Chapter 211: Spirit Copper Wire and Broken Formation Stones

Before dawn on the fifteenth day of the First Month, smoke rose from the kitchen chimney first.

Qian Duoduo divided a pot of spirit meal into two wooden buckets, pressed a wet cloth over each mouth, then weighted the cloths down with stones. Du Xiaochuan set the carrying pole across his shoulders and bounced it twice to test the weight. By the kitchen door, Bai Xiaoman already had her bundle on her back, old mountain-walking shoes on her feet, her skirt hem tucked into her waistband, standing below the steps waiting.

"What are you going down for?" Qian Duoduo asked.

"To buy materials."

"What materials?"

"Materials for making a hand."

Qian Duoduo stood holding the buckets, studied her for a while, then looked at Du Xiaochuan. Du Xiaochuan shook his head. Xu Yan came around from the west side of the kitchen, the market ledger in one hand and the market box in the other, with Qi Qi following behind—he would leave after the Medicine Hall's Chen-hour batch of Qi-Gathering Powder came out. Xu Yan looked at Bai Xiaoman's bundle. "Brought the diagram?"

"Brought it."

"Don't gawk on the way down. Once you're in the market, look at the goods in the cabinet one by one. Speak only when you're sure."

"Mm."

They left through the Mountain Gate at the Mao hour. Ten li of mountain road, the sky going from pale gray to full daylight. Luoxia Town's tile roofs floated up out of the fog one by one. By the Chen hour they reached the Town Gate, and the market street was already packed—people with baskets on their backs, carrying poles over their shoulders, driving carts, cramming the whole street into a single seam.

The Market opened at the Chen hour too. Xu Yan took down the door panel on the east wall and leaned it inside. Shao Ming hauled out the old scale by the door, hung the beam on the iron hook inside, set the weight level, and wiped the scale stars with his sleeve. Bai Xiaoman stood outside the threshold for a while, looked up at the plaque over the door lintel, looked down at her own feet, then stepped in.

There were already people inside. Two rogue cultivators set their basket on the scale pan; one called out the number, the other watched the stars and read them, each announcing the jin and liang aloud for themselves. A man with a carrying pole over his shoulder came down the middle of the street and tossed a line through the doorway—"Don't let your stall block the road"—then kept walking, the pole ends bobbing as he left the street mouth.

Bai Xiaoman didn't go near the scale. She crouched down in front of the cabinet just inside the door.

One cell per vendor's goods, with a label pasted behind each cell. Ink Pool Gate's talisman paper stacked neat; Willow Bank Gate's spirit bamboo splints laid sideways; Azure Brook Sect's spirit herbs tied with cord. In the bottom cell sat a small burlap sack tied with a hemp cord, and leaning against it, a coil of copper wire with a scrap of cloth strip wrapped around it.

She lifted the sack out, set it on her knees, untied it, and tipped it onto the cabinet top. A pile of broken formation stones spilled out, all different sizes, the smallest no bigger than a fingernail.

She picked them up one by one and held them to the slanted light coming through the doorway. One had a darkened fracture face; she scraped it twice with a nail, set it down. Another's internal veining ran crooked; she turned it in the light twice, set it down too. The ones she chose went onto the cabinet top, lined up in a row. At the fourth stone, she picked it up and tapped it twice against the cabinet board, listened to the sound, and nodded.

Shao Ming was watching the scale by the door. He glanced back at her.

"Five." She set the last one into the row and counted again herself.

"Enough?"

"Enough. Four slots on the wrist, one in the palm." She retied the burlap sack and pushed it back into its cell. The rest stayed in the sack. "These few all have straight veining. If the vein breaks at the edge, it's no good—qi stops when it reaches there. And if it sounds dull when you knock it, that's no good either, the inside's rotten."

"Who taught you to check that?"

"Senior Sister taught me about tapping stones and listening. The veining—I worked that out myself. When we set a trapping formation, if the stones are wrong, the formation won't rise."

