Chapter 210: The Third Compartment of the East Wall

Bai Xiaoman stood at the Accounts Room door, both hands tucked into her sleeves, one foot planted outside the threshold.

Xu Yan set his brush down. He was recording the running ledger for the thirteenth, a line half-written. The lamp at the corner of the desk had its wick trimmed short; the flame sat low against the oil.

"Sect Master."

"Come in."

She came in, set her small wooden-framed abacus on the stool by the door first, then picked it back up and held it against her chest.

"Elder Cheng talks about waiting on a hand," she said. "I want to make him one."

Xu Yan drew his hand back from the page. "You know how to make a hand?"

"I know how to lay stones. I know how to trap someone in a formation." She smiled at herself, and the smile wasn't pretty. "A hand, no."

"Then why say you'll make one?"

"I've thought it through." She measured against her own arm, down to just below the wrist. "Find a length of wood, carve it to the size of a hand, fit it inside a sleeve. Palm, fingers, joint by joint. Strap it on with leather cord, tie it around the upper arm, and it won't fall off." She mimed the tying. "Elder Cheng could use it to weigh down paper, to steady a ladle."

"He doesn't need carved wood to steady a ladle," Xu Yan said. "His own hand does that just fine."

Bai Xiaoman flushed. "I was thinking about him not being able to lift the furnace lid."

"So you heard all of it yesterday."

"I was crouched by the wood stove. Didn't miss a line."

"Then what makes you think you can do it?" Xu Yan asked. "You've never built a hand in your life."

She switched the abacus to her other hand. "That wooden crate under the Huichun Hall counter—I had to stand on it to reach the hand scale. The tenon worked loose once, it fell apart, and the proprietor was going to throw it out. I whittled a bamboo splint and wedged it back in, wrapped it with two turns of hemp thread, and I've stood on it ever since without it collapsing." She seemed to realize herself how little that amounted to. "A hand's harder than my crate."

The window paper in the Accounts Room was freshly pasted. Sunlight came through and washed the ledgers on the desk to white. Xu Yan turned a page—not reading the accounts, just letting the words settle.

Cheng Banshan could manage brewing medicine one-handed: iron hook through the ring on the furnace lid, slide it aside; bamboo slat reaches in to scrape, each pill pinched out and dropped into a bottle, the way he'd done it for decades. The difficulty was the pill-taking moment in alchemy. One hand regulated the alchemy flame, holding down the furnace chamber; the other lifted the lid and set the receiving tray. The two had to move together—a breath too early and the pill essence scattered, a breath too late and the pill crumbled into ash. The flame was his own; no one else's hand could stand in.

"What did you see yesterday?" Xu Yan asked.

"He tucked his sleeve back into his belt. Twice," Bai Xiaoman said, head lowered. "Once, he tucked it in, bent down to stir the fire, and it slid out again. So he tucked it again. There's nothing in that part of it, but it still gets in the way."

Xu Yan didn't answer. No one had taught her to see these things. She'd noticed on her own.

"There might be something in the storehouse," he said.

"The storehouse?" Bai Xiaoman looked up. "Doesn't the storehouse just hold ledgers?"

"Stacks of old ledgers. Other things in the hidden cavities too."

He didn't say more. Behind that wall of bricks were compartments, and he'd never looked closely at them himself. The first compartment held the Vajra Pillar manual. The second, to the north, held the Five Elements Formation Manual. He'd pried each one out with an awl, brick by brick, stacking the bricks at the base of the east wall, two piles. Whatever came out of those cavities went into someone's name in the ledger—the books were clear on that—and that person's hands were meant to hold it.

He didn't know whether the third compartment had anything. Even less whether, if it did, he could afford it. The first had cost four points, the second five—and five was already half their entire reserves. If this page turned out to cost ten, or eight, the balance wouldn't cover it, and the matter would have to wait. And when the next chance came to replenish their foundations, he couldn't begin to say.

Cheng Banshan still wasn't on the roster. Nothing in the storehouse would be recorded under his name.

"I'll go check the storehouse," Xu Yan said.

Bai Xiaoman stood, hugging her abacus. "May I come see?"

"After I've looked."

She carried the abacus out. In the front courtyard, Nie Bo was sweeping the stone steps—the frost half-melted, the broom scraping wetly across the stone. She walked around the puddle.

That afternoon Xu Yan went to the Medicine Hall, stood outside the door without entering. The inner wood stove was burning. Cheng Banshan had one foot braced on the brick at the base of the furnace, bent over, lifting the lid: iron hook through the ring, a heave. Steam rushed up; he turned his face aside and reached in with the bamboo slat to scrape. A few small porcelain vials sat on the furnace ledge, mouths covered with prescription paper. The charcoal stove by the door had sat idle all the Twelfth Month, its door shut, a little ash sifting out through the seam.

The next day at noon, Xu Yan spread the ledger open on his desk.

To anyone else it was a blank old account book. To him it was a ledger. The days flipped to white pages; only when the words settled did they become visible.

"Does the storehouse hold a formation diagram Bai Xiaoman could use to make a hand?"

The words came down. One line. Then another.

[Debit: Heritages 5 points, Storehouse: Formation Hand Diagram one page, old storehouse east wall hidden cavity third compartment, recorded under Bai Xiaoman.]

[Balance: Heritages 6 points.]

Xu Yan looked at the two lines and set down his brush. Five points out, six left. Six wasn't much: the larger items cost ten. Six meant a few reconciliations, a few small matters like this one, and it would be gone. He ran the math through his mind again, squared it, then pressed the ledger flat on the desk and asked one more question:

"Is there anything recorded under Elder Cheng's name?"

No words came down this time. The book stayed open, white as before.

He closed the ledger and slipped it into his robes. Recorded under Bai Xiaoman. This page wasn't for him.

