Ch. 045| Closing the Net

Qinghe's message came up along with that month's herbs sent down the mountain.

A square-cut sheet of talisman paper, on its back four characters written in exceedingly pale cinnabar: "The jade token asks after the source."

Lin Que held the paper and stood a good while before the stove-fire in the herb-lodge.

The jade-token buyer had put out word in the market town that he was looking into "who was supplying the extra stock"—this Lin Que already knew, and it was why he had halted his goods. But now Qinghe was sending word on purpose: the jade-token crowd, following the stock, had traced it to the Guangyuan Company.

The Guangyuan Company was the one and only road by which he moved his stock. When he had pushed the rift crystal onto Madam Chang, he had only said it was "picked up at the pauper's burial ground, too hot to hold," leaving no real name. But every piece of stock has a provenance: whoever traced the stock to the Guangyuan Company would find the Company's books pointing to "a rogue cultivator who scavenged stock at the pauper's burial ground," and trace that rogue cultivator further down—to an herb-lodge odd-jobber who could produce rift crystal out of thin air.

He had to make a trip down the mountain, before this thread was traced to him.

He lit the cinnabar talisman paper at the stove-fire, watched it curl into a small clump of black ash, ground it to bits, then went to find the steward to ask leave.

---

Down the mountain on his ten-day rest, Lin Que first swung by Qinghe's talisman shop.

"Day before yesterday one came in a fine cotton robe, a mutton-fat jade token at his waist." Qinghe set down her brush, her voice pressed low. "He didn't come into my shop. He went to the Guangyuan Company in the back lane behind the Listening-Rain Tower, and talked with Madam Chang behind closed doors for half an hour. When he came out, Madam Chang's face was white."

Lin Que's heart sank.

"Madam Chang had someone pass a word to you." Qinghe looked at him. "She says: 'Tell that young stock-supplier to stay out of sight these few days; and if he must show his face, let him make his provenance hold together—don't drag my Guangyuan Company into it.'"

Drag in.

Lin Que understood Madam Chang's meaning. She was a woman of business; she settled her debts of gratitude and grievance clean. He, Lin Que, had appraised goods for her and got her out of a fix—that favor she acknowledged. But this road of the jade-token buyer had cut off half her lifeblood; she had no reason, for an herb-lodge odd-jobber, to throw the Guangyuan Company in with him. That she was willing to pass this word was already doing right by him to the fullest.

"I'll go see her," Lin Que said.

"Are you mad?" Qinghe knit her brows. "That errand-runner may still be in the market town."

"Precisely because he's here, I have to go," Lin Que said. "This thread of the stock—it has to be cut off in my own hands before it's traced to me."

Qinghe pressed her lips together and stopped trying to stop him. She drew from a cabinet drawer a talisman folded square and pressed it into his palm: "A breath-veiling talisman. Among that crowd there are those who can read qi. Press it to your heart; it'll last one stick of incense, and they won't be able to tell which one you are." Her fingertips pressed a moment against his palm before slowly drawing back. "Go early, come back early."

Lin Que tucked the talisman into his breast, thanked her a word, his thoughts already fallen a step ahead to the Guangyuan Company below. He did not catch how the tail of that parting reminder of Qinghe's was a shade lighter than usual, and softer.

---

In the rear yard of the Guangyuan Company's cart-and-horse house, Madam Chang was watching the hands load goods, her abacus beads clacking away—clacking faster than usual.

Seeing Lin Que come in, her abacus paused, and a flicker of vexation-and-helplessness crossed her eyes: "You've got nerve, coming here."

"Proprietor, that you were willing to stand off this one road for me—I've noted that debt." Lin Que stood with hands lowered, not lifting his eyes. "I've come to settle this business on my head alone, so it won't be laid on the Guangyuan Company again. That jade-token man—what exactly did he ask?"

"He asked which road that extra rift-crystal and rare stock of the past half-year came in by, and who supplied it." Madam Chang pressed her voice exceedingly low. "I said it was a rogue cultivator who scavenged stock at the pauper's burial ground—no name, no surname, came once and sold once, long since vanished. He didn't believe it. He said—'The Guangyuan Company's books have always been clear. Extra stock always has a source on the books.'"

Her hand on the abacus stopped; she fixed her gaze on Lin Que and laid it bare: "I'll speak plainly with you. I could well turn you in—trade one herb-lodge odd-jobber for the Guangyuan Company's peace hereafter, that's a very good deal."

Lin Que kept his eyes lowered and didn't take it up.

"I didn't turn you in," Madam Chang said. "Not for any other reason—you appraised goods for me, rooted out the supplier cheating me; that favor I acknowledge, grievance and gratitude I settle clean. But, young Lin, favors have a price: this one road I've stood off for you, and you and I are square. Come a next time, if the jade-token man presses to my door again, I may not stake myself on you again."

Lin Que's mind turned swiftly.

That errand-runner was a meticulous man. Madam Chang's "burial-ground rogue cultivator" could fob off the surface, but not one who watched the books. For this thread to die dead here, "the rogue cultivator has vanished" was not enough—the source had to be made to look truly, certainly, "severed."

He raised his eyes: "Proprietor, on your books, that rogue cultivator's last time selling stock—when was it?"

Madam Chang named a date.

"Then it's easily handled," Lin Que said. "Hereafter, if you're asked again, say: that rogue cultivator, late last month, drank himself to death in a ruined hut at the pauper's burial ground—same as those few rogue cultivators who died strangely before, no wound, no breath, missing a piece. The stock he'd scavenged from the blighted ground, and the man too, the blighted ground took away. The source is dead; the account is severed."

Madam Chang fixed her gaze on him, her abacus beads unmoving for a long moment.

