Ch. 048| The Man Who Collects the Scrolls

Steward He's ledger of flaws, Lin Que could neither seize nor pry open—that old man guarded his duty-room closer than he guarded the deep scrolls.

But the ledger was dead, while the scrolls marked "borrowed" on it were alive. Borrowed—they had to be borrowed to some place.

To trace it further, only one thread was left that he hadn't yet walked: the half-sentence Senior Brother Xu had traded his life for. On that unsent letter it was set down—the one who collected the scrolls, every last day of the ten-day span, at the Listening-Rain Tower below the mountain.

Only this thread, of all threads, was hard to walk. The neighborhood of the Listening-Rain Tower was, just now, the very place he most ought not show his face. The jade-token crowd had put out word to look into "who was supplying the extra stock in the market"; that stock had been moved out through the Guangyuan Company, and trace the Guangyuan Company down, and what you'd find was him. Senior Brother Xu was gone because he'd looked too close. And the place he was going this trip was exactly the ground that crowd watched most closely.

The last day of the span came round again. Lin Que got himself an errand of buying down the mountain, shouldered his medicine-satchel, and went down.

---

Xu Qinghe's talisman shop stood at a lane-mouth not far from the Listening-Rain Tower. Meaning to stake out that private room, Lin Que swung by her place first.

Coming in, he found Qinghe bent over her desk tracing a talisman. Hearing the door, she looked up and saw it was him; her brush-holding hand paused, then, as if nothing were amiss, she set the brush down. "How is it you're down the mountain again."

The words were bland, but the tips of her ears quietly reddened a thread.

"Buying." Lin Que sat down across from her, glanced at the talisman nearing completion on her desk. "And to ask you something too—the private room upstairs at the Listening-Rain Tower, the one facing the street, on the last afternoon of the span, is there a regular, unfamiliar guest who comes?"

Qinghe's talisman-tracing hand paused. "There is. Every last afternoon of the span, a lean man in a grey cloth robe goes upstairs, orders a pot of tea, and sits until dusk before leaving. What's strange is—he comes empty-handed, and leaves with a cloth-wrapped box extra in his sleeve." She looked up, those eyes practiced at talismans turning sharp, her voice pressed low. "What do you ask this for?"

The last day of the span, the Listening-Rain Tower, coming regular, and a cloth-wrapped box taken into his sleeve besides—it matched the half-sentence Senior Brother Xu had traded his life for. The string in Lin Que's heart drew taut, though his face stayed level.

"Qinghe," he said, "since you can spy that lean man from your shop, that crowd will sooner or later find there's a pair of eyes watching them. That private room, that crowd—hereafter just take it that you never saw them. These waters are deeper than you think."

Qinghe fixed her gaze on him a while, the worry in those eyes pressed beneath composure. She answered neither yes nor no, only drew a thin sheaf from the stack of talismans on the desk and pressed it into his hands—seven or eight neatly folded evil-warding talismans and ward-probing talismans, their corners still cool with fresh ink.

"The talismans I draw—don't skimp on using them." She looked away, took up her brush again, the tips of her ears flushed through. "Last time you probed that rift, your wrist burned like that when you came back. What you're wading into this time bites worse than what's in the rifts." She paused, her voice dropping. "...Go early, come back early."

Lin Que tucked the talismans into his breast, said his thanks, and went out.

---

Diagonally across from the Listening-Rain Tower stood a stall selling coarse tea. Lin Que ordered a bowl of coarse tea, picked a corner out of the light, tucked his hands into his sleeves, lowered his eyes—the very image of a purchasing disciple taking a rest.

The neighborhood looked peaceable, yet eyes were everywhere. The upstairs runners, the folk at the tea-shed next door, the peddler with his carrying-pole at the lane-mouth—among these ordinary faces, no telling which one kept the comings-and-goings for that crowd. Lin Que wanted those eyes of his not too bright, that bowl of tea drunk slow, that measuring gaze laid on shallow—the one watching most dreads being seen to watch.

The old man selling tea took him at first only for a resting guest; after refilling his water once, he paid him no more mind. But as the second bowl reached its dregs, Lin Que sensed the old man's eyes begin to steal toward his shadowed corner, trip after trip—one glance, then a look back into the counter. Lin Que gave no sign, pressed his straw hat lower, fished out two copper coins and set them at the table's corner, ordered besides a small dish of shriveled fennel beans, and made himself the picture of a poor purchaser loath to leave, dawdling. Only then did the old man's eyes slowly drift away.

But Lin Que's heart sank. A seller of coarse tea, watching a resting guest so diligently—out of the ordinary.

Not long after noon, a lean man in a grey cloth robe went upstairs, empty-handed, and entered that private room. The point of heat beneath Lin Que's left eye rose quietly—in the qi all about that lean man was hidden a flaw once cut, of the same manner as the flaw on the stock-collecting jade-token man.

One stick of incense later, a disciple dressed as Xuanzhao outer-gate went upstairs with his head down, a cloth-wrapped long object under his arm; before long he came down again empty-handed and in a hurry. The cloth-wrapped object stayed upstairs.

Lin Que's eyes wanted an instant more on that disciple's face—commit this face to memory, and it might serve later. But across a street and a haze of tea-smoke, the disciple kept his head down throughout, his straw hat pressed over the greater part of his face. Lin Que didn't, after all, dare fix him: that old tea-seller was still behind the counter. Every extra look was a look of risk; just now, he dared not covet even one look more.

At dusk, the grey-cloth lean man came down, and this time a long shape bulged in his sleeve. Lin Que set down his tea-bowl and trailed after from afar.

