it on the table. "Let me have a taste."

Xu Yan picked up the silver with two fingers, walked around the edge of the table, and placed it back in the man's hand. "A taste, I'll give you free. To buy, you take a tally."

"Free?"

"A free bowl isn't entered in the books," Xu Yan said. "A sale has to be recorded, stroke for stroke."

The man tucked the silver back into his sleeve and studied Xu Yan for a moment. He didn't seem angry. He dropped a parting remark—"You people do business stiff as a board"—and led his men off down the street. After a dozen steps he glanced back once more at the tally bucket.

"Six stones though," Qian Duoduo muttered.

"We're opening again tomorrow," Xu Yan said.

Before they packed up, Xu Yan got a look at the way Qian Duoduo was holding his bowl: both hands cupped, palms upturned, a layer of apron between skin and ceramic.

"Show me your hands."

Qian Duoduo tucked them under his apron. "It's nothing."

"Show me."

Three blisters on his palms. The middle one had burst; the surrounding skin was ringed red.

"On the tenth, Shi Po carries the bowls," Xu Yan said.

"The pot's still going."

"The pot's going, and so are your hands."

Qian Duoduo pulled the corner of his apron up and wrapped it around one palm. "Once it's wrapped, it doesn't hurt. Sect Master, there's only one day left. Let me see it through."

Xu Yan said nothing more. That night by lamplight at the inn, he added a line in the margin of the ninth's page: Cloth for Qian Duoduo's hands. Not yet paid.

On the morning of the tenth, the Chixiao Shop across the way hung out its sign again. The sign had been down for three days; a strip of unfaded wood showed where it had hung. A shop hand carried out a stack of bowls and arranged them on the little table by the door, then stepped back and stood behind it. All morning, not a single bowl was touched.

The line on their side ran from the Market Gate deep into East Row Three. They lit the fire before dawn, opened at Snake hour, and tallies climbed upward from 301. Three pots sold out around midday. After the last ladle scraped the bottom, Qian Duoduo tilted the pot and scraped for a long while, working out a small half-bowl. He gave it to the boy at the very end of the line.

"This one's not on a tally," the boy said.

"Not on a tally," Qian Duoduo agreed. "Bottom of the pot."

Monkey hour. The Formation Implements Shop at the west end of the market.

A row of wooden troughs ran along the counter. Stones were sorted by element—Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth—into five troughs, each with a wooden label nailed to its front. The shop smelled of stone dust cut with tung oil.

The shop hand was a short, middle-aged man rubbing down the edge of a flint with a rough cloth. When he saw someone come in, he draped the cloth over his shoulder. "What do you need?"

"Five-Element Formation Stones. Metal, Water, Earth." Xu Yan spread the diagram out on the counter.

The diagram was drawn on the back of last year's discarded ledger paper, folded twice, the creases worn pale. Three empty slots were sketched on it, each labeled in charcoal along the side: Metal, Water, Earth.

The shop hand bent over it for a long while and let out a short laugh. "Drawn clear enough. Who drew it?"

"Someone up on the mountain."

"Three slots?" He looked up at Xu Yan. "That formation of yours is missing three stones."

"Missing three."

The shop hand asked no more questions. He bent down and picked one stone from each of the three troughs, setting them out on the countertop one at a time. The first was grayish-white, with a faint red thread running across its face. The second had a bluish-green cast, its edges worn smooth. The third was ochre, pitted and rough.

From beneath the counter he brought out a small lamp with a Low-grade Spirit Stone pressed under its wick. The flame burned white, and it gave off no heat even up close. He brought the lamp to the first stone, and the red thread inside flickered to life, hair-thin. Under the second, a blue-green glow spread from one side to the other like water soaking through. For the third, the light went in and scattered—the whole stone just looked like a lump of sun-dried clay.

"Anything I've lit up is good," the shop hand said, returning the lamp to its place. "One hundred each."

Xu Yan hefted the three stones one by one, tapping each with his knuckle. The first rang short; the second a little longer; the third was dull. Cheng Banshan had said it: a formation stone has to be held in the palm and listened to. The stone workshop proprietor in Luoxia Town had tapped stones for him too—dull ones won't do; only clear ones conduct energy.

The third one was dull.

"Swap this one for another," Xu Yan said.

The shop hand gave him a look, picked the ochre stone back out of the trough, rummaged around, and brought up a replacement. This one sat heavier in the hand. Tap—short and solid. Lamp again: the light still scattered, but evenly.

"Earth ones all do that," the shop hand said. "Even scatter is good. Lumps all clotted together—that's what you call a crack."

"Three stones. Can you come down any?"

"The price is fixed in the register." The shop hand pointed at the wall behind the counter; a wooden sign listed several rows of figures. "Not mine to change."

"Three hundred, then."

Xu Yan counted out three hundred low-grade stones from the cloth pouch, stacking them in piles of a hundred. The shop hand swept them together, counted pile by pile, stowed them in the wooden box under the counter, and entered a line in his register.

