Chapter 153: The Vermilion Seal at the Top of the Page

By the time Shi Po set the first armful of roof tiles down at the base of the courtyard wall, daylight had just reached the second row of square holes on the east wall.

He set them down gently, one armful at a time. The broken pieces he placed on top. The tiles with their points still facing up he left alone; he stood at the collapsed end for a moment, then stepped back.

"Start with this east row, working outward from the base of the wall," Jiang Wan said. "Four people per row. Knees on the ground—don't kneel on the paper. It'll crumble the moment you put weight on it."

Bai Xiaoman crouched down first. She squatted in front of the wall, reached out with both hands, and began brushing the topmost layer of ash to either side, checking what lay beneath. Only when a strip of paper edge appeared did she pinch it between her fingers and begin lifting it toward herself, slowly.

"This page is stuck in the ash," she said.

"Blow from underneath," Xu Yan said from beyond the threshold.

Bai Xiaoman lowered her face and blew a puff of air into the gap between the paper and the stone slab. The ash scattered, the paper's edge lifted a little, and she worked the page free, holding it in both hands before setting it down by her knee.

Huo Qing was at the far end of the counter. He pulled the drawers out one by one, turned them over to inspect the bottoms, pushed them back exactly as they'd been, then thrust his hand into the gap between the counter and the wall, slowly tugging out whatever was wedged inside.

Shao Ming and Du Xiaochuan worked the stretch of east wall running south. Du Xiaochuan examined each page twice before lifting it, slow and careful; Shao Ming was fast, stacking the pages he pulled up in a crooked pile on the ash by his knee.

"Uncle Shao, stacked like that, the writing on the pages underneath will get rubbed off," Xu Yan said.

Shao Ming moved the pile onto a stone slab. "Like this?"

"Once a stack reaches the width of your palm, hand it to Elder Cheng. Don't let them pile up."

Xu Yan himself didn't squat by the east wall. He walked three paces in from the courtyard gate and crouched at a spot not far from the counter, where they'd agreed the night before. He picked up the first page. It was face-down, the edges caked with ash that had hardened into a shell. He turned the paper right-side up and scraped the layer of black grime from the top of the page with his fingernail.

At the top of the page was a square vermilion seal, red, stamped slightly askew, one corner running past the paper's edge. Beneath it was a line of ledger text, the ink so faded it was nearly invisible, but still legible:

"The seventeenth day of the Third Month. In: four sacks of spirit rice. Out: tile-repair fee, nine spirit stones. Balance on hand: two hundred sixty-four spirit stones."

Xu Yan read it twice, then held the page in his hand and stood.

"Everyone, stop for a moment."

The whole circle stilled. Shi Po remained half-crouched on the roof, one foot on a rafter, frozen in place without coming down.

Xu Yan raised the page so everyone could see the red mark at the top. "This seal at the top of the page—it belongs to the Qingya Accounting Office."

He recited the regulation, one word at a time: "Old articles bearing a sect's name or mark shall belong to that sect."

When he finished, he said, "The page bears the Qingya Accounting Office's mark. Everything we pick up belongs to Qingya. Lift each page one at a time. No tearing."

Qi Qi, working the southern stretch, looked up. "Sect Master, the Eight Sects already went through once. The things they took—those don't count?"

"They didn't pick any up," Xu Yan said. "They were looking at objects. Paper isn't on their list."

"Paper doesn't count as an object?"

"It does," Xu Yan said. "But objects that count have to be lifted by methods that count."

Qi Qi lowered his head again, the page in his hand held motionless. Jiang Wan, at her end of the wall, said, "Get back to work."

Everyone crouched down again. The courtyard fell quiet, leaving only the sound of air being blown against paper, fingernails scraping stone slabs, and the occasional cough—the ash was thick, and whoever coughed turned their face aside, coughed, then went back to lifting.

Bai Xiaoman had cleared half a row when she suddenly froze, pinching a page between her fingers. "Sect Master, this page has no mark."

Xu Yan walked over and crouched beside her to look. The top half of the page had burned away; all that remained of the lower portion were halves of a few characters, unrecognizable. The paper's edges were curled, and it crumbled to flakes at the slightest touch.

"Can't tell where it's from?"

"Can't tell."

