My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 71: The New Weir on the Ridge

East past the fork, the grass grew past the ankle. The dew was heavy, and before they had gone a mile, all three of them had trouser legs soaked through, clinging to their shins, cold. The sky was still gray, a line of white on the treetops, the dirt underfoot loose.

"Grass is higher than last time." Qi Qi pushed the grass aside at the front and looked back.

"Last time was what month," Huo Qing said.

Qi Qi opened his mouth, then said nothing. Before the Autumn Evaluation he used to crouch along this path; the trail he'd worn then had been bright with use. Now new grass lay over the old, and you couldn't tell whose feet had made it.

Farther down, the path began to fall. Two miles of descent brought them to the fields.

The water in the fields was gone, but the mud still held damp. A foot sank half a finger's depth and came up carrying a whole clod with it. Twelve mu of fields lay edge to edge, the mud surface printed with the lines of receding water, horizontal and vertical, so that standing on the embankment you could see which end the water had drained from. The small pond at the east end of the fields lay bottom-up to the sky, the mud hard and white. A white-necked bird landed, hopped twice, found no water, shook out its wings, and flew off.

Qi Qi crouched on the field embankment and pressed his palm into the mud. He lifted it; his palm was wet. "Still damp."

"Damp doesn't count as water," Xu Yan said.

"I know it doesn't." Qi Qi wiped his hand on his trousers. "I mean the water only left in the last couple of days. The ground hasn't dried through, and the embankment mud is still soft. If it'd been two weeks, the mud would have crusted over."

Xu Yan walked the length of the field embankment. Twelve mu, and it took a short quarter-hour to get from the west end to the east. At the east end he turned and looked back: not a single patch of standing water in the fields, not even a puddle the size of an ox hoofprint. Uncle Wang had said he'd hauled water for half a day and it all seeped away in the space of a breath. That had been said in the Main Hall; now he could see it under his own feet.

The stream lay on their left. They said stream, but the creek bed held nothing but stones. Turn over a round stone and the underside was still dark, a last thread of moisture in the cracks. Farther east, even that thread was gone. Huo Qing climbed down into the creek bed and walked it, feet steady on the stones, step by step, making no sound.

"The water comes from up above," Qi Qi said. "Walk far enough and there's a source."

"Up top is a spring source," Xu Yan said.

"I came up once, before the Autumn Evaluation," Qi Qi said. "The water in the creek was half a foot deep then, ice-cold to the touch. I lay flat and drank from it."

"And you admit it," Huo Qing said from the creek bed.

"Admit what? It didn't give me the runs."

The sun came up over the ridge ahead, lighting the stones in front first, then their faces. The slope steepened, the trees shrank, and the stones came back. The slope eased, then steepened again. By the time the sun had climbed halfway up the sky, they reached a bend, and Qi Qi stopped suddenly and pointed ahead.

On a flat stretch of the slope stood a boundary stele, taller than a man, the side facing the stream bleached white by light. The three of them passed beneath it. Qi Qi tilted his head to look up at it. Huo Qing didn't look.

No more than half a mile farther up, the path turned bare of grass, nothing but loose stone that slid underfoot, and the three of them heard the sound of water.

The sound was wrong. It didn't run downward beneath their feet; it cut across in front of them, sounding all the way from their right to their left, then falling away into the distance. The three of them stopped on the slope. No one said anything. They followed the sound upward.

The spring source sat beneath a recessed rock face. The rock was wet and black, grown over with moss; water emerged from a seam at its base and fell into a stone basin. Below the basin, someone had built a new weir.

The stone was freshly cut. The faces were white, the edges still sharp, and the mud packed into the joints hadn't dried—a finger pressed into it went right in. The top of the weir stood a cut higher than the old stone on either side. When they'd built it, they'd used pebbles from the creek for the foundation, and the waterline ring on those pebbles hadn't dried through yet. At the east end of the weir, a channel had been cut. Water spilled over the weir, tumbled into the channel, and ran east.

