Ch. 055| Braiding the Rope

That empty room in the back lane of the Listening-Rain Tower was Han Bosheng's newly-shifted nest. The old pill-kiln couldn't be kept; he'd hauled his gear down overnight, heaped it in this draughty broken room, and lodged himself here too.

This night, Lin Que, Han Bosheng, and Qinghe, circled around a dim oil lamp in the middle of the room, and settled the method of the strike.

The dead proof was laid out before all three of them—Madam Chang's box of accounts, Qinghe's scroll of talismans, Shen Ningshuang's thread on the official side.

"Dead proof won't overturn that stone house." Han Bosheng trimmed the lamp-wick. "Accounts or talismans, hand them up, and one 'no hard proof' from above presses them down. To make it so they can't cover it, you need something living."

"Living?" Qinghe asked.

"The ones in the stone house still drawing breath, still able to speak." Han Bosheng said. "A disciple taken for 'dead of qi deviation,' yet alive and standing forth to bear witness—that presses the dead harder than a hundred ledgers. To save its own skin, the Xuanzhao Sect would have to cut that 'Teacher,' along with that stone house, right out. We're not going to kill him. We're going to force the Xuanzhao Sect to do it themselves, to cut him out."

Lin Que stared at that lamp, and understood Han Bosheng's meaning.

To force the Xuanzhao Sect to move, handing up the accounts and talismans alone was not enough. There had to be someone who, from that stone house, brought out a few still-living people, and set them alive before the sect master of the Xuanzhao Sect and those few not-yet-wholly-rotted elders of the Enforcement Hall.

And the one who could get into that stone house and bring people out—in all this market town, was he alone.

"Shen Ningshuang's thread on the official side hands the people and the proof up before the sect master," Lin Que said, word by word. "I go into the stone house, and bring the living out."

Saying this, he knew better than anyone how hard this step was.

Last time he'd gone to the stone house, he'd merely looked through a door-crack, one glance. This time, he had to go in—to untie those people bound to the wooden beds, and, with a few living men who couldn't walk, bring them whole out through a yard full of watches, a three-zhang wall.

One man stealing in to take a look, and hauling a few burdens out under fire, were two different things.

Han Bosheng's face was grim; he nodded. "This trip, there's no second time. One shot, take it or leave it. Succeed, and that 'Teacher' goes down; botch it, and the few of us, along with everyone in that stone house, not one gets away."

Qinghe gripped that scroll of the family's broken talisman, her knuckles white, but with not a shade of retreat.

"There's one more thing." She suddenly spoke. "You get into the stone house, take people over the wall—down the mountain, how does Shen Ningshuang know it's time to receive them? Within three li of that forbidden court, you can't call out, can't show a firelight either. A quarter's delay, and it's death."

The question struck the vital point. For a moment Lin Que could not answer.

Qinghe did not wait for his answer; she'd already gone back to the table, drawn out a sheet of plain notepaper, and taken up the brush, sweeping it across. In a moment, she blew the ink dry and held it out—a talisman the size of a palm, a dot of cinnabar at its heart, like a spark on the point of going out and not yet gone.

"A message talisman, a pair of two, I'll finish it now," she said. "You crush one, and within three li the heart of the other grows hot and shows a thread of red. Shen Ningshuang keeps it against her body; the moment she feels the heat, she knows you're out, and receives you at once. Soundless, without light—no one else can tell."

Han Bosheng leaned over and looked at that talisman, and gave, for once, a nod. "This one hand of the girl's is worth more than the few mouths of us."

"A talisman of my Xu house—at last one of them's used in the place it ought to be." Qinghe lowered her head and put away the ink, her voice soft, that thread of red creeping quietly back up the rims of her ears.

Lin Que took that just-drawn talisman, its ink not yet dried through, and put it away with care. This was the second thing Qinghe's strand had given him, besides those three years of hard proof.

---

The method was set; the rest was Lin Que's affair alone.

Over the next two nights, he stole up to the forbidden court's outer wall.

This time, not to go in, only to see clear—where he'd enter, how he'd bring people out.

The first night, he lay on the grass slope outside the wall, and looked that three-zhang wall over, inch by inch, from the southeast corner to the side gate. The watch at the southeast corner left a scant half-cup of tea in its change; but from the stone house door to the foot of the southeast wall was a good twenty paces, three heaps of stock lying across the way. He walked it through in his mind: untie one binding, prop up one man who couldn't walk, skim the twenty-odd paces, then clear the three-zhang wall—in a scant half-cup of tea, he couldn't bring even one man out.

A cold sweat broke over him.

The second night, he changed position, and lay behind a crook-necked old pine kitty-corner from the side gate.

This night, inside the wall, it was different.

The side gate, which normally opened only at the hour of the Ox, this night opened once soundlessly just past the hour of the Pig. Two men carried out something wrapped in a straw mat—the shape wrapped in that straw mat, Lin Que's left eye swept and knew: it was a person. Wrapped up tight, it was loaded onto a plain cart, and taken through the night off toward that pauper's burial ground on the back mountain.

Whether the person was living or dead, at this distance, he couldn't make out clear. But one thing he could see clear: that forbidden court, always unhurried, taking in stock but once every three days, these two nights, was moving fast.

The "Teacher" inside seemed to be racing to tie off the ends.

