Ch. 041| Where the Stock Goes

Back at the Xuanzhao Sect, Lin Que's duties went on as before: firing the stove and decocting medicine before dawn, sweeping the ground by day, tending the injured, answering whatever task came down—showing not a fraction of himself.

But those eyes never truly rested a moment.

The two blue-cloth flat carts in the Listening-Rain Tower's back alley had gone up the mountain along the northern road—and what they went up to was this very Xuanzhao Sect. The stock entered the gate; it had to go somewhere. Where that somewhere was, who collected it, and what it was collected to do, Lin Que meant to make clear. The stock he had gambled his life dredging out of the rifts had, in the end, all been fed into that hand's stores; what that hand did on this mountain, he could not stay blindfolded to.

Ever since Han Nine-Lives had brought Madam Chang's word, he had held off putting stock out, and had not even dared return to the old pill-kiln for a while—the jade-token buyer was asking all over the market "who's putting out the extra stock," and on this wind, to hunt rifts again, to sell stock again, was to tread each step on a blade's edge. The stock was held in the roost, but the man could not stay still. Rather than wait idle for the wind to pass, better to use this lull to make clear that hand's doings on the mountain—for the next descent into rifts, the next putting-out of stock, he had first to know who the adversary was, and where.

First he learned the channels by which stock came in.

Herb-lodge purchasing, pill-hall delivery, Archive Hall sweeping—these tasks he had taken on a whole load of this past half-year, and had walked the better part of the outer-gate ground; no one suspected an outer-gate disciple forever running errands. Under cover of his going about, he committed the Xuanzhao Sect's incoming stock to memory, item by item: herbs, grain and rice, charcoal and firewood, talisman-paper, all entered through that side gate to the west—weighed, warehoused, entered in the register, plain and clear, the disciple in charge keeping the ledger, not a fraction to be muddled.

Only one thing did not go through the west side gate, nor get weighed and registered.

On the third day past a ten-day's end, at noon, Lin Que was shouldering an empty herb-basket toward the pill-hall when he glimpsed, far off at the mountain-road's end, a cart rumbling up—draped in blue cloth, the very kind from the Listening-Rain Tower. The cart reached the gate, did not queue at the west side gate to be weighed, and the disciple at the gate did not check it either, only waved it through. The moment the cart was in, it turned about and, along a back-path, headed for the northernmost edge of the outer gate.

That way lay the direction of the back-mountain. Lin Que fixed this route dead in mind, his feet not stopping, and went on to the pill-hall to deliver his medicine as usual.

He kept his mind on it two more days. Every three to five days, one such blue-cloth cart came up the mountain, each time by this same manner: not weighed, not registered, not checked by the gate. On the books, this stock did not exist at all. Someone on the mountain deliberately kept it from the light.

---

Over the next few days, he found pretexts and felt his way twice toward that back-path.

The first time, gathering fresh herbs from the shaded slope of the back-mountain, aboveboard. He went north along the back-path and, reaching a mountain hollow, the road cut off—a neat rammed-earth wall lay across the hollow's mouth, spiked with cheval-de-frise along its top, several courtyards faintly within. At the gate stood two disciples with hands on their swords, in black vigorous garb, their waist-tokens of a style only the inner gate bore.

The northernmost side-court of the outer gate, guarded, of all things, by inner-gate disciples.

Lin Que did not go closer. He crouched behind a thicket outside the hollow, striking a herb-gathering pose, and used the chance to look this courtyard over carefully: the disciples changing shift at the wall-foot rotated every two hours; within the wall, that blue-cloth cart was unloading, several rough laborers hauling basket after basket of stock inside—all the sort of heavy, tightly-wrapped baskets of rift-stock. Stock only went in, and nothing was seen hauled out—however much went in was stockpiled; this courtyard was like a mouth that only swallowed and never gave back. And the rough laborers who finished hauling were not seen coming out the front gate either, as if men and stock alike had been swallowed together into that wall.

Beneath his left eye that heat quietly rose, and he looked in along a crack in the wall.

Deep in the courtyard stood two stone houses, without windows, no cooking-smoke chimney on their roofs, yet a very faint, very light thread of grey vapor seeped from the stone cracks and dispersed into the air. Along the wall-foot the grey vapor drifted over, a ring of grass was scorched sallow. Wound into that grey vapor was a thing all too familiar to him—the rift's flaw-lines, of the same smell as that "clean" qi at the blighted ground's rift-edges.

What sank his heart further was: the course of those flaw-lines, he had seen elsewhere too. The stroke cut from the Pill Hall's monthly-allotment pill, the stretch drawn out of the Xuanzhao Breathing Art in the deep scrolls—all the same handiwork.

This courtyard refining rift-stock, and the hand that tampered with arts and pill-formulas, were of one make.

He was holding his breath, watching, when the court-gate at the hollow's mouth opened with a creak.

Someone within came out to meet a blue-robed man, ushering him respectfully inside. That blue-robed man walked with hands behind his back, unhurried. Lin Que, far off, could not see his face, but that dark-patterned cuff of the blue robe, that measured, unhurried gait—he had seen it at the market tea-awning, and seen it below the Archive Hall's steps.

The blue-robed man. The one the Archive Hall steward bent to and called "the Teacher," the one Supervisor Pei waited on in his duty-room.