She took down the coil of copper wire and shook out about a chi of it. The wire was fine, taking up little space around her hand. She pinched one end, flicked it with the back of her other hand and listened, then held it to the light to check the color before setting it down, reel and all.

A rogue cultivator with a basket on his back had finished at the scale but hadn't left. He stood watching for a while, then asked Xu Yan, "You people buy broken stones too?"

"If someone wants them, the Market sells them," Xu Yan said.

"I've got half a basket at home, all chipped off when we were cutting the big blocks. Felt wrong throwing them out."

"Bring them next market day. We'll weigh them, you set your own price, and it'll be recorded under your name."

The rogue cultivator answered, hoisted his basket, and headed out. At the door he turned back to look once more at that row of small stones on the cabinet top.

Xu Yan came over then, spread the market ledger on the cabinet top, and flipped page by page to the entry for the fifth: one bag of stones, one coil of copper wire, each with a price listed; the date, goods, and price all written down, the name column blank.

Bai Xiaoman looked up. "Sect Master, what's this person's surname?"

"He didn't leave a name," Xu Yan said. "On the fifth he came in with a basket, dumped the stones onto the scale pan, and called out the count himself. He couldn't hold a brush to write his own label, so I wrote it for him."

He counted fifteen stones from the Qingya money pouch and set them one by one into the market box, clicked the bronze lock shut, then added a line beneath that entry in the ledger: the fifteenth day of the First Month, Qingya buys. The characters were written beneath the man's name—settle on the tenth day of the Eighth Month; he would come to collect the money.

"Fifteen stones." Bai Xiaoman read the words aloud, counted on her fingers for a while, then lowered her voice. "The Tower won't sell to us, but our own Market has it."

Xu Yan said nothing.

"How long can one copper wire stretch?"

"Pick your stones first."

"I'm counting how many times I can ruin a piece." She measured a length with both hands. "Ruin three, there's still a bit left."

Xu Yan tapped his brush against the inkstone cover and closed the ledger. "The materials are bought. If you can't make the thing, that's what's truly expensive."

Bai Xiaoman lowered her head and packed the five stones and the coil of copper wire into the old cloth in her bundle, tied the four corners into two knots, and held it to her chest—held it the way one might hold a furnace of freshly made pills.

At the Si hour, Miao Zhong came in with a bundle of talisman paper on his back. He set it on the scale, glanced at the stars, said "A few more sheets than last time," and was about to speak when he noticed the row of small stones on the cabinet top.

"Those stones are still good for something?"

"They're useful," Bai Xiaoman said.

"Shattered like that." Miao Zhong picked one up, rubbed it between his fingers, and put it back.

"Shattered still works," she said. "If they're broken, you pack them tight, they'll seat."

Miao Zhong laughed once, stacked the talisman paper bundle by bundle, wrote his own label, and said, "Sect Master Xu, your Market can even sell broken stones."

"The Market doesn't sell stones," Xu Yan said. "The Market sells whatever someone has a use for."

Miao Zhong set the brush down, shot another glance at the cabinet top, and went out.

By late Si hour, the gathering broke up. Most of the people who'd come to weigh, collect, and settle accounts had gone. At the end of the Wu hour, Xu Yan fitted the door panel back in place and locked up, carrying the ledger and the box together. They left town at the Wei hour, took the mountain road, and reached the Mountain Gate at the Shen hour, the sun already leaning west.

Bai Xiaoman had walked fast the whole way, ahead of everyone, only slowing at the stone steps of the Mountain Gate. The frost on the steps had long since melted; Nie Bo's broom marks still showed in the cracks between the stones.

She remembered something and turned back. "Sect Master, which year did Elder Cheng lose his hand?"

"No one ever said."

"You don't know either?"

"He hasn't said, so I don't ask." Xu Yan shifted the market box to his other hand. "If he doesn't say it, he has his reasons. Making this thing for his hand matters more than asking."

Bai Xiaoman hugged the bundle to her chest and asked no more.

She went straight to the Medicine Hall and spread the bundle out on that table by the window. The four corners of the old cloth came undone, the five broken formation stones rolled out, and the copper wire pressed a curve into the cloth. Cheng Banshan was over by the wood stove simmering his Qi-Gathering Powder. He heard the sound, walked over, and nudged the stones with one finger.

