Chapter 151: This Is How Ledger Racks Are Set Up

Dawn had just touched the ground when ten people from Qingya came out of the stone stair mouth and headed north.

Half a li, a quarter hour's walk. At first the ground was loose gravel; halfway there it turned to ash—fine, dry, silent underfoot, each step kicking up a small puff that settled on the tops of their shoes.

Shi Po walked at the front, planting each foot firmly before moving the next. Qi Qi walked beside him, eyes on the ground the whole way. Qian Duoduo brought up the rear, one hand steadying Du Xiaochuan's back, the cake bundle hugged high against his chest.

Jiang Wan quickened her pace half a step to walk level with Xu Yan. "That row of black things to the north—what is it?"

"Looks like a burnt storeroom," Xu Yan said.

"A storeroom that big?"

"We'll see."

The courtyard wall appeared first. Several sections had collapsed, the gaps exposing the bricks inside, dead grass in the mortar cracks that snapped at a touch. Where the wall still stood, dark green-black stains climbed from the base to the top, hardened onto the surface.

Xu Yan stopped at the courtyard gate.

Only half the door frame remained. The pillar had burned down to a black stump, the iron door pivot still embedded in it, rusted into a crust that flaked off and piled at the base. Beyond the gate was the courtyard, and beyond the courtyard, the house. The roof was gone; daylight fell straight into the rooms. Half the roof frame had collapsed: the crossbeams slanted down one by one, some on the ground, some resting on other beams, ends tilting up, none touching each other. On the half that hadn't collapsed, the rafters were still perfectly aligned, and daylight leaked through the gaps between them in strips, falling into the house below.

Ledger racks stood along the walls. Row on row, all charred black, the wood shrunk to thin strips, the cubbyholes empty. Near the door stood a counter, its surface cracked into three or four pieces, the frame beneath still standing, the corners bound with iron. In the wall behind the counter a doorway opened, and inside it was dark.

The floor was paper. What the fire hadn't consumed lay in layers, edges scorched, some rolled into tubes, some flattened into the ash by footsteps, some stuck to the beams, rustling whenever the wind stirred. Footprints covered it all—some horizontal, some vertical, the deep ones showing the pattern of a shoe sole.

Shi Po stood behind Xu Yan, head tilted back to study the roof frame for a while. "The top's loose. Don't rush in."

Jiang Wan came back around from the collapsed section of wall, ash dusted on her shoe sides. She glanced down, scraped it off on a stone outside the gate. "There's nothing beyond the north wall. A road runs south—the one we came on. North of here there's no path, just rock."

Xu Yan said, "Go in. Step on stone, not ash."

He went first, toe landing on an unbroken stone slab inside the gate, steps light, moving from stone to stone through the gaps in the paper.

Qian Duoduo squeezed in behind the second person, clutching the cake bundle, lifting it higher and higher as he crossed the threshold. "The ground is all paper..."

Cheng Banshan, behind him, adjusted the medicine pouch at his waist. "Then keep holding it."

"Until when?"

"Until dark, if that's what it takes."

Qian Duoduo walked two steps holding it, then backed out of the gate and set the bundle on a small patch of hard dry ground between two stepping stones, glancing back over his shoulder as if afraid someone might step on it.

Bai Xiaoman crouched down three steps inside. She didn't look at the paper; she looked at the ledger racks. She ran her hand along the wall and found a row of square holes, broken wood stubs inside. "The racks weren't just sitting on the floor," she said. "The back crossbars were set into the wall. Six holes per row. Six rows."

Qi Qi had already reached the counter. With the toe of his boot he nudged a drawer over. It lay face-down, empty, its four corner nails still in place, not one loose. He nudged another—also empty. "Cleaned out thoroughly. The drawers were all pulled out and had their bottoms checked."

Shao Ming stood at the collapsed wall section, studying the footprints. "People came in from here. Nobody used the gate."

Du Xiaochuan followed behind him, shifting the bundle of torches higher on his shoulder. "Where should I put the torches?"

"Keep carrying them," Xu Yan said. "We won't need them for a few days."

Huo Qing didn't enter the courtyard. He stood one step inside the gate, back to the group, watching the road south, left hand hanging at his side, not touching the sword on his back. After a while he said, "Someone walked past on the south road. Didn't turn this way."

"Which sect?"

"Can't tell. They were wearing dark colors."

Xu Yan walked deeper in. Past the ledger racks, past a flattened stack of paper, seven or eight steps, then he stopped.

It was quiet—so quiet he could hear the wind leaking through the collapsed section. In that quiet he counted the racks: one row, two, three... six rows, and that was all. The earliest row stood closest to the counter; the innermost row stood against the wall, where the square holes in the wall were the most intact.

He didn't speak, didn't bend down. He looked at the ash on the countertop—thin, a brush of the heel revealing the blackened wood beneath. He looked at the inner edge of the counter, where a long shallow groove had been worn smooth, the kind left by years of someone pressing their elbow there while reading through ledger pages.

At the end of the Mao hour, there was movement in the dark doorway behind the counter.

First one person's footsteps, then three or four, soles striking hard ground, step by step into the light. The first out was a Jinding Pavilion disciple, an empty cloth sack slung over his shoulder, hands empty. The next two were empty-handed as well, one with black ash on his fingers. Last came Pang Ce, his cuffs gray with dust. He patted his sleeves twice, looked up, saw Qingya at the courtyard gate, slowed, then kept walking down.