At the Wei hour he went into the old storehouse.

It sat against the back wall of the Accounts Room—stone walls, wooden door. The door had to be lifted half an inch before it would turn on its hinges. Inside stood decades of unsold ledgers, stack after stack against the walls, mold spotting the paper, a chill in the corners. He'd brought the small iron awl from beside the kitchen, its tip bright.

Two piles of bricks lay at the base of the east wall, one thinner than the other, dust settled thick on top. He nudged them with his toe; the bricks didn't shift. The two openings in the wall still gaped, dark inside, the seam of the hidden cavity just visible.

He counted north. Handspan by handspan he measured until he reached the third spot. Knocked.

The first two taps came back solid, dull. On the third, the layer beneath his knuckles rang hollow.

He dug the dust from the brick seams and worked the awl tip in, prying outward. The brick loosened. The first came out easily; the second was heavier. He set down the awl and hauled it out with both hands, stacking it at his feet. When the third came free, a smell of old paper drifted out of the wall, cold.

Inside the cavity lay a roll of oilcloth, bound tight with hemp rope. He untied it and drew the roll out—thinner than the previous two, no more than a finger's thickness when coiled.

He carried it out of the storehouse and spread it on the stone steps in the courtyard, pinning the four corners with broken stones. Wind came from the west; the oilcloth shifted, and he reset the stones.

Inside the oilcloth lay one page of silk. Yellowed, edges curling. Drawn on it was a hand.

Rendered with extraordinary fineness: a sleeve socket, open at both ends, with cord loops drawn at the openings. From the socket extended palm bones, and from the palm, five segments, joint by joint, out to the fingertips. Four sockets in a row along the wrist, one socket in the palm, all empty, each with characters carved beside it. Five extremely fine lines rose from the five sockets—winding, turning, running one by one into the finger joints. Along the silk's edge was a block of text.

A He and A Sui poked their heads out from the kitchen and saw something spread on the stone steps. Both started forward together.

"Don't touch," Xu Yan said.

"Sect Master, what is that?" A Sui asked.

"A diagram."

"What kind of diagram?"

"A hand."

A He tucked his hands into his sleeves and craned his neck. "A wooden hand?"

"I haven't looked closely yet."

The two children stared a while longer before Qian Duoduo called them back from the kitchen. Xu Yan folded the oilcloth and carried it into the Accounts Room. He didn't return the bricks to the wall—just stacked them with the other two piles and covered the opening with an old plank.

At the Shen hour, Bai Xiaoman came to the Accounts Room. He spread the diagram on the desk, weighing the corners with the paperweight, the abacus, and a lamp. She stood looking—first at the hand, then at the sockets. When she reached the five lines, she bent low, her nose half a foot from the silk.

"This is a formation."

"Mm."

"Not one for trapping people." She reached out, fingertip an inch from the silk, tracing the center line. "Four on the wrist, one in the palm. East Wood, South Fire, West Metal, North Water—and this middle one's Center Earth. I can read the characters beside the sockets."

Xu Yan didn't answer. Let her keep looking on her own.

She counted every finger joint, then counted again, then went back to study the length of the sleeve socket. The lamp flickered in a draft; she moved it farther away, afraid the oil smoke would stain the silk. The sunlight crawled across the window paper, one pane, then another. She looked for a full two-hour stretch. From the kitchen came the sound of bowls being collected, porcelain clinking against a basin.

"Five sockets need stones," she said at last, straightening. "The sockets are the formation anchors. The qi only flows when the stones are set. The lines run from the sockets to the finger joints, and that's what moves the fingers."

"Whose qi goes into the stones?"

Bai Xiaoman pressed her lips together and pointed at the sleeve socket. "These lines underneath the sockets wrap back around the socket. The qi comes from the sleeve." She looked up at him. "It has to be Elder Cheng's own. If someone else's qi goes in for him, that's someone else's qi—the fingers won't recognize it."

"Who's going to tell him that?" She lowered her hand. "I mean—how do you say it to him?"

"I'll tell him."

"How will you put it?"

"After the thing is on the table in front of him."

Xu Yan's finger tapped the desk. The alchemy flame is Cheng Banshan's own; no one else's hand can stand in. He'd said as much at the Medicine Hall the day before. And this page wasn't asking anyone to stand in for him either. It was asking him to get his own hand back—just a little.

"Can you build it?" he asked.

"Whether I can or can't isn't mine to say," she replied. "There isn't a single line on this page drawn for nothing. Every line has two ends—one in a socket, one on a finger joint, nothing broken in between. Whoever drew this made a working thing from it." She paused. "Sect Master, where did this diagram come from?"

"The storehouse."

"How would the storehouse have something like this?"

"The Founder's leavings all have their places," Xu Yan said. "Recorded under someone's name, for when that person needs them."

Bai Xiaoman didn't ask more. She lowered her head and carefully smoothed the four corners of the silk. She'd stopped fussing with her abacus; she just held it.

After another while, she pointed at the four sockets on the wrist. "Four stones here, one in the palm." Her fingertip traced half a circle around the palm socket, then she looked up. "Sect Master, the stones don't have to be whole. The sockets are only so big—a whole stone might not seat flush. Broken pieces wedge in tight, and the qi flows the same."

"Won't the broken ones fall out?"

"They can't. The sockets have bottoms, and the top gets sealed." Her voice had gone quiet, as if only now realizing what the seal would need to be, how it would work. "...Let me think on it more."

Xu Yan gave her a look. She wiped her hand on her front placket, smearing off the dust.

"Hardwood," she said. "Spirit copper wire. And five formation stones. Broken ones will do."

Xu Yan studied the five empty sockets for a while.

"There's a market fair on the fifteenth."