The one collecting stock, the one cutting arts, the one refining who-knew-what—all of one company, all locked in the deepest place of this mountain, gripped in the same one hand.

---

The second time he felt his way there, he near came to grief.

That day he wanted to see clearly which face the stone houses' doors opened onto, and drew a little closer. He had just crouched steady at the wall-foot when behind him came a sudden heavy shout: "Halt. Which court are you from?"

The sweat came down Lin Que's back all at once.

He did not turn back; first he bent his waist lower, striking the pose of an honest, startled odd-jobbing disciple, and only then turned slowly around—it was a black-clad disciple patrolling the wall, hand on his sword-hilt, his look unkind.

"From the herb-lodge." Lin Que dropped his hands and pushed the herb-basket forward, showing a few mud-caked fresh herbs inside. "The old man over the herbs sent this lowly one to gather cliff-pearl grass, saying this hollow's edge lies in shade and it grows best here. This lowly one's feet are strange to the place and didn't know it was forbidden ground—I'll go, I'll go now."

The black-clad disciple looked him up and down, and turned over the herbs in the basket, and in the end turned up no flaw. But the wariness in his eyes did not ease; if anything he committed Lin Que's face to memory: "From now on, this back-path, herb-lodge folk are not to come again. Let me catch you crouching at this wall-foot once more—" His words unfinished, he tapped his palm twice on his sword-hilt.

Lin Que answered yes and yes, shouldered his herb-basket, and withdrew at an even pace, neither fast nor slow. By the time he had backed out of sight of that wall, the clothes at his back were soaked through.

He was, that day, only a few yards from that courtyard; but those few yards, he could not cross. Grudge that one glance more, and this life of his would most likely be left at this wall-foot, coming to the same end as Senior Brother Xu.

Han Nine-Lives' first rule: don't be greedy.

Lin Que reined in his steps, and did not look back again.

---

That wall he could not get into, so he shifted direction and felt his way from another quarter.

Two days on, it was his turn to go deliver medicine to the pill-hall. The Pill Hall's dispensary he knew well—the monthly-allotment pills were refined here, short on materials, short on formula; he had long sounded out its depths. That day, waiting in the side-court for the delivery to be checked and received, he inadvertently glimpsed, over by the back door: a Pill Hall steward, cradling a wax-sealed wooden box, not weighed, not registered, handing it to two black-clad disciples on guard there. The disciples took the box and turned to go—by the very road that led toward the northern back-path.

Lin Que lowered his eyes, showing not a fraction, but in his heart joined this line up—between that forbidden court to the north and this Pill Hall, something walked quietly to and fro.

"What are you looking at?"

A voice behind him. Lin Que turned—it was that steward over the monthly-allotment pills, the pill-warden steward who had sent him down the mountain to purchase last time, who had seen through his scraping red-scale sand from the waste-dregs and yet pressed it down and let it go. The steward lifted an eyelid and eyed him with a half-smile.

"Delivering medicine." Lin Que handed over the medicine-slip, level. "Please check and receive it, Steward."

The steward took the slip, swept it a glance, swept his face a glance, and said unhurried: "The herb-lodge's duties, tend well at the herb-lodge. The doings of this dispensary, this back-court—one glance more, ten years' less life." He stuffed the checked-off slip back into Lin Que's hand and pressed his knuckle, neither light nor heavy, on the back of his hand. "Understood?"

"Understood." Lin Que dropped his hands and withdrew.

Out of the dispensary, a thin sweat seeped from his back again. The eyes watching him on this mountain were more than he had thought. This Pill Hall steward plainly knew of that northern-court business too—knew, and would not let a man look one glance more.

---

That day, back at the herb-lodge, the sky had gone dusk.

He crouched on a low stool grinding medicine, but his mind still turned about that forbidden court.

He had taken these several matters for unconnected things and investigated them so—until today, when that forbidden court twisted them into a single rope. The flaw-lines in the stone houses' grey vapor that had scorched the wall-foot grass, the blue-robed man ushered respectfully in at the hollow's mouth, the cut-marks he had seen in the deep scrolls, the wax-sealed box he had chanced upon at the dispensary's back door—all plainly the handiwork of the same one hand.

Where the stock went, he had, in the end, felt out half of. But what exactly the stone houses refined, and for what—across that wall, those two inner-gate swords, he could not see, could not ask, still less break in.

The medicine in the grinding-trough turned round and round.

This wall, he, a herb-lodge odd-jobbing disciple, could not break open. To look one glance more within, he had to borrow a pair of eyes that could get into the inner gate—and that were only too eager to investigate this mountain.

On this mountain, such a pair of eyes, he could think of only one person.

Bai Heng. This generation's true-lineage disciple, investigating those several qi-deviation deaths, investigating till she hit a wall, and to this day not letting go. She could get into the inner gate, and had the best cause to turn her thoughts toward that forbidden court.

Only, to open this matter with her was another perilous move on the board. She was true-lineage, one of the higher-ups; the day she had pressed his secret down for him, she had held one handle over him in her grasp. To ask her again to go into that forbidden court and probe on his behalf was to hand a still deeper stretch of his bottom into her hands.

The grinding hand stopped. Lin Que weighed it and weighed it again—but the deepest place of this mountain, by him alone, a herb-lodge odd-jobbing disciple, could no longer be felt into.

【Ch. 041 End · the Xuanzhao Sect's outer gate · outside the forbidden court on the northern back-path】