Lin Que lay in the pine's shadow, chill after chill running down his back. He'd thought he had a few more days to reckon in; only now did he understand—the time left him was thinner even than he'd counted.

Back in that empty room, without a word, he took a coil of hemp rope from a corner where Han Bosheng heaped his odds and ends, and, following the way the wooden beds in that stone house bound people, wound the rope tight around a wooden post, crouched down, and, with the lamp dark, drilled untying.

The first few times, his fingers were clumsy indeed. That binding slipknot, wound three turns and hooked back once, felt out and untied in the dark, cost a dozen-odd breaths a knot. A dozen breaths to one—five or six beds, and he'd not finish untying by dawn.

Han Bosheng rose in the night to relieve himself, and watched him crouched in the corner in the pitch dark, wrestling a wooden post, watched a good while, said nothing, then turned and fished from his own heap of gear a small knife thin as a willow leaf, and tossed it at his feet.

"A knot's not for untying," the old man dropped one line, and lay back down. "It's for cutting."

Lin Que pinched that thin knife and, in the dark, held it against the slipknot to gauge it—the blade wiped along the strands of rope, and that death-knot wound three turns fell open at a touch.

One breath.

He crouched in the corner, cutting that coil of rope and winding it again, winding and cutting again, drilling until one stroke down, and the rope parted, the knot fell open, the thin knife in his hand without a hair's hitch.

But he could cut the rope, and not carry the people. He stuffed a hemp sack full of sand and earth, bound it into a human shape, shouldered it, and, following that skimming body-art, walked it through the room again and again. Shouldered with this dozens-of-catties dead weight of a sand-sack, the skimming art couldn't be fully used—his feet sank, and the sound the steps raised, even he could hear.

To take one man who couldn't walk over the wall was harder, far, than he'd thought.

He shouldered the sand-sack and walked the room a dozen-odd rounds, each slower than the last. At last he stopped, dropped the sand-sack to the floor, and, gasping, admitted a thing he'd been unwilling to admit—

That scant half-cup of tea, that three-zhang wall—this skill of his, in one trip, could bring out one man at most.

One.

Of the five or six wooden beds in the stone house, he could take away only one.

The moment this thought surfaced, he crouched beside the sand-sack, unable to move for a good while. The other four or five, the ones he couldn't take—once he'd cleared the wall, when that side gate opened again, what end they'd meet, he knew better than anyone.

But couldn't take was couldn't take. Force it, shoulder one more, and the two of them would fall together beneath that three-zhang wall, and not even the one would be saved, and he himself thrown in.

Then—take whom?

This one, outside that door-crack, he'd in truth already reckoned. The youth surnamed Su on the bed nearest the door—he was closest to the door, could be brought out; the register recorded him in black and white as "deceased of qi deviation," and a "dead man" alive and standing before the sect master pressed the dead hardest. To bring him out was, in this gambit, the most useful move.

Lin Que turned that thin knife over in his palm. The most useful move—he only hoped this wasn't merely a pretext he'd seized on, to press down that something else in his heart.

---

In two nights' work, that thin knife came smooth, and his sand-sack-shouldering step steadied somewhat. But Lin Que knew well this bit of drilling wouldn't bear scrutiny—what he wagered was that, in that scant half-cup of tea, not the least hitch would arise.

And this wager pressed tighter than he'd thought.

The night grew deep; Lin Que had just lain down in the corner of the empty room when the paper of the broken window was flicked, very lightly, three times.

The agreed signal.

Lin Que rolled out. Waiting outside the courtyard gate was that errand-runner from Qinghe's shop, come down the mountain through the night, his breath not yet even.

"Master Han told me to tell you," the runner pressed his voice low, "word Proprietor Chang's side just had out from the Wind-Hearing Bureau: that 'Teacher' at the forbidden court leaves in three days. Before he leaves—"

He swallowed.

"Before he leaves, the 'stock' in the stone house is to be cleaned out."

Lin Que's heart sank to the bottom.

Cleaned out. Those people bound to the wooden beds, still drawing breath—that youth not yet come to his turn, yet already fixed a date of death—three days on, would be "cleaned out."

Those few living witnesses—the most vital, the ones that pressed the dead hardest, for forcing the Xuanzhao Sect to move—three days on, not one would be left.

They could wait no longer. Within three days, either strike, or that stone house's people, along with the source of it all, would vanish with him.

Lin Que stood in the broken courtyard of the empty room, the night wind very cool. He lowered his head and looked at the thin knife in his hand—the blade, in the dimness, gave off a thread of cold light.

He turned back into the room, and slipped that thin knife carefully into his legging.

"Three days from now, the hour of the Ox." He said it to the dim lamp in the room, word by word, as if to himself, and as if to that night three days hence. "We strike."

The three days that remained—the first thing—he had to get this hour into Shen Ningshuang's hand before dawn. Her people receiving them down the mountain, the path skirting Supervisor Pei straight to the sect master, all had to be arranged to this one hour of the Ox.

He blew out the lamp and pushed the door open. The night was still deep, only a scattered few lamps left lit in the market. He tucked away that thin knife, that pair of message talismans not yet dried through, and set off for Shen Ningshuang's thread—this hour of the Ox, he had to deliver into her hand himself, before dawn.

His steps fell on the night road, and that art of skimming across the ground, than two nights before, was lighter yet by a few degrees.

【Ch. 055 End · the market below the mountain · the empty room in the back lane of the Listening-Rain Tower】