"Set it aside. Don't mix it with the ones on the oilcloth," Xu Yan said. "It burned itself into silence. Whether we can identify it has nothing to do with that."

Bai Xiaoman placed the page on a clean stone slab by her knee, then added, "So whose is it?"

"Qingya's," Xu Yan said. "We're just not numbering it yet."

Cheng Banshan came in through the courtyard gate and stopped at the three stone steps before the storeroom door, untying the medicine pouch from his waist. He pulled out the oilcloth wrapping the medicine, tucked the packet under his arm, and shook the oilcloth open with his freed hand, spreading it over the second step and smoothing down all four corners. He picked up half a broken tile from beside his foot and weighed down the outer corner.

"What we find goes here," he said. "Stack them neatly. No piling."

"Elder Cheng, you're not weighing down that corner?" Qian Duoduo asked.

"One corner is enough. If all four are pinned down, you won't be able to pull a stack out."

Qian Duoduo carried over the first stack he'd gathered. Cheng Banshan didn't take it; instead he studied the pile. "Page tops facing out."

"Huh?"

"Page tops facing out in every stack. That way, when someone needs to look through them later, one flip shows all the page tops—no hunting through page by page." Cheng Banshan said, "And don't put the tile on top of any writing."

Qian Duoduo turned the stack around and squared it up again. Only then did Cheng Banshan reach out and straighten both ends of the stack. "Where was this from?"

"Base of the east wall, first section."

"East wall base, first row, first section from north to south." Cheng Banshan recited it back, then placed the stack at the inner end of the oilcloth. "The next stack goes beside it."

At the Snake hour, there were footsteps outside the courtyard wall—more than one person's.

It was Wanshou Mountain's people, walking single file along the path to the second level. Xiong Dai, leading the group, slowed half a step by the collapsed section of the wall and glanced into the courtyard.

Xu Yan straightened and nodded. Xiong Dai nodded back without stopping.

A Wanshou Mountain disciple behind him reached the base of the wall, spotted a page pinned there, and flicked it with the toe of his boot. The paper flipped halfway over, stuck to the ash on the sole of his shoe.

"Burnt scrap," he said, looking back into the courtyard. "If Qingya wants it, take it."

No one in the courtyard answered him. Jiang Wan crouched at her end of the wall, her fingers still pinching the edge of a page, not even lifting her head. The procession passed, the sound of footsteps fading southward until it could no longer be heard.

Qian Duoduo muttered, "That kick—like he was poking at stove ash."

"Stove ash, once raked out, can at least line a pigsty," Cheng Banshan said.

Qian Duoduo blinked, let out a short laugh, then quickly shut his mouth and lowered his head back to work.

Xu Yan crouched again and turned over the page in his hand to check the back. It was blank, and the paper's edge had gone brittle—it would break at the slightest fold.

"Elder Cheng," he said. "Pages with brittle edges should be set aside separately. Don't stack them with the good ones."

"Set them where?"

"At the far end of the oilcloth, with a whole tile on top."

Jiang Wan had been crouching by the wall for a long time. When she stood, she pressed a hand against her lower back, made no sound, and crouched back down. Cheng Banshan noticed. "Take a break for one incense stick. Crouch all day and your knees will be the first to go."

"After this row."

"After this row, it'll be dark," Cheng Banshan said. "You're leading today. You're needed to lead again tomorrow."

Jiang Wan didn't answer. Her hands didn't stop.

By the time the sun slanted past the western rock face, Qian Duoduo and Du Xiaochuan each carried five waterskins, circled behind the accounting office, and made their way to the stone trough. The water mark on the rock face ran down to the base of the trough, and water fell drop by drop.

"At this rate, one drop at a time, ten skins will take until dark to fill," Qian Duoduo said.

Du Xiaochuan crouched down and set the mouth of one skin against the twin polished grooves at the trough's edge. The water followed the grooves downward and dripped straight into the opening. No one needed to hold it.

"No holding needed," he said.

"Then we'll swap them two at a time."

The water was cold. Du Xiaochuan held his hand under the water mark for a while until his fingers went red, then switched hands, tucking the other one behind his knee to warm it. Qian Duoduo kept watching the openings and calculating. "Ten skins filled, one per person per day—by dark we'll have what, half a skin left over."

"Half a skin is still half a skin."