The channel was newly dug too. The excavated soil lay heaped along its banks, clods with grass roots still attached, the turned-under side still wet. The water ran fast in the channel, loud all the way down.

Qi Qi crouched at the channel's edge and put his hand in. Water rushed through his fingers, carrying a few grains of sand. He pulled his hand out, shook it off, and turned to look west.

West—the side they'd come up—the creek bed was dry. The stones were dry.

Not a drop of water had made it across.

"Sect Master." Qi Qi's voice was tight. "If I'd come up here in the ninth month—"

"You'd have seen it, and you couldn't have stopped it," Xu Yan said.

Three men sat on the weir, all in red robes. Two leaned against the rock face; one sat in the middle of the weir. The one against the rock had been crouching by the channel earlier, washing the mud from his hands; now he shook the water off and wiped them dry on his lapel.

The man sitting in the middle of the weir tucked whatever was in his hand into his robes and stood. Cao Hu. The blade at his waist was new, a bronze clasp on the scabbard.

He wiped both hands on his trousers, then set one on the knife hilt. "The boundary stele's there." His chin lifted toward the stone down the slope. "The spring is inside Chixiao territory."

Qi Qi took half a step forward. Huo Qing moved behind Xu Yan.

Xu Yan looked down at the stele on the slope, at the weir below the spring source, at the channel beside it, and followed the channel east with his eyes as far as he could see. The water ran and rang the whole way, skirting stones, dropping east into the woods below, out of sight. The twelve mu of fields lay spread at the foot of the mountain below—dry. A full winter's water, and now it all ran off into someone else's land.

"Seen enough?" Cao Hu said. "Then turn around and go back down. Three of you came up, three of us here. No more, no less."

"Cao Hu," Qi Qi said.

"What, you know me." Cao Hu turned his face halfway. "That stall we smashed, that was me. That formation eye we wrecked, also me. What was your name again?"

"Qi Qi."

"Noted." Cao Hu said. "Next time you come up the ridge, call out at the mountain gate first. You've dirtied the soil along the channel. Now we've got to fill it in."

The disciple by the rock face who'd washed his hands laughed twice.

Xu Yan shook his head once, toward his own side of the slope, not toward the men.

Huo Qing stood behind him. His sword was back on the mountain; his waist was empty, his left hand loose at his side, fingers relaxed, not reaching for anything. He looked at Cao Hu evenly, the way he'd look at a stone.

"Let's go," Xu Yan said.

The three turned and descended. They had gone some distance when Cao Hu's voice chased them from behind: "Chixiao has rice for sale. Twenty a sack, post-harvest price."

At the boundary stele, Qi Qi stopped and laid a hand on the stone. It had been in the sun half the day; it was warm. He pulled his hand back and wiped it twice on his trousers.

"The weir is from the ninth month," Huo Qing said from below. "The mud's not dry."

"No."

"The soil along the channel was turned that long ago and still shows wet. It's only been a few days."

"No."

By the time the three of them came down to the fields, the sun had moved west; the mud still held their footprints from the morning.

Someone sat on the top step of the mountain gate. Jiang Wan held her sword across her knees, sitting perfectly straight. She looked up only when she heard the gravel shift.

"Did you fight?"

"No."

She lifted the sword from her knees, rose, and came down two steps. "I'll go tear it down."

"The stele has stood west of the spring for one day," Xu Yan said. "Tear down the weir, and the one crossing the boundary is Qingya."

Jiang Wan stopped. The sword point hung downward but did not touch the ground. "They've blocked the spring source, sent the water east, and we can't say a single word."

"Words—but on paper," Xu Yan said.

"And if paper gets you nothing?"

Xu Yan looked toward the slope east of the mountain gate. "Then we think of something else."

"How many were there."

"Three," Qi Qi said. "Cao Hu and two Outer Court disciples."

