Chapter 204: The Plaque Goes Up

When Shao Ming uncovered the third tile from the eastern corner, he stopped.

Two rafters had rotted. He pressed them with his fingertips; the wood gave way, and he broke off a half-foot length. The inside was hollowed out. He leaned half his body over the edge and shouted down, "Shi Po—rafters."

The ladder rested against the east wall. Shi Po held the ladder steady with one hand while he slid two new rafters off his shoulder and passed them up. They'd ordered the rafters from the carpenter's shop on the ninth; the carpenter had brought these two ahead of schedule, while the cabinet and door panels stayed scheduled for the twentieth.

Shao Ming took them, checked the lengths against each other, pulled out the rotten one, slid the new one in, and gave it two knocks on each end.

The first day, Shi Po had gone up to remove tiles. When he reached the eastern corner, Shao Ming climbed up to inspect the rafters, and the two of them crouched on the roof talking for a while. After that they swapped as the work required: Shi Po took the heavy labor, while Shao Ming did the sighting, inspected the rafters, and listened to the tiles ring. Shi Po had said he'd handle the roof, and Shao Ming hadn't objected—just told him one thing: "Up there, don't step on the beams."

That was the eleventh day of the Eleventh Month. Before dawn, Shi Po had carried two bundles of tiles down from the mountain, one on each shoulder, ten li of mountain road in a single shichen. By the time he set them in the storehouse the sky was just fully light. From that day on, the two of them came down the mountain at the Mao hour and went back up at the You hour, every day. They stripped and re-laid the eastern half of the roof and left the western half alone. Tile by tile the old ones came off—whole ones stacked in the courtyard, cracked ones tossed into the carrying basket. Shi Po hauled them to the riverbank before knocking off and dumped them down the slope.

By the third row, they were short on whole tiles. Shao Ming sat on the roof ridge for a while, worked out how many tiles the roof surface needed and where the shortfall would land, then told Shi Po to count the whole tiles in the courtyard again. They'd finish the eave row completely and patch the gaps further up. After pressing in a row, he tapped along it with the back of his trowel, listening. Any tile that gave a dull sound got pulled and re-laid.

During the tile work, Shi Po passed materials up from below. He could hoist a bundle onto his shoulder and move the ladder by himself, from the east eave to the west, leaving a groove pressed into the ground. He had strength to spare; by the end of a day even his eyebrows were white with dust.

The walls needed patching in three places, then plastering. Two coats. The first coat had to dry completely before the second went on, and the floor inside kept wicking up moisture, so the lime dried slowly. Shao Ming crouched at the wall base and waited until he could run a finger over it and no white came off on his skin. Only then did he get up and mix the second bucket.

The door in the east wall had been nailed shut with planks, not opened in twenty years. The nail heads were rusted clean through. Shao Ming pulled them one by one with pliers. After a dozen or so, one snapped off in the wood—the exposed half came out easily, but the buried end wouldn't budge no matter what. He ended up prying the whole plank off around it. The bottom of the door frame had rotted too; it dented at a press of a finger. He found a thin board in the lumber pile, shaved it to the right width, fitted it in, and hammered it flush.

The day the planks came down, they swept half a dustpan of debris from the door base: grain husks, dried rat droppings, a few tile fragments. Once the doorway was open, the sounds of Market Street's north end drifted in—someone hawking goods, a cart wheel grinding over flagstone, someone coughing outside the wall.

Shao Ming stood in the open doorway looking out for a long while, then said, "This room hasn't had this door open in twenty years." When they knocked off that day, they blocked the doorway with two old planks and weighted them down with stones.

The lime was vicious. Shi Po mixed mortar with his bare hands and claimed it was nothing, but two days later white cracks split open across the backs of his hands, stinging at the touch of water. When they got back to the mountain, Cheng Banshan took one look, pulled a small jar of medicine off the shelf, and pushed it at him. "Put this on."

"It doesn't hurt."

"Doesn't hurt—put it on anyway." Cheng Banshan headed toward the kitchen. "Those hands are mixing mortar again tomorrow."