"But the flatbread—that's all there is," Qian Duoduo said. "It's harder by the day. When I bit into mine today, my teeth took a real hit."

"Soak it before eating," Du Xiaochuan said. "Yesterday, soaked, it was edible."

The two of them squatted by the trough, pulling up each skin as it filled, plugging it, and swapping the next into place. The first full skins they carried back and set on the ground at the foot of the storeroom steps, arranged neatly, all mouths facing outward.

The east wall row was cleared. Jiang Wan stood and called back, "This row's done. Shifting south."

The whole crew shifted south a row and crouched again.

Late in the Monkey hour, the light angled down through the open roof frame and fell across the oilcloth, across the neat stacks of pages. Cheng Banshan squared up the last stack, stepped back two paces, and crouched to sight along the rows, checking their alignment.

Shi Po climbed down from the beam, brushed the black grime from his hands, and stood before the inner room's doorway, studying it for a while.

"These two beams are pressing on the doorframe," he said. "To move them, we'd need four men on one end."

"Not today," Xu Yan said.

"Not today."

As the light dimmed, the accounting office darkened first, then the courtyard. Xu Yan handed the last few pages to Cheng Banshan and stood in the middle of the outer room, looking around. The ground showed strips of stone slab seams—this was how a worked area looked by day's end. The ash had been swept aside, the original stone exposed, black still packed into the cracks.

"Starting tonight, we sleep in the storeroom," he said. "The west half, where there's stone overhead. The north end is off-limits—don't lean against it."

"The storeroom's empty. Empty space is easy to sleep in," Qian Duoduo said.

"Spread your bundle cloth on the floor. Don't lay out paper."

"The whole courtyard is paper." Xu Yan added, "And no striking fire-starters. No one lights anything inside this courtyard."

Qian Duoduo acknowledged and carried a bundle of flatbread into the storeroom.

The night watch was still three shifts: "You hour to Xu hour, Shao Ming. Hai hour to Zi hour, Huo Qing. Chou hour to Yin hour, me. Whoever's on watch sits on the outer room's threshold, facing the courtyard gate. If you hear something, don't go in alone—call out first."

"What about my shift?" Jiang Wan asked.

"You're leading people tomorrow. Sleep tonight."

Bai Xiaoman got an early start and still made one last trip to the flat stone by the collapsed wall before bed. Two vertical lines were carved into the stone, one deep, one shallow. She looked at them, then came back and sat at the storeroom door. "When the light comes back tomorrow, I'll add the third."

"Wait for daylight," Xu Yan said. "Carve in the dark, and if it comes out crooked it won't count."

The flatbread was still hard. The ten of them sat at the storeroom door, each splitting a half-portion, no one saying much. Shi Po finished his half, tipped the crumbs from his palm into his mouth, and looked up at the storeroom's stone ceiling for a long while.

"Sect Master," he said. "What's pressing on this roof is lighter than the weight over the outer room."

"It'll hold?"

"It'll hold," Shi Po said. "Just don't go jumping around inside."

Du Xiaochuan started to laugh, then swallowed it halfway.

By the time Shao Ming took his seat on the threshold of the outer room, only the patch by the door was still lit inside the storeroom. Soon that went dark too. He pulled his sleeves down over his hands and faced the courtyard gate. Inside the storeroom, Xu Yan lay down against the western wall, his bundle under his head.

Before he fell asleep, he heard wind outside—very slight, coming in through the collapsed section of the wall and leaving through the open roof frame, flipping over a page here and there on the ground.

At the Chou hour, he rose to change shifts. Huo Qing yielded his spot. "Nothing moved," he said, then went into the storeroom.

Xu Yan sat on the outer room's threshold.

Behind him lay the ashen ground. The areas worked during the day showed line after line of stone slab seams; the untouched stretches were still a uniform black, impossible to tell ash from page. Across the inner room's doorway lay two beams, one end pressing on the doorframe, the other resting on the collapsed tile heap. The doorway beneath them was black—so black he couldn't tell how wide the door was.

He didn't go over.

The wind died, then rose again. From somewhere distant—maybe the stair mouth, maybe in the direction of the second level—came the sound of water, faint through the stone, like someone long ago striking the edge of a stone trough.

He sat there, waiting, until the light returned.