Chapter 223: The Second Carrying Pole

The sky wasn't fully light yet, and someone on Market Street was sweeping frost. By the third pillar against the wall, the stall board was already propped up. For the thirtieth-day fair of the Third Month, the pot came off the stove earlier than usual.

White steam slipped out from under the old tile eaves and drifted toward the river. Qian Duoduo gripped the pot handles with one hand and lifted the lid with the other. The heat hit him in the face and he turned his head.

"Last pot," he said.

Du Xiaochuan was laying out bowls beside him. Coarse bowls, upside down, set in two rows. The market crowd was arriving earlier than at the last few fairs. The first woman set her basket on the stall board, asked for a bowl, ate standing up, and after two mouthfuls turned to call her child.

They sold until the Snake Hour, when the scraping of the ladle against the pot bottom rang out. Qian Duoduo flipped the pot onto the carrying pole, wrapped the rope three times and cinched it tight, then counted the bowls. One short.

"Which one?"

"The kid carried it off just now," Du Xiaochuan said. "His mother paid."

Qian Duoduo grunted, lifted the pole to test it, and headed for the grain shop.

That day the Market sold its fifth batch of Qi-Gathering Pills. Ten pills, gone by the end of Chen Hour. One of the buyers held a bottle up to his eyes, read the date on the label aloud, and only then set his spirit stones on the counter. Xu Yan made a mark in the market book, then scraped the brush tip against the inkstone's edge.

Fourth Month rations: fifty stones. The abacus on the counter clicked as they counted spirit stones. The shop hand carried out two sacks of spirit rice and one sack of coarse grain from the back courtyard. Du Xiaochuan squatted, tied the three rope ends together, and heaved them onto his shoulder. Standing, he put real strength into his legs.

On the road back to the mountain, Qian Duoduo walked behind and suddenly said, "One pot isn't enough anymore."

"Then make it two," Xu Yan said.

Qian Duoduo stopped for a step. "Two pots. