Ch. 054| The Account

Three days later, the hour of the Ox.

Lin Que did not wait for Shen Ningshuang's word in the herb-lodge. He too had stolen out to the edge of the forbidden court.

He did not go down beneath that wall of the stone house—that spot he'd trodden once, and knew its peril. This night he lay in a scatter of rocks beside the north mountain road, his eyes fixed on the road the stock-cart took into the forbidden court. If Shen Ningshuang truly came to examine it, she too must be waiting somewhere along this road. Whatever she could examine out, he meant to watch with his own eyes.

The night was cool as water. The mountain road lay empty for the better part of an hour, not half a shadow of a soul.

Not until the hour of the Ox was nearly out did that stock-cart come, rumbling.

Draped in blue cloth, the mule's hooves wrapped in cloth, moving very light. The hook on the shaft where the shop-name lantern should hang was empty—the lantern had been taken off. But the plank-work of the cart body, the pattern of the wheel hubs, Lin Que knew at a glance: it was a Guangyuan Company cart.

His heart stirred. Madam Chang's cart.

The stock-cart stopped outside the forbidden court's side gate. The side gate opened soundlessly a crack, and two stock-bearing men came out and unloaded the blue-cloth-draped stock, heap by heap, inside. Through the whole of it, not a man spoke a word; even the mule seemed to have been dosed with a muting drug. Unloaded, the cart turned and went, still along the north mountain road, off toward the market town.

Lin Que watched this whole passage with the greatest care—which road the stock-cart came by, at which spot it turned, how long the side gate took to open and close, the pace of those two stock-bearing men. All of it, later, would come in use.

The stock-cart went far off.

At that moment, in the shadow of an old pine kitty-corner from the rock-pile, a figure moved, very lightly, once.

Lin Que's heart lifted. His left eye looked into that shadow—a fitted blue combat-dress, a plain-sheathed long sword at the waist.

Shen Ningshuang.

She had come too. From beginning to end, she'd lain in that pine's shadow, watching this stock-cart clear. What she examined was finer than Lin Que's—he saw that, as she left, she crouched and swept a hand along the edge of the ruts the stock-cart had rolled over, and by the faint light, rubbed between her fingertips that bit of grey grit scattered in the unloading.

The smell of that grey grit—Lin Que, far off as he was, seemed almost to catch it—was the same smell as the grey air in the stone house.

Shen Ningshuang rose to her feet, not glancing once toward Lin Que—she likely had no idea he was there too. She gave one last look at that side gate now shut again, turned, and vanished into the dark at the other end of the mountain road.

Lin Que lay behind the rocks and slowly let out a breath.

She'd examined it, examined it finer than he had. What he'd told her—not a bit of it was false.

---

The next day, the herb-lodge.

Beneath a medicine drawer, Lin Que's hand found a slip of paper folded very small. Shen Ningshuang's writing, only one line:

The stock-cart is real; you didn't lie to me. But on this one thread alone, the forbidden court can't be moved. Braid those few threads of yours into one strand, and I follow.

This one thread on the official side, gripped. But one official thread alone was still too thin—one order from above could shift Shen Ningshuang away. Lin Que burned that paper by the lamp.

Next was Madam Chang. And of these several strands, the hardest to broach.

Han Bosheng was willing, for the sake of the bond, and for a fate he couldn't dodge; Shen Ningshuang was willing, for justice for the dead. But Madam Chang was a woman of business. On a woman of business's scales, neither bond nor justice pressed a whit; what pressed was only whether this deal paid or not. With such a person, the words about living men bound in that stone house were of no use at all. He'd have to work a different abacus, and reckon with her.

---

On the ten-day rest he went down the mountain, and detoured to the cart-and-horse company in the back lane of the Listening-Rain Tower.

Madam Chang was tallying a batch of goods to be shipped. Seeing him come in, those eyes like abacus beads swept over him, but her hands did not stop.

"Last time I set the words out plain for you," she said without lifting her head. "Come again, and I may not post your bond. And how many days has it been?"

"This time, I've not come for Proprietor Chang to post my bond," Lin Que said. "I've come to do a deal with Proprietor Chang."

Madam Chang's hand, tallying goods, paused. The two words "a deal" she was far fonder of hearing than that whole set of "save a life," "justice." She lifted her eyes and looked him over anew, then glanced at the few porters shifting goods, and raised her voice: "Set this batch aside. All of you, out, and pull the door to."

The porters withdrew, and only the two of them were left in the cart-and-horse company. She sat down behind an old wooden table. "Speak. Whether it's worth my shutting this door, we'll see by these few words of yours."

"The night before last, at the hour of the Ox, a stock-cart draped in blue cloth went in through the side gate of the Xuanzhao Sect's forbidden court." Lin Que sat down across the table, going straight to it. "The shop-name lantern on the shaft had been taken off. But that cart was a Guangyuan Company cart."

Madam Chang's hand, tallying goods, stopped entirely.

"That lot with the jade tokens at their waists—how they've squeezed Guangyuan this half-year, Proprietor Chang knows better than I," Lin Que said. "The stock's monopolized in their hands; ten parts of stock pass through Proprietor Chang's carts, and eight go into their stores. The price they give is low, and grumble as Proprietor Chang might, she has to bear it. And now the stock they collect passes on Guangyuan carts, is entered in Guangyuan accounts—and those accounts, entry by entry, can't be denied."

"When this business breaks open, the people from the official side come to look into it." Lin Que looked at her. "Guangyuan, as 'the one it passed through,' can't wash itself clean. At that point, is Proprietor Chang a witness who 'kept accounts for the official side early, and helped break this lot open,' or an accomplice who 'ran with the jade tokens and hauled their tainted stock half a year'—that turns on how Proprietor Chang does this deal, right now."

The cart-and-horse company went still. Madam Chang stared at him, and in those eyes the accounts ran, entry by entry.

"You lad," she suddenly gave a very faint laugh, no warmth in it, all the knowing of one who's weighed the stakes through, "with one mouth, you've hoisted me onto the fire."

She stretched out a finger and tapped the table. "Let me reckon the other side of the account for you too. You mean to take these Guangyuan accounts of mine and stab that jade-token lot, stab that forbidden court. This gambit succeeds, and everyone's glad. But if it collapses? You, a herb-lodge menial, lose your head—that's one life. My Guangyuan, its signboard built up over twenty years, its dozens of carts, its connections across the whole market town, collapse this once, and they'll be dug up root and all. This wager—why should I gamble it even against you?"

"Proprietor Chang is right. So I'm not asking Proprietor Chang to gamble her life with me," Lin Que said. "Shen Ningshuang holds an official waist-token, Proprietor Chang holds these accounts, and in the market town there's another who holds hard proof of that lot cutting short a person's art. Handed up each on its own, the powers above can choke them one by one. But gathered into one place, set off together, and for the powers above to press them down, they'll have to press several strands at once. Press them less than clean, and this fire catches."

"Proprietor Chang's name needn't show on the surface, not one word of it," he said. "Proprietor Chang is only, among these several strands, the least conspicuous, and the least deniable."

Madam Chang's eyes nailed to his face a while.

"That Shen on the official side—will she truly move? An enforcement disciple hung out to dry, if she shrinks back midway, what snaps is the most vital strand of all."

"The night before last at the hour of the Ox, that stock-cart—she went too," Lin Que said. "Lay in the pine-shadow beside the road, and examined it a whole night through. An enforcement disciple willing to overturn a verdict for the dead, to throw away even her own post—she's more to be relied on than anyone."

Madam Chang weighed the heft of these words. She'd done business twenty years, and was the best at telling how much of a sentence was true, how much was wind.

A long while, and from a hidden compartment in the counting-room she took out a small locked box.

"The accounts, I can give," she said, her voice cold as if discussing a run-of-the-mill batch of goods. "A copy. The original I keep elsewhere—it's Guangyuan's very life, and the way back I keep for myself, should this gambit of yours collapse. My name goes on nothing in the open; the day you break that lot open, not a Guangyuan cart, not a Guangyuan man, is to touch it. I keep the accounts for you, hand up the base of it, and there it ends."

Lin Que answered every one. Every one was a way back, shrewd past finding fault.

Yet he'd heard it too—if she truly meant to wash her hands, these accounts, she needn't give at all. The steadiest course for a woman of business was to aid neither side, to sit and watch the storm, and pick up the bargains once the dust settled. That she was willing to give this copy was already to stake half of Guangyuan's life.

"Proprietor Chang," he said, "give these accounts, and Proprietor Chang no longer counts as one who 'happened to keep a record by chance.'"

Madam Chang pushed the box toward him, but her eyes cast off elsewhere.