"Huo Qing. Why didn't your hand move."

Huo Qing stood below and lifted his head. "My sword is on the mountain."

Jiang Wan tapped her sword sheath lightly against her knee, turned, gathered the sword back into the crook of her arm, and returned to the steps. When she sat, she laid the sword across her knees again, setting it straighter than before.

Nie Bo's broom passed along the bottom of the steps, sweeping shh-shh to the mouth of the slope, the broom bristles tracing around the lime circle.

At Dog hour the Main Hall was lit, and all thirteen were there.

Xu Yan laid it out from the beginning: three miles past the fork, the fields were dry, the pond bed hard; nothing but stones in the creek bed; more than a shichen climbing, then the sound of water cutting across from above; below the spring source, a new weir, freshly cut stone, mud not dry; east of the weir, a new channel, freshly turned soil on its banks, water flowing east; the boundary stele set west of the spring source; three men in red on the weir, led by Cao Hu, a new blade, a bronze clasp on the scabbard.

He spoke slowly, one point at a time, and when he was done, he stopped. The day the stele had gone up—he didn't say a word about it.

"One weir?" Shao Ming asked.

"One. Not wide. Pebbles for a base."

"Enough to hold back a winter's water."

"Enough."

Du Xiaochuan looked up from beside the door. "Guarding a weir isn't like guarding goods. Guarding goods means waiting for someone to haul them off. Guarding a weir means waiting for someone to tear it down."

Cheng Banshan turned his gourd once in his hand. "A man with a blade sitting on a weir—that's waiting for someone to tear it down."

Shi Po stood by the door pillar, shoulders braced. "When I'm better—"

"When you're better, you still won't go," Cheng Banshan said.

"I didn't say I would."

"Your face said it."

Bai Xiaoman had been counting on her fingers for a while. Now she asked, "The channel runs east. Digging a channel like that—two men, two days at least, plus piling the soil along the banks. What day did they start?"

"In the ninth month," Xu Yan said. "We didn't see."

"The channel's head is at the weir; it runs east into the woods." Bai Xiaoman said. "The whole length of it lies east of the stele. They dug in the open."

"Yes," Xu Yan said.

Jiang Wan sat outside the lamplight, her sword propped against a table leg. "One question. This winter—is there any other way to get water on those fields?"

"No," Xu Yan said. "The creek is cut at the top. Twelve oxen couldn't haul it down."

No one answered that. Qi Qi lowered his head, hands pressed on his knees until the knuckles went white.

"Qi Qi," Xu Yan said. "Tomorrow you go down to the market. After closing the stall, take the long way past Uncle Wang's door and tell him this: we went up the ridge. There's a weir there, and the water runs east."

Qi Qi stood and acknowledged it, and his answer came heavier than usual.

"So we still go to the market tomorrow?" A He asked from by the door.

"We sell as before," Xu Yan said. "Rice in the pot is rice. Water in the field is water."

"Then the fields…" Qian Duoduo asked quietly. "If they really can't be flooded this winter, there's no Spirit Rice next year?"

"None," Xu Yan said. "This half year, we'll still have enough to eat."

At Hai hour in the Accounts Room, he flipped the daily ledger to today's page. Not a single Spirit Stone in or out today; the page was empty except for the date on the top line.

He dipped his brush and wrote beneath that line: 9th month, 24th day. On the ridge. New weir at the spring source, channel water running east. Boundary stele west of the spring.

When he finished, the brush hung above "boundary stele" and stayed there a moment. Ink gathered at the tip into a single bead, then fell, blotting a corner of that spot.

He laid the brush on the inkstone, reached out, and smoothed the paper flat. He read the whole entry again from beginning to end. After reading it, he added nothing.

Blew out the lamp. Across the courtyard, the lids on the kitchen vats were pressed down tight; no sound. The sounds farther off he couldn't hear, but he could count it out: the water in that channel on the ridge was still running east right now, and it would run all night without stopping.