Chapter 208: Thirteen Pairs of Chopsticks

On the twentieth day of the Twelfth Month, the sky hadn't fully brightened before people were already standing at the market gate. Shao Ming lifted the door panels off one by one and leaned them against the wall, then glanced back. Four people carrying grass bundles were already queued at the entrance.

This market day drew more people than the previous several. Other families' goods sat in the cabinet, a plaque hung above the lintel, and the scale inside weighed goods free of charge once per visit — more than one household in Luoxia Town knew how to do that math.

Shao Ming took the scale down from the wall, wiped the hook once, and set it on the counter. The edge of the market rules posted on the wall had started to fray. He pressed it down with his palm, but it wouldn't lie flat, so he left it alone.

Xu Yan spread the market ledger across the counter, row by row: Ink Pool Gate in the east compartment, Willow Bank Gate in the west half-compartment, rogue cultivators squeezed in below. Every time an item sold from one of the compartments, he made a mark; items weighed got a separate entry with date and weight.

The first customer through the door was a rogue cultivator carrying a grass bundle. He hung it on the scale hook, held it steady with both hands, and watched Shao Ming slide the weight. The scale beam stopped at twenty-five jin. He recited the number to himself before lifting the bundle down and asking, "Rogue cultivator's goods — same as the sects?"

"One compartment per establishment," Shao Ming said.

The man carried his bundle over to the cabinet, crouched down to align it with the others underneath, and looked up. "I write my own price?"

"You write it yourself. Charcoal sticks are on the counter."

People came in one after another. Some just weighed goods and hauled them off afterward; some flipped over the grass bundles on the bottom to inspect the roots, asked, "Whose stone lichen is this?" and then didn't buy even after asking. There were buyers too: three more sheets of talisman paper disappeared from Ink Pool Gate's stack, and a woman with a basket picked two strips of Willow Bank Gate's spirit bamboo splints, saying she'd use them to patch the bottom of a tray. Xu Yan recorded a line in the ledger and dropped the coins into the market box.

At Snake hour, a man in a gray-green old robe walked in alone. He didn't go straight to the counter. He stood just inside the threshold and swept his eyes over all four walls, then came up and took the scale down, hefting the beam in his hand. "It hangs low."

Xu Yan recognized him: Kuang Lun of Azure Brook Sect. On that objection filed in the First Month of Alliance Year 301, Azure Brook Sect's name had been on it.

Kuang Lun untied the bundle from his back and set it on the counter, opening it layer by layer: three bundles of sun-dried spirit grass, yellow mountain mud still caked on the binding cords; a few old talismans, their corners curled.

"Picked from the mountains," he said. "I dug them up myself. I'll write my own price."

Xu Yan flipped the market ledger to a fresh page, wrote "Azure Brook Sect," and started a new line beneath it with "Kuang Lun." The brush paused on the paper. The date and name on that objection — he remembered them. He didn't bring them up. Kuang Lun didn't either; he only talked about the goods.

Shao Ming weighed the bundles one by one and called out the numbers. Kuang Lun wrote his own price tags, the characters large and carefully drawn. After finishing the first one he studied it, picked up the brush, crossed it out, and lowered the price by two stones before slipping it into the cabinet door crack, facing outward.

"What if it doesn't sell?" he asked.

"You can come get it back any market day," Xu Yan said.

"Money on the tenth day of the Eighth Month."

"The tenth day of the Eighth Month."

Kuang Lun gave a single nod and stepped back to study the cabinet. He bent down to read the price tags pinned on Willow Bank Gate's half-compartment and said, "So Willow Bank Gate is here too."

"Steward Zhuo came on the fifteenth."

"This street — from now on it's all pointing to this one scale," Kuang Lun said. Then he suddenly asked, "This many people over a year, can you really remember them all?"

"What's written on paper is for other people to see," Xu Yan said. "What I keep in my mind is my own."

Kuang Lun paused, then said, "I'll bring more next time." He walked to the door, glanced back at the plaque above the lintel, and left.