"I've done business twenty years, and what I can't stand most is a deal that leans on power to bully people to death." Her voice was flat, then, as if faulting her own words for being too soft, she added, hard-edged: "Besides, topple them, and the seat of stock-broker for this stock falls open. I'm doing a deal, not handing out charity. Don't take it wrong."

Lin Que did not take it wrong, nor did he say so. He tucked that small box carefully into his robe.

"Take the accounts, and go see to your business." Madam Chang picked up the goods-list again, then, as if recalling something: "I'll give you a base thread for nothing—that jade-token lot has been fiendishly frantic these few days. The buying price for stock's been raised again, and they're sweeping up even the poorest stock. The other day a solo runner came to me with two rift crystals of wretched grade, saying the price the jade tokens quoted was double last month's. Twenty years in this trade, and I've never seen anyone snatch at a thing so hard—to snatch it this far, there's only one reason: they're running out of time."

"The 'sum' that one above them means to make up is nearly complete," Madam Chang's abacus beads flicked fast. "Complete, and that one leaves. That one leaves, and these few strands you mean to gather—who's left to snare them onto?"

Lin Que's heart sank a beat.

---

Out of the cart-and-horse company, Lin Que detoured to the east end of the market town, and pushed open the door of Qinghe's talisman shop.

The last strand needed not half a word of his mouth. That meridian-cutting hand, Qinghe had chased three years. Later she'd moved the shop down here at the mountain's foot, and, together with Lin Que, had made out that the hand hid behind the Xuanzhao Sect. Made out it was, but a market-town talisman-maker couldn't get through that gate. What she'd been waiting for, all along, was this one line from Lin Que: I've found it.

Lin Que told her the matter of the forbidden court's stone house, taking the vital parts—that windowless stone house, that "Teacher" with its back to the door, and the flaws it cut, look on look, into the meridians of the living men bound to the wooden beds. Qinghe's talisman-drawing brush slowed, a little at a time, and at last stopped in mid-air.

She did not ask whether it was the same hand that had cut short her family's talismans—that hand's hiding behind this gate, she and Lin Que had been certain of for more than a day. She only stared at Lin Que, her voice a little dry: "You got right up to it… and it just goes on, cutting living men."

"The flaw cut into the living men, and the one cut into the final stroke of your family's talismans—the same hand's method, not a hair's breadth off," Lin Que looked at her. "The one you've chased three years, I've watched with my own eyes. And now Shen Ningshuang's strand and Madam Chang's are both in hand—the road to move on it has, at last, been braided out."

Qinghe said nothing. She rose and went to the very back of the shop, and from a locked wooden chest took out a scroll of the Green Seal-Script Talisman, the family's original, and beneath it a thick sheaf of paper—what she'd noted these three years, entry by entry: which year, at which place, that meridian-cutting method had shown itself once more on whose talismans, in whose art.

She set that scroll, that sheaf, before Lin Que.

"This is my three years' inquiry," she said, her voice very low. "I readied it for this day long ago. Take it—all that can nail that hand shut on the crime of 'cutting short a person's art' is here."

"Hand this over, and you stake your whole self on it," Lin Que said. "Lose the wager—"

"Lose the wager, and I, Xu Qinghe, am one more who died seeking justice for her house." She cut him off, and in those habitually cool eyes burned a thing Lin Que had not seen before. "Better than clutching a broken talisman that can never be mended, and dragging out a whole life of it."

Said with resolve. But said, and meeting his gaze, out of that resolve there quietly leaked something else—that these words of his were spoken out of worry for her.

She quickly lowered her head, took up the brush again, and, as if to cover it, added: "Besides, with those eyes of yours watching, I may not lose after all."

Lin Que did not catch that something else. He tucked that scroll of talismans, that sheaf of paper, carefully into his robe, beside Madam Chang's box of accounts.

All four strands were in hand.

But that line of Madam Chang's still pressed on his heart—the sum that "Teacher" meant to make up was nearly complete. Complete, and that one would leave. Before leaving, of the living witnesses in that stone house, likely not one would be left.

He tucked away that box of accounts, that scroll of talismans, and strode quickly out of the talisman shop. The sun over the market blazed.

All that had to be gathered was gathered. But how to move, and when to move, he could no longer put off in the least.

【Ch. 054 End · outside the forbidden court of the Xuanzhao Sect → the market below the mountain · the Guangyuan Cart-and-Horse Company → Qinghe's talisman shop】