My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 54: The Tenth Name

That blade lay across the steps all night.

At daybreak, Shi Po came out first. He bent down, picked it up, felt its weight, turned it over to look at the spine, then examined the cloth wrapped around the hilt—the cloth had dried, with a small dark-red patch in the middle. He rubbed it against his pant leg twice. It wouldn't come out.

Xu Yan stepped out of the Accounts Room and stood under the eaves.

"Not our property, so it doesn't go in the books," he said. "Is Qi Qi up yet?"

Cheng Banshan came over from the Medicine Hall with his wine gourd, glanced at the blade. "That's Cao Hu's weapon. You keep it, he'll be thinking about it for a year."

"His blade sitting inside the Qingya Mountain Gate gives him something to say come the Ninth of September." Xu Yan took the blade from Shi Po, looked it over, and handed it back. "Return it."

"I'll take it," Shi Po said.

"Qi Qi's faster."

Nie Bo was sweeping by the Mountain Gate. When he reached the gate arch he stepped around it, his broom never stopping.

Breakfast was set out in front of the kitchen.

Qian Duoduo squatted by the stove counting bowls. He counted thirteen, swapped the chipped one at the end for his own, and slid the unblemished one into the empty spot, muttering as he worked: "Thirteen bowls... the pot's too small. The rice will last though—I figured it: one big pot a day, and we'll still have some left come the Ninth."

Du Xiaochuan stood outside the door, still in yesterday's Chixiao-red clothes, heels together, hands at his sides.

"Eat standing," Xu Yan said.

"Yes," he answered, very quietly.

Qian Duoduo handed him a bowl, chopsticks gripped in his other hand. "If the bowl's too heavy, set it on the steps. Holding it up works too."

Du Xiaochuan took it and held it.

Shi Po picked up his own bowl and stood to Du Xiaochuan's right, the two of them eating facing the courtyard wall. Shi Po ate fast. When he finished, he didn't leave—just stood there holding his empty bowl.

A He and A Sui squatted at the two ends of the door threshold, eating and bickering—A He said there were three torches last night, A Sui said four. Each stuck to her count, neither yielding.

"Three," Qi Qi said, coming out of the kitchen with his bowl. "I counted."

A Sui fell silent and scooted half a hand's width closer to A He.

When A Sui finished, she carried two bowls toward the Mountain Gate—one for Nie Bo, one around the corner to the East Courtyard. She came back with the empty bowls stacked in her hands and reported that Senior Sister had finished eating and had asked whether the new arrival had eaten. She'd told her he ate standing.

Huo Qing was the last one out. Bowl in his left hand, he had to rotate his wrist to level it, and the rim clicked against his teeth. He sat down on the long bench by the kitchen door and ate slowly, one spoonful at a time.

Cheng Banshan pushed his bowl aside and nodded at Du Xiaochuan. "Pull your shirt up. Let me look."

Du Xiaochuan hesitated, then lifted the back of his shirt up to his shoulders. Across his lower back ran a purple-black bruise, slanting down from the right, the skin broken in the middle. Above the backs of his knees were two hard patches, yellowing.

Cheng Banshan pressed a finger along the bruise. On the third press, Du Xiaochuan's shoulder blades twitched.

"Those two marks from kneeling need rubbing, twice a day." Cheng Banshan withdrew his hand. "The one from the carrying-pole beating is nothing—the skin didn't split all the way. Salve's in the Medicine Hall, second shelf. Get it yourself."

"Thank you, Elder Cheng."

"Kneeling a night in the outer court—that wasn't punishment." Du Xiaochuan let his shirt fall and said it flatly.

Cheng Banshan looked up at him. "And the pole beating?"

"Cao Hu said he'd remember it for me."

"Remember what?"

Du Xiaochuan held his bowl with both hands. "Remember that the day I came back from delivering the letter, I was two quarter-hours late."

Cheng Banshan didn't answer. He stacked his bowl into A Sui's hands. "The ones who call me Grandpa Cheng are those two. They've got it wrong, but don't you follow along."

Snake hour. The Ancestral Hall.

The doors stood open, and a shaft of sunlight fell across the long table. The ancestral tablets climbed row after row; at the very top was the Founding Patriarch Ning Gui's, with fresh incense ash scattered before it from that morning.

Xu Yan dragged the wooden box out from under the offering table, opened it, and took out the sect roster, spreading it flat. It was open to the middle page: nine names, no two written alike. Jiang Wan's sat at the top, every stroke edged; Shi Po's was traced from stone slabs, horizontal and vertical lines perfectly straight, like it had been chiseled. Huo Qing wrote with his left hand; his characters tilted. A He's took up half a square. A Sui's was neat. Qian Duoduo's shook, the last stroke trailing a tail. Under the ninth name, half the page was still blank.

A Sui ground ink until it was thick. Bai Xiaoman stretched her neck beside her, counting. "Nine."

"When a name goes in this roster, we don't ask where the person came from." Xu Yan laid the brush on the edge of the inkstone. "From now on, the roster has one Du Xiaochuan and no one else."

Du Xiaochuan heard him out, then nodded once.

"Three kowtows."

He walked to the tablets. The wound on his back still ached; his waist stayed stiff as he bent. The three kowtows came slowly, and when he rose he had to push off his knee to straighten. After the kowtows, he turned and saluted Xu Yan.

"I join Qingya of my own will."

Word by word, his breath changing pace three times in between.

"Write. Under the ninth."

Du Xiaochuan took the brush. The scraped skin on his palm had scabbed thin; he couldn't grip with full strength, and the brush handle twisted between his fingers before he held it steady. He wrote on the tenth line—small, tight, pausing at the end of every stroke.