Around noon, the market reached its densest hour. Xu Yan closed the market ledger, circled around to the front of the counter, crouched down, and brought the items out of the bottom compartment one by one: a packet of stone lichen, a bundle of purple-skin root, a small packet of eclipta leaf. He laid them out on the counter.

All three had been left in the bottom compartment — none from any sect. The stone lichen had been left around noon on the tenth by the man who carried a spirit meal and read the label all the way through. The purple-skin root had been left by a rogue cultivator before the hour of Wei on the fifteenth, and the eclipta leaf by another rogue cultivator at the same time. Those lines in the market ledger had no names — only dates, goods, prices. No one had said what they were called, and Xu Yan never asked.

The figures on the three price tags added up to twenty stones. He counted out twenty, ten per stack, two stacks, and dropped them into the market box. Then, beneath the rogue cultivator column in the market ledger, he added a line for each item, noting the day it was left, which item, and how much.

This was the ingredient batch for Qingya's first furnace of Qi-Gathering Pills, twenty stones.

"The three items Elder Cheng named — all here," he said.

Shao Ming looked up. "Once we buy them, they become Qingya's?"

"Qingya bought them. The money goes into the market box, recorded under Qingya's name."

At Shen hour, back at the mountain, Xu Yan set the three items on the medicine hall table. Cheng Banshan hung the furnace hook back on his belt and came over, peeling back the oiled paper layer by layer.

He opened the stone lichen packet first, shook it out flat onto the oiled paper, flicked out two clumps of dirt with his finger, grabbed a handful and rubbed it between his fingers, then brought it close to sniff. He snapped a purple-skin root in two, examined the broken end, then held it up to the lamp. The eclipta leaf packet he didn't open; he squeezed it through the oiled paper, then gave the paper corner two shakes.

"Well dried," he said. With one palm he gathered the three items together, wrapped them back in the oiled paper, and tucked them onto the top shelf. "Let it sit." He shifted the wooden box on the shelf to make room for the packet.

"These past few years, Qingya's ingredients have all been dug by me from the herb garden on the back mountain," Cheng Banshan said.

"From now on, if it's at the market, we buy from the market," Xu Yan said.

Cheng Banshan didn't answer. He turned back to poke at his wood stove.

On the twenty-fifth, two rogue cultivators came to the market at Snake hour — both had consigned spirit grass there before. One set his basket down in front of the counter. "Are you open on the thirtieth?"

"Yes," Xu Yan said.

"We'll come on the thirtieth," the other said. "Sold goods count as ours; unsold goods we take back. Makes the year-end easier."

"You can claim your goods on any market day."

The man smiled. "Then we'll come on the thirtieth. Your place — still open at year's end."

The market broke up at the end of Snake hour. Qian Duoduo went through the New Year goods list at the market, and when he got to pork he said, "Get it with the skin on. Braised right, the skin shines." Qi Qi, walking beside him, remarked that several shops on the street had already closed half their doors, and asked where those people's goods were supposed to sell. Qian Duoduo said he didn't know, but Qingya's place was open even on the thirtieth.

Qian Duoduo bought next month's rations at the grain shop, fifty stones. Shi Po hoisted two sacks of spirit rice and one sack of coarse grain onto his shoulders, one pressing down on the next, and his shoulders sank a little.

At the butcher's stall, Xu Yan asked for a cut of pork with the skin on. The butcher lifted the meat off the hook and asked which cut; Xu Yan said skin on, fatty. A stack of red paper and a string of firecrackers, bought from the stall at the east end of the market. The three came to two taels of silver total. He handed the coins over, and with that, the twenty taels from the exchange were used up.

On the thirtieth, the market opened as usual. Year's-end folk started early; by the Dragon hour there were already people on the street, and stalls went up with them. The stall was set up beneath the third pillar from the wall. One pot of spirit meals and ten vials of Qi-Gathering Powder sold out by mid-Snake hour. Someone bought a bowl and stood eating it by hand, saying at year's end this was the one hot thing left.

The two rogue cultivators came at Snake hour, one with a basket on his back, the other with rope under his arm. Xu Yan opened the cabinet and brought the spirit grass out of the bottom compartment item by item, reading from the market ledger and crossing each one off as he went. The money from sold goods had long been recorded in the ledger; unsold goods were claimed this time. The one with the basket stuffed the grass bundles inside, pressed them down, and said, "I'll bring more next time."