At midday the two of them squatted on the storehouse threshold eating coarse grain flatbread. Qian Duoduo had baked it; it came out of the Eleventh Month rations, hard enough to knock against as if it were a table. A hand from the grain shop came up from the river carrying water, and as he passed he offered them the dipper. Shi Po broke the flatbread into pieces, soaked them in the water until they softened enough to bite. The hand said the building had changed owners three times before, and nobody had ever made a go of it. Shao Ming said nothing. He handed back the dipper and thanked him.

Up on the mountain, the days were two people short. At mealtimes Qian Duoduo always set aside a portion first, left it by the stove under a cloth, saved for the two who came back after dark.

The fifteenth and twentieth market days ran as usual. One pot of spirit meals, ten bottles of Qi-Gathering Powder. Sold out by noon.

On the twentieth the carpenter delivered the cabinet and the door panels. The two of them carried the cabinet in and set it against the west wall. The lock hasp was new, and the doors opened with a slight stiffness; the carpenter rubbed a bit of wax into the hinges. The door panel went into the east wall frame. They fitted it twice to confirm it could be taken down, then leaned it against the wall, leaving the doorway open. After the market closed, Xu Yan came to inspect the storehouse once. He ran his hand over the planed grooves on the panel, then crouched to look at the wedge under the frame. "It fits," he said.

The key he put away in his inner robe.

On the night of the twenty-second, in the accounts room: the plaque board lay across two stools, the lacquer jar beside the inkstone. Xu Yan moved the lamp to the corner of the table, dipped an old brush in the lacquer, and began writing on the board. Lacquer was heavier than ink; once it touched down it wouldn't travel, and each stroke had to spread on its own before he could lay the next.

He wrote from one end to the other without retouching a single stroke. When he finished he lifted the lamp and passed its light over the board from end to end. The board stayed on the stools to dry and wasn't put away all night.

At the Mao hour on the twenty-third, Bai Xiaoman came down the mountain with them. The scale was long—too awkward for her to carry—so Shao Ming shouldered it, the two ends wrapped in oilcloth. The hand scale went in a small wooden box she carried herself.

At the storehouse, they hung the scale from the new rafter with hemp rope, three turns around. She tugged it, checking that it hung straight, then let the scale hook down another half foot.

"The grain shop first," she said.

The scale at the grain shop hung from a beam, its arm taller than a person. Bai Xiaoman looked up at the markings, studying them for a while, then told the shop hand to slide the counterweight inward. He'd nudge it and ask, "Here?" She'd shake her head, and he'd nudge again. The proprietor was at the back working an abacus. He lifted his eyes once and said, "Go ahead and use it. Just don't knock the weight off."

The first item was a sack of rice. Shi Po lifted it onto the hook, and the shop hand slid the weight until the arm balanced, then called out the measure. Bai Xiaoman, head tilted back, wrote the number on paper. The second item was a half sack. The third was a dou of rice the shop had just measured out from their counter.

With all three weighed, she had Shi Po carry the rice to the storehouse and hang each item on the market scale there. Shi Po gripped the scale cord and lifted the arm.

"Don't lift it up," Bai Xiaoman said. "Relax your hand. Let the arm balance itself."

Shi Po loosened his grip. The arm swayed twice and settled. She leaned in to read the marks, called out a number, and wrote it down next to the grain shop's figure.

The first item was off by half a mark. The second by a full mark. The third was off by more.

"The counterweight," she said.

Shao Ming pulled a file from the tool bundle and handed it over. Bai Xiaoman turned the counterweight over, bottom side up, filed it a few strokes, wiped it clean with a cloth, and weighed again. Still off. She filed again—filed, weighed, filed, weighed—and on the third filing, all three items landed on the same reading.

She weighed all three once more, cross-checked the two scales' numbers, and only when they matched did she hand the paper to Shao Ming.

"This counterweight's been shaved," she said, holding it up to the light at the door and turning it over and over.

They calibrated the hand scale with copper coins. She took a few coins from her purse and set them in the scale pan one at a time, watching how high it rose. The first coin brought the arm level exactly at the "one qian" mark. She swapped to another coin; still one qian. The third was the same. She put the hand scale back in its wooden box and fastened the clasp.

Shao Ming packed up the tools and said, "From now on, the market hand scale is yours to manage."