"Broken."

"The diagram says broken works," Bai Xiaoman said.

Cheng Banshan drew his hand back. The empty half-sleeve tucked into his waistband shifted with the motion. He turned to adjust the fire in the stove and said nothing more.

Bai Xiaoman laid the stones out one by one and spread the diagram beside them, studying it against the light: which stone went on the wrist, which in the palm. She kept at it until lamp-lighting time.

Before dawn on the sixteenth, there was noise under the front veranda. Huo Qing was practicing that single thrust against the wooden target, again and again, and a new ring of wood shavings had fallen around the pit in the bullseye.

At the Chen hour, Shi Po circled northwest from the old herb garden behind the Medicine Hall and into the West Gully. He carried no tools, only a hemp rope. When he came back, a section of dead hardwood weighed on his shoulder—thicker than a bowl's mouth, longer than an arm, one end already hollowed out by rot. He walked to the back wall of the Medicine Hall and dropped the wood to the ground. It landed with a dull thud, and the stack of old firewood by the wall jumped.

The thrust under the veranda paused for an instant, then continued.

Shao Ming came over with the leftover saw, chisel, and plane from the storeroom repairs. He squatted and drew lines with a charcoal stick. "One section for the arm sleeve, one for the palm bones, one for the finger joints." The wood was sawn into three sections, the shavings falling at the foot of the wall.

Bai Xiaoman crouched at the cut edge and ran a finger over the saw marks. "This piece is a little slanted."

"Slanted gets sawn off and planed flat," Shao Ming said, resting the saw on the wood. "You just do the carving. I'll do the sawing for you."

Shi Po straightened, looked at the three sections of wood, then at Bai Xiaoman. "Need more?"

"This section's enough for now," she said.

Shi Po coiled the rope and tucked it into his waistband.

Wei hour, outer room of the Medicine Hall. Bai Xiaoman cleared half of the table by the window, spread out the formation-hand diagram, weighted the corners with broken stones, and took up the hemp line. Cheng Banshan sat down across the table.

"Where do you measure?" he asked.

"The diagram says: one loop around the break; and from the break to the base of the palm."

Cheng Banshan looked at the diagram for a long while. He pulled the empty half-sleeve from his waistband, gathered the cuff up with his one hand, and turned his face toward the stove mouth, exposing the break to her.

The stove fire crackled once.

Bai Xiaoman looped the line around for a first try. It slid loose at the break. She drew it away, pressed her lips together, and looped it again—around once, pinching the crossing point and holding it tight with a fingernail. Keeping that fixed, she reached with the other hand for the charcoal stick, missing twice before she got it.

"Measured it twice," she said, afraid he would think she'd only done it once.

"Mm."

She drew a line with the charcoal in the blank margin of the diagram and marked it in her own notation, then measured again from the break to the base of the palm and recorded that end too.

"I haven't figured out how to seal the top of the slot yet," she said, head down. "The stones seat in, the qi flows through, but it can't just stay open."

"Think it through before you make it," Cheng Banshan said. "Don't use my hand for experiments."

"I won't."

Cheng Banshan sat there, face still turned toward the stove mouth. After a while he asked, "Long enough?"

"Enough."

"Width?"

"The sawn sections leave extra. Carve until it fits."

"Did it hurt?" Bai Xiaoman asked quietly. "When I pulled the line."

"Doesn't hurt." He lowered the cuff. "It hasn't hurt for a long time. Your hand—don't shake."

"I wasn't shaking."

"You were. That first line—look for yourself. It ran a half-finger off."

Bai Xiaoman looked down at the line, her face reddening to her ears. She smudged that spot out with the charcoal, then drew it again, slower than before.

Cheng Banshan slowly tucked the half-sleeve back into his waistband, neat and even, pressed the knot at his waist once, then turned to face her.

"Measure it right. This is the only stump I've got. If it gets ruined, there's no second one for you to measure."