Shi Po wrapped the three stones in old cloth, loosened the rope on his Back Basket, settled them at the very bottom, tucked the cloth corners in tight, and bounced the basket on his shoulders.

"Heavy?" Xu Yan asked.

"No," Shi Po said. "Lighter than flagstones."

You Hour. The Money House at the east end of the market. Its two front steps were polished slick, and the threshold was sheathed in copper.

Xu Yan set three cloth sacks on the counter and untied them one by one, spilling out low-grade Spirit Stones that clattered across the wooden surface. The clerk behind the counter was an older man with heavy eyelids and a slow way of talking. He scooped the stones into a wooden measure—fifty per scoop. Twenty scoops, then ten more. He looked up. "Fifteen hundred."

"Exchange for mid-grade."

The old clerk brought out a flat wooden case from under the counter and opened it. One stone per compartment. He counted them out one at a time, and at fifteen he laid them in a single row on the counter.

Mid-grade stones were bigger, deeper in color, almost dull in the light. Xu Yan picked them up one by one, holding each to the light from the doorway, then weighed the last one in his palm.

"What are you weighing?" the old clerk asked.

"Force of habit."

"Mid-grade has no fakes," the old clerk said. "Anything counterfeit shows on the scale."

Xu Yan tucked the fifteen into his money pouch, wound the drawstring twice, cinched it tight, and slipped it inside his robe, pressing through the cloth to feel it settle. The remaining three hundred and fifty low-grade went back into the sack, which Shi Po took and wedged under the three stones at the bottom of his basket.

Back at the inn to settle the room charge. The innkeeper pulled out his book and flipped to the page dated September 1. "Ten nights, two per night, twenty. The man from the carriage yard came by this afternoon—he'll be waiting outside at Mao hour tomorrow."

"The fare was paid on the first," Xu Yan said.

"Round trip." The innkeeper nodded. "Already paid, so nothing more owed."

Xu Yan counted out twenty stones. The innkeeper ran a finger down a line in the book. A new entry appeared in the ledger: September 10, Luoxia Inn, ten nights, twenty stones.

Near the end of You Hour, he carried the account book to the Market Office and laid their stall tag on the desk. Xue Guizhi was turning the pages of a thick register by lamplight. She glanced up at the tag, picked it up, checked the number on its face, then rose and hung it among the row of wooden tags on the wall.

"Heading out tomorrow?"

"At Mao hour."

"Keep the stall in Linchuan. Five a day. I'll hold one for you." She sat back down. "That pot of yours—the market knows it now."

"Before the Double Ninth, someone has to be up on the mountain."

Xue Guizhi slid the abacus closer. "The market's open in September too. When you come back, check in here first."

"Check in here first," Xu Yan repeated.

Back at the inn, a single lamp burned in their room upstairs. Shi Po set the Back Basket down by the wall near the door; the three stones at the bottom gave a dull thud. Qian Duoduo sat on the edge of the bed, both hands lying open on his knees. The cloth on his palms had been changed; a little yellow had seeped through the white.

Xu Yan spread the account book on the low table and paged back to September 1.

Four stones for the cart. Fifty for the stall. First day: materials eighteen, three pots two hundred and forty, twelve bottles of Qi-Gathering Powder for sixty. The third: materials eighteen, income two hundred and forty, income forty. The fourth: out eighteen, in eighty. The fifth and sixth: not a single entry in or out.

He turned to the seventh. Stall fee refunded: fifteen. Materials twelve. Two pots, one hundred and sixty.

The eighth, ninth, and tenth were identical: income two hundred and forty, expenditure eighteen.

At the end, two more entries: formation stones, three pieces, three hundred; inn, ten nights, twenty.

He added the days front to back, then back to front, and set the brush tip to the page for the final line.

Balance on hand: one thousand eight hundred and thirty stones.

The thin booklet sat tucked inside the account book. He turned to the Roster page. Four names, stroke by stroke, some large, some small. Tonight it made no sound.

Xu Yan pressed the page back down and kept calculating.

Of the 1,830 stones, 1,500 had been exchanged into fifteen mid-grade stones, tucked against his chest. Three hundred and thirty low-grade sat at the bottom of Shi Po's basket. Owed to the Sect Alliance: 2,100.

2,100 minus 1,830: 270 stones.

He flipped back to the rough sheet tucked into the fifth's page—the tally-range scratch paper he'd worked out that night, its back still blank. On a new line, he wrote out the dates one by one: 15th, 20th, 25th, 30th, 5th.

Before the Double Ninth, Luoxia Town still had five Market Fairs.

One fair, two pots, ten bottles of powder: one hundred and ten stones. Three fairs would cover 270. The last two were cushion for leaks: rice prices would fluctuate, the cloth for Qian Duoduo's hands still had to be paid for, and the mountain's September charcoal had yet to be bought.

He blew out the lamp. The room went dark; a faint glow from the market still lingered on the window paper. The money pouch pressed against his chest, the fifteen mid-grade stones hard and unyielding. When he rolled over, they dug into his ribs.