The hall was silent. Bai Xiaoman tried to crane her neck over, but Cheng Banshan coughed behind her and she pulled back. Shi Po stood by the door, feet planted in his pillar stance, motionless.

The brush left the paper.

Before Xu Yan's eyes, the thin ledger flipped once, and a line floated up on the page:

[Balance: Registered Disciples: ten.]

A second line followed immediately:

[Entry: Before the Ninth of September, Registered Disciples reach ten. Settled.]

And beneath that, another line dropped down:

[Balance: Heritage: 25 points.]

Xu Yan held the brush and didn't move. The ink at the tip welled up and fell, landing on the long table.

Cheng Banshan stuck half his body through the doorway. "Done writing yet? The food's almost cold." He saw that Xu Yan wasn't moving and swallowed the rest of his sentence.

"Ten now," Bai Xiaoman said in a small voice.

"I can count bowls, and I can count names too." Qi Qi picked up from the doorway. "Ten."

"The day I came up the mountain, there were six in the roster," Shao Ming said from behind the others.

Xu Yan set the brush down without wiping the ink from the table. "Ten names in the roster. On the Ninth, the Rank Evaluator will ask one by one—ten names, and we'll recite every one for her."

Du Xiaochuan stood by the table, hands at his sides. "Sect Master, I can work."

"Rest for two days first."

"Two days is too long."

"Then two days it is, not one less." Xu Yan closed the roster and returned it to the wooden box. "The Accounts Room doesn't rush people, and it doesn't sweet-talk them either."

Lunch was laid out in the front courtyard. Two square tables pushed together, not enough stools, so A He and A Sui took their bowls and squatted at the two ends of the threshold.

Qian Duoduo buried an extra spoonful of the thick rice from the bottom of the pot under the bowl for the East Courtyard and had A Sui deliver it. Then he ladled the last spoon of soup into Du Xiaochuan's bowl. Du Xiaochuan tried to refuse, but Qian Duoduo set the bowl down on the table with a thump. "When a bowl reaches my hands, I'm the one who decides."

When A Sui came back, she set the empty bowl on the corner of the table and added: "Senior Sister says, let him eat half a bowl more."

Qian Duoduo acknowledged it, then scraped the bottom of the pot and scraped out half a small bowl.

Du Xiaochuan ate fast. When he finished, he set the bowl down and looked around at the table full of people, as if about to say something. His throat moved, but nothing came out.

Xu Yan saw it but didn't ask.

A He picked the spirit mushroom out of his own bowl and dropped it into Du Xiaochuan's. Du Xiaochuan stared at it for a second, then ate it anyway.

"Those three stones are still under my bed," Bai Xiaoman said between bites. "Tomorrow I'm going up the Back Mountain. I'll measure the grooves before I set them in—nobody touch them first."

"Shi Po goes with you," Xu Yan said.

Shao Ming scraped his bowl clean. "There are ten people on this mountain now. At the market on the Fifth, will the pot still feed everyone?"

"It'll feed them," Qian Duoduo said. "We'll add two extra pairs of hands then."

The sun sank west, and Xu Yan called Qi Qi into the Accounts Room.

The blade was wrapped in a piece of old cloth, lying at the corner of the desk.

"The Chixiao Mountain Gate. Put it on the stone footing outside their gate. Set it down, leave, and don't say a word."

Qi Qi lifted one corner of the cloth. "This blade is Cao Hu's."

"It is."

"That gash on the web of his hand will take days to heal."

"Which is why we're returning it." Xu Yan tucked the cloth corner in. "Keeping another man's property on this mountain only gives them something to talk about."

Qi Qi thought for a moment. "If we give the blade back, we get nothing out of it."

"We get one thing," Xu Yan said. "It was his blade. We don't take what isn't ours."

Qi Qi slung the blade onto his back. "If they chase—"

"They won't catch you. Go over the Back Mountain and down along the gully on the east side."

Qi Qi smiled. "This blade's better than mine."

"That's why it isn't yours."

Qi Qi left as the sky was darkening.

That night the lamp in the Accounts Room stayed lit. Xu Yan opened the running ledger and, on the roster page, counted from Jiang Wan down to Du Xiaochuan. Ten. He pulled the notice out from among the old records and spread it under the lamp, checking the clauses one by one: the Ninth of September, before the Rank Evaluator, 2,100 pieces, and if not paid in full, surrender the mountain deed. He'd read this paper more than ten times; the corners had gone soft from handling.

When Qi Qi returned, the window paper was already turning pale. He didn't knock—just lay against the windowsill and caught his breath first.

"Delivered?"

"I set it on that square stone footing outside their Mountain Gate, with the cloth corner tucked underneath." Qi Qi said. "Someone came out to get it. I was crouched on the slope watching—made sure they didn't see me."

"Mm."

"Sect Master," Qi Qi lowered his voice, "on the other side of the ridge, the lights burned all night."

"Where exactly?"

"The Steward Office area, and they hung three or four lanterns in the open ground in the middle of the compound. People coming and going—it stayed lit nearly until dawn." He thought for a moment, then added, "No hammering, no shouting. Just lights."

Xu Yan trimmed the lamp wick shorter.

"Are your legs numb?"

"They are," Qi Qi answered honestly. "Crouched half the night. When I stood up it was like treading on cotton."

"Get some sleep. Be at the Accounts Room by Dragon hour."

"That early?"

"Du Xiaochuan has something to say."

Qi Qi made a small "oh," turned, and left. His footsteps sounded twice on the stone steps and vanished.

Xu Yan turned to the running ledger and wrote two lines:

August 27. Blade returned to Chixiao, left on the stone footing outside their gate.

August 27. Lights on the ridge burned all night.

He set the brush back on the rest. Outside the window paper, the sky was whitening bit by bit. The stone below the steps was empty, dew pressing down on it, gleaming in a thin line.