Bai Xiaoman hugged the wooden box to her chest. "I'll manage it."

"Can you reach?"

"I can reach." She lifted the box a little higher, then added, "Back at Huichun Hall, I had to stand on a wooden crate to reach the hand scale."

Shao Ming laughed and put the file back in the bundle. Shi Po carried the last sack of rice back to the grain shop counter. On his way out he moved the stone propping the door panel over to the base of the wall.

Once the scale was calibrated, Shao Ming used nails to hang it on the patched wall just inside the door, the hook hanging a head higher than the countertop. The hand scale went in the top compartment of the cabinet.

On the morning of the twenty-fourth, at the Dragon hour, Xu Yan too came down the mountain. Shi Po shouldered the plaque and climbed the ladder rung by rung, one hand steadying it, while Shao Ming held the ladder and watched from below. At the top, Shi Po pressed the plaque to the lintel and held it there, freeing one hand to fish nails from his belt and hold them in his teeth while he drove them in with the hammer one by one.

When he came down, Shao Ming stepped back to the middle of the street to sight it. "Left side's a finger too high," he said.

Shi Po climbed back up and tapped the left nail twice. Shao Ming backed up again, tilting his head. "Half a finger to the right." Shi Po shifted it and nailed it home. Two passersby on the street stopped, looked up, and read aloud, "Qingya Market." They read it and walked on.

Xu Yan pasted the market rules on the wall next to the scale by the door. The wall was freshly patched; the lime held the paste, and the paper went on with its corners smoothed twice, pressed flat.

Written on the wall:

"Qingya Market. Open on days ending in five and ten; doors open at the Dragon hour, close at the end of the Horse hour. No stall fees, no commissions taken. Anyone may use the scale. Consigned goods are priced by the seller; the market sells at the listed price and asks no questions about buyers. Proceeds are recorded under the consignor's name. Every year on the tenth day of the Eighth Month, accounts are settled; the year's consignment earnings are paid in full that day, and the market remains open after lamplight."

Shao Ming stood before the wall, reading it word by word. When he reached "asks no questions about buyers," his voice dropped a fraction, and he glanced at Xu Yan before reading on. When he finished he said nothing, walked back a couple of steps, then turned and looked at the paper on the wall again.

When Shi Po finished listening, he asked, "Only settled once a year?"

"Once a year," Xu Yan said.

"Will they be willing to wait?"

"The ones who are will stay."

Bai Xiaoman stood under the scale, looking up at it, then at the writing on the wall. "The scale is here, the words are over there."

They knocked off at the end of the Monkey hour and headed up the mountain together, passing through the gate at the Dog hour. Nie Bo edged his broom aside for them. There was hot water in the kitchen; Shi Po washed his hands first, and the white cracks flushed red in the water.

On the night of the twenty-fourth, Xu Yan brought ten written paper labels to the Medicine Hall and set them on the table. The labels read "Qingya," with "the twenty-fifth day of the Eleventh Month" written below.

The wood stove was burning; the Qi-Gathering Powder would be ready at the Dragon hour the next morning. Cheng Banshan fed the fire with one hand, adding a stick whenever the flames sagged. He took the wooden box down from the shelf, blew the dust from inside, and set it at the corner of the table. Only then did he pick up a label and hold it to the lamp.

"Labels go on, and keep a sample pack too." He set the label back down. "Once medicine leaves your door, it's no longer yours. Keep one pack so you know what you sent out."

"Which one do we keep?" Xu Yan asked.

"Whatever's left after bottling," Cheng Banshan said. "Pack up however much remains, write the date on it, and store it in this box. Don't let it get mixed up with anything else."

"Should we keep from tomorrow morning's batch?"

"Do it." Cheng Banshan poked the fire apart, and the firebox brightened. "From this batch on, every batch gets a sample."

Xu Yan pressed the ten labels flat, tucked them into his robe, and returned to the accounts room. From the bottom shelf of the account rack he pulled a stack of trimmed paper, bound it with hemp thread into a thin booklet, and wrote "Furnace Log" on the cover.

When he'd finished, he laid the booklet on top of the ledgers, pressing it smooth and flat. The lamp wick had burned low; he trimmed it with the scissors, and the room brightened a little.