The strange deaths at the pauper's burial ground, the blighted ground, missing a piece—these were all things spun into wild legend in the market town, things no one dared probe deep. To set that "rogue cultivator's" death inside this tale everyone shunned, so that even the most meticulous man would not, and would not dare, look further. No corpse to bear witness, ghosts and gods for the tale—nothing stops a mouth better.

Better still—the ones collecting the stock themselves knew best that the blighted ground truly ate men. The stock in the rifts was exactly what they hauled up the mountain cartload by cartload; the rifts multiplying in the blighted ground, they understood better than anyone. A stock-scavenging rogue cultivator dead in such a place, missing a piece, was to their eyes ordinary past comment. Lin Que's whole tale borrowed the very knowledge of that crowd: the better you knew the blighted ground, the less you'd doubt this manner of death.

"That mouth of yours." After a long moment Madam Chang flicked an abacus bead, half a smile on her face. "Spins it round, I'll give you that."

---

At the courtyard gate there was suddenly a stir.

A man in a fine cotton robe strolled in unhurried, the mutton-fat jade token at his waist glowing warmly in the sun. His face was pale and beardless; his gaze swept the yard, fell on Madam Chang, then passed lightly over Lin Que standing to one side.

"Proprietor Chang," the man said, his voice not loud, "the matter I asked about last time—have you thought it through?"

Lin Que lowered his eyes and bent his back a little, showing the timid look an herb-lodge odd-jobber always wore, dropping three parts at one sweep of a fine gentleman's gaze.

But the three bone-picks in his sleeve lay against his wrist. That stroke of sword-intent gained from within the rift crouched quietly in his meridians.

This man—sent by the one behind it all, the one who killed Senior Brother Xu, pinned Senior Brother Du, cut a stroke from the arts of all under heaven—was no more than five paces from him. Lin Que knew in his heart: if he willed it, a turn of his wrist, the bone-pick carrying that thread of sword-qi, would be enough to pierce this man's throat before he could react. A stock-collecting errand-runner, at the late stage of Qi Condensation, was, beneath that stroke of sword-intent, no different from the rift-spider skewered through its shell by a single pick.

In that instant, killing intent flashed across the bottom of his heart. For Senior Brother Xu, for Senior Brother Du, for all those in the herb-lodge who had fallen to qi deviation.

But he pressed that killing intent, together with the force gathering at his wrist, back down.

Move once, and this market town could hide him no more. This errand-runner's master would at once know: that odd-jobber in the Xuanzhao Sect's herb-lodge who could save qi-deviation cases was no odd-jobber. Then what came for him would be more than one errand-runner—it would be the whole forbidden court, that entire crowd. Hiding was harder than killing; but just now, hiding was worth far more than killing.

He bent his stooped back three parts lower still.

"I've thought it through." Madam Chang, unhurried, reported that whole tale again—the pauper's burial ground, drank himself to death, missing a piece, the source severed.

The errand-runner listened, but his gaze turned again onto Lin Que: "And who is this?"

"The herb-lodge's purchaser, come to reconcile the herb accounts," Madam Chang said.

The man stared at Lin Que for two breaths. Lin Que's inner string was drawn to its utmost, yet his face held only an obliging smile; he shrank back a little, the very picture of a timid servant.

The errand-runner's gaze, in the end, moved away. An herb-lodge odd-jobber wasn't worth a second look.

"The pauper's burial ground..." He chewed the words over unhurried, his expression bland, giving no sign how much he believed. "So be it. Since the source is severed, let the Guangyuan Company keep to its buying quietly hereafter."

Leaving that, he strolled out of the yard with his hands behind his back.

---

Only when the footsteps beyond the gate had faded did Madam Chang let out a long breath and set the abacus down on the table.

"This pass, we've cleared." She looked at Lin Que, and in those brisk eyes was something hard to name. "But mark this—he didn't believe it; he simply couldn't be bothered. The day he can be bothered, the burial-ground tale won't stop him."

"I'll mark it," Lin Que said. "And this favor of the Guangyuan Company's, I'll mark that too."

"Favor is favor, accounts are accounts." Madam Chang recovered a woman of business's briskness. "Hereafter, don't move your stock out through me. We'll talk again once the heat's passed."

Lin Que made to leave, but she called him back and lowered her voice, adding, like a piece of news that was worthless yet handy, to the tail of this settled account:

"There's another odd thing—hear it and forget it. That jade-token lot, these one or two months, have been collecting stock more urgently than usual—the price they offer is up three parts, and even poor-grade, marginal stuff they take by the lot. I've done business twenty years and never seen anyone hoard one thing like that." She flicked the abacus. "Their higher-ups are likely rushing to gather enough of something. What's gathered in a rush is often what's about to go wrong."

Lin Que noted the words in his heart. The jade-token crowd rushing to hoard stock, and what they meant to do once they'd hoarded enough, he couldn't yet see; but "gathered in a rush, about to go wrong"—those six words were a woman of business's twenty years of eye, not to be taken lightly.

Lin Que nodded. The road for moving his stock was cut off for now; but next to drawing that stock-collecting crowd to the old pill-kiln on the rear mountain, onto his own head, a few severed money-roads counted for nothing.

Out of the cart-and-horse house, the sun was at its fiercest. Lin Que touched the three bone-picks in his sleeve—that instant just now, he had been one thought away from drawing his sword.

But in the end he had not drawn it. The other man took him for a timid odd-jobber and couldn't be bothered with a second look—and just now, that "couldn't be bothered" was more precious than anything.

He pushed the bone-picks an inch deeper down his sleeve, bent his back and dropped three parts again, and, before the sun tilted west, went back up the mountain to his duties.

【Ch. 045 End · the market town below Xuanzhao Mountain · the Guangyuan Company in the back lane behind the Listening-Rain Tower】