The place was boarded up by the start of Horse hour. They left town at Horse hour and returned to the mountain gate at Wei hour. Snow still hadn't fully melted along the mountain path; it crunched underfoot.

That same day, before dawn, someone was still out on the veranda practicing that one thrust against the wooden target — once, pause, once. Xu Yan walked past behind him without stopping.

At Dog hour, firecrackers popped in the courtyard. A He lit them with a fire starter, then covered his ears and ran back. A Sui stood under the eaves with both hands pressed over her ears, laughing at every crack. The red paper cut days before had been pasted in pairs — two on the kitchen door, one on the door frame of the low hut by the mountain gate.

Qian Duoduo carried dishes from the kitchen to the main hall, trip after trip: a big pot of braised pork, the skin shining; a pot of spirit rice; two kinds of vegetables pulled from the herb garden on the back mountain; half a pot still left over. Cheng Banshan's wine gourd sat beside his hand. Chopsticks were laid out pair by pair — he laid them carefully, then stepped back and counted once.

A Sui filled a bowl first, pressed two pieces of meat on top, and carried it out. The low hut by the mountain gate had no lantern. She walked to the doorstep, set the bowl on the threshold, said "Nie Bo, happy New Year," and came back.

By the time she returned to the table, the bowl on the threshold was already gone.

Xu Yan counted the people at the table: Elder Cheng, Senior Sister, Uncle Shao, Huo Qing, Shi Po, Bai Xiaoman, Qi Qi, Qian Duoduo, Du Xiaochuan, A He, A Sui, plus himself — twelve.

A Sui counted the chopsticks, pair by pair. "Still thirteen pairs."

"There's room to sit," Qian Duoduo said.

Qi Qi, chewing, mumbled, "Someone at the market said we're the only ones still open for business at year's end."

"Open the doors, and people come," Cheng Banshan said.

At the bottom of the pot, the last piece of pork with skin — A He's chopsticks got there first, A Sui's right behind, pressing down on the back of his hand. Qian Duoduo fished the meat out with a spoon and put it in A Sui's bowl, then pushed a chopstickful from his own bowl to A He. A He said that wasn't fair. A Sui said it was.

Huo Qing held his chopsticks in his left hand, his right arm resting on his knee, and barely lifted his head through the meal. Shi Po ate bowl after bowl, and when Shao Ming refilled his third, he said, "Slow down." Shi Po said "Mm" and kept at the same pace. Jiang Wan sat a little to Xu Yan's left; her rice went down fast, and only when Qian Duoduo brought the last dish did she reach out to steady the edge of the pot.

Dishes cleared, bowls clinked from the direction of the kitchen. Xu Yan went to the accounts room and lit the lamp, laying out three books — the sect ledger, the market ledger, and the furnace log — to close the Eleventh and Twelfth Month accounts.

Market day by market day, he checked page by page: money in, money out — market rent, silver exchange, two rounds of rations, pill ingredients, New Year goods. Every sum had a place it went; wherever one didn't fit, he flipped backward. Every entry in the market ledger was checked too: consigned goods, money from sales, claimed goods, all had to reconcile. The lines crossed out today he went over again — how much had been claimed, how much remained in the cabinet. He counted the market box; the figure went on a slip of paper pressed inside the market ledger. That money wasn't Qingya's.

On the last line of the sect ledger he wrote the balance: six thousand forty-seven spirit stones. Ten taels of silver sat in Bai Xiaoman's book; that figure hadn't moved.

The market box was locked, placed a foot apart from the iron cash box, and pushed under the bottom of the ledger rack; the market ledger went on top of it. The furnace log was pressed atop the sect ledger.

He blew out the lamp and stood in the doorway. The lantern in the front courtyard still hung there, one corner of its red paper curling up, slapping twice when the wind passed. From the kitchen came the sound of water — Qian Duoduo scrubbing the pot. From the mountain gate came the sound of sweeping, once, then once again.

The ledgers stayed in his arms through the night, silent.