The lane was narrow; trail too close and he feared being caught on a backward glance; trail too far and he feared losing the man. Lin Que hugged the base of the wall and, by the figures in the dusk, the vegetable-carriers, the drying-poles of bamboo, edged forward stretch by stretch. Once the lean man halted abruptly and looked back; Lin Que happened to be right behind a man carrying night-soil, and by that nose-stinging stench ducked his head and just barely dodged it. The lean man's eyes swept the lane, didn't linger on the night-soil carrier, and turned back to his road.

The lean man turned into the back lane behind the Listening-Rain Tower—this back lane Lin Que knew: the Guangyuan Company's cart-and-horse house was in it. In the lane stood a cart covered with blue cloth, the very same as the kind that carted rift-stock up the mountain. By the cart a man waited, a mutton-fat jade token at his waist, glinting once in the dusk.

The lean man went over, drew the boxed roll from his sleeve, and handed it across. The jade-token man took it, weighed it in his hand, thrust it into the blue-cloth cart, and set a small string of spirit stones back into the lean man's palm. The lean man hunched his neck, took it, and melted into the dusk. The blue-cloth cart rumbled off along the lane to the north, and was gone.

The scrolls slipped out from within the gate, the stock collected up in the market town, joined into one cart here in this back lane, disguised as a cartload of ordinary goods, and went north together—toward that man-eating forbidden court. The last look Senior Brother Xu had run short of at his death, this day he'd watched in his stead.

But having watched it—what then.

---

"You've no small nerve, young Lin."

A woman's low voice behind him. Lin Que's heart jumped; he turned—Madam Chang stood, at some point, in the lane's shadow. The cart parked in this back lane had a share of the Guangyuan Company in it; that she'd run into him at the door of her own cart-and-horse house was, after all, no surprise.

"Proprietor Chang." Lin Que lowered his eyes.

But Madam Chang gave him no leisure to play the odd-jobber. She swept the corner of her eye over the receding blue-cloth cart, then swept it back onto his face: "Whose cart that is, and where it's bound—you saw so true just now. Do you take these eyes of mine, twenty years in business, for blind?"

Lin Que didn't take up the words.

"I'll give you a word of counsel." Those eyes of hers, like abacus beads, held not half a courtesy this time. "That jade-token lot, lately, have set eyes above and below the Listening-Rain Tower. The upstairs runners, the tea-seller at the lane-mouth, the porters of the cart-and-horse house—whoever's traded a word with that grey-cloth lean man, whoever's given that private room a second look, they mark it all down. They collect stock more urgently by the ten-day span, and press for the scrolls hard too, as if rushing to make some deadline. The more they rush, the sharper this crowd's eyes."

She paused, the thread of keenness at the corner of her lip drawing colder: "Last time, that burial-ground tale, I spun round for you once. This time you're loitering in my back lane again—that face of yours, don't let that crowd mark it a second time. Mark it twice, and my cart-and-horse house can't bear it, nor will I bear it for you."

"Take the front lane." She turned her head aside and jerked her chin toward the market town. "That tea-seller in the back lane just now—those eyes of his have been on your back the whole while."

Lin Que's heart went cold. He'd been intent only on watching that boxed roll, that jade token, and hadn't even sensed that the coarse-tea stall had long since fixed on him—had Senior Brother Xu too, back then, been watched from behind like this, himself all unknowing? He turned, as she said, onto the front lane, and left behind him the bowl of tea he hadn't finished and the resting purchasing disciple both. The chill of being watched at the back of his neck ebbed slowly only after he'd walked half a street.

---

That cart had gone north, and Lin Que didn't follow.

It wasn't that he didn't dare act. A single jade-token errand-runner was no more than late Qi Condensation; this one sword in his sleeve, striking his vital gate across a full ten feet, that errand-runner might not withstand. But let this one sword out, and the timid odd-jobber he'd worn all half-year was blown—an herb-boy who could strike a man dead across ten feet, that crowd needn't even investigate, only chase him to the death. Besides, what good was killing one errand-runner? The cart would go north all the same, and that crowd would at once know a pair of eyes had fixed on them.

This half-year, he'd felt his way along this net, from the waste-pill vats of the market town all the way to the Xuanzhao Sect's ledger of flaws, to the blue-cloth cart of this back lane. Now the thread had reached its end—and the end was inside that forbidden court. The borrowed scrolls, the stone house Bai Heng spoke of that one went into and never came out—all locked behind that wall three fathoms high, behind the eyes on guard at its four corners. On the strength of his seventh layer of Qi Condensation, a forced break wouldn't outlast the inner gate's several barriers; looking into it from outside, he'd looked as far as the foot of the wall. Either way, the road was gone.

And that crowd was rushing to make their deadline. Once they'd gathered enough of that number he still couldn't see, this northward road would be withdrawn, and the Listening-Rain Tower, the back lane, the blue-cloth cart, would all be no more. The time left him was not much.

To take one step further, only one road remained—to look into it from outside no longer; he had to go into that forbidden court.

He raised his eyes and looked toward the north. That mountain road lay sunk in black; at its end the wall three fathoms high, the unblinking eyes on guard at its four corners, lay athwart between him and the answer. The sky darkened, shade by shade.

---

By the time he circled back to the east end of the market town, it had gone fully dark. The lamp of Qinghe's talisman shop still burned.

Lin Que's steps paused before that lamp. The chill at the back of his neck had only just ebbed—he was unwilling to draw the eyes fixed on himself under this one lamp of hers.

He touched the sheaf of talismans in his breast, still cool with fresh ink, and in the end didn't push that door, but turned and went up the mountain.

The lamp behind him burned, and burned on, until he rounded the mountain road and could see it no more.

【Ch. 048 End · the market town below the mountain · the back lane behind the Listening-Rain Tower】