"Sect Master Xu."

"Fellow Daoist Pang."

"The room in back is a storeroom," Pang Ce said. "The door frame's cracked from the fire; one push and it opened. We went in first, went through it once. Not a single shelf board left on the racks. Empty."

Xu Yan asked, "Did you touch the ground in there?"

"We did. You can't search the shelves without stepping on it." Pang Ce said. "The drawers were all flipped over; we checked underneath too."

"Whose footprints?"

Pang Ce looked down at the patch near his feet. "Ours. And some from people who got here before us." He paused, then looked out over the paper-strewn floor for a moment. "What was left in the accounts room is all waste paper."

Xu Yan asked, "Who opened the storeroom door first?"

"I don't know," Pang Ce said. "It was already open when I arrived."

Xu Yan said, "Thank you, Fellow Daoist Pang."

Pang Ce nodded and led his people toward the gate. The Jinding Pavilion group picked their way around the paper, exited through the collapsed wall section, and headed south. Their passing added another layer of footprints to the courtyard.

The daylight climbed, reaching the countertop.

Xu Yan walked to the dark doorway and looked in. The darkness inside was solid; daylight didn't penetrate more than a foot, lighting only ash and a few broken tiles on the floor. Beyond that, nothing was visible. He withdrew, stopped in front of the counter. He looked at the counter, at the aisle the ledger racks carved out between the door and the counter, at the doorway in the wall behind.

Cheng Banshan came over, resting one hand on the half-burnt pillar by the door. "Xu Yan, can you tell what this was?"

"It was the accounts room," Xu Yan said.

"Burned like this, and you can still tell?"

"This is how ledger racks are set up." Xu Yan didn't turn around. "Along the wall, row after row, leaving one aisle from the door to the counter. The counter faces the door—people who came to reconcile accounts stood outside, the accounts people stood inside and read the entries page by page. The receipts brought in, the daily ledgers copied out, were stacked by date, pile after pile, on the innermost row of racks."

He stopped there.

The accounts room on the mountain was laid out the same way: ledgers along the wall, counter facing the door, the innermost compartments holding the oldest registers, which no one was allowed to move. He'd stood in that room for ten years—he could lift a foot and know which spot on the threshold had sunk half an inch, reach out and know there was a wormhole in the second rack's third compartment.

Jiang Wan stood just outside the threshold, watching him, not rushing him.

"The racks were set into the wall," Bai Xiaoman said, lifting her head from the floor. "They meant to use them for a long time."

Xu Yan gave a "Mm" and crouched down.

He studied the paper on the floor but didn't touch it. One page lay face-down on the ash, its edges burned away; the remaining half held a few brushstrokes, soaked by water, smeared into an unreadable blur. Another page was wedged under the counter, only a corner showing, its scorched edge pressed into a stone crack. Further in, one page had been ground into the ash by a shoe sole, paper and ash fused into one, impossible to tell where the paper began.

Qi Qi crouched beside him, hand reaching to move it. "Let me check what's underneath—"

"Don't touch it yet," Xu Yan said.

Qi Qi pulled his hand back and wiped it on his clothes.

"These pages are all burned through," he said. "One pinch and they'd crumble."

"Then they'd be gone."

Bai Xiaoman asked, "Sect Master, do we pick them up?"

"We do," Xu Yan said. "But not today."

Qian Duoduo poked half his body in from outside the gate. "Then who gets the stuff in this house?"

Xu Yan didn't answer that. He took one more look at the paper corner under the counter, then stood and brushed the ash from his knees. By the end of the Chen hour, daylight had reached the middle of the courtyard.

"Nobody picks up anything today," he said.

All ten of them looked at him.

"Shi Po inspects the roof frame first," Xu Yan said. "Which beams can bear weight, which areas are off-limits—he decides. Until he's looked, no one goes under the beams, no one touches them."

Shi Po grunted in acknowledgment. He tilted his head back again to study the beams slanting down at the eastern end, then stepped back half a pace and waited in the gate's shadow.

"Tomorrow," Xu Yan said. "Start from the east wall."

"The east wall?" Qi Qi asked.

"Starting at the east wall, several people in a line, working outward from the base of the wall," Xu Yan said. "Note where each stack of paper originally lay. The counter area belongs to the counter, the space under the ledger racks belongs to the racks, the pile by the storeroom door belongs to that pile. Lift page by page. No tearing."

"Why does it have to be by location?" Qi Qi asked.

"So that every page we lift still knows which compartment it once stood in," Xu Yan said. "Mix them all into one pile, spread them out again, and you can't tell anything apart. What little paper the fire left is illegible; all that can still speak is its location."

Cheng Banshan pressed the medicine pouch against his waist and studied him for a while. "A man who keeps accounts even records a piece of paper's place."

"If you don't record the place, there's no point picking the paper up at all," Xu Yan said.

Jiang Wan stepped half a pace in from the threshold, glanced at the ash near his feet, then at him. "Finish looking and come out. The ash is thick in there. It'll choke you."

Xu Yan said, "I've finished."

The courtyard went quiet. Wind passed through the gate and flipped a scorched page on the ground, exposing the darker patch beneath it. Shi Po still stood in the gate's shadow, head tilted up at the half-collapsed shelf; Qian Duoduo stood outside the gate, glancing toward the cake bundle on the stepping stones, not daring to come in; Bai Xiaoman's hand still rested on the row of square holes, fingertips pressed against the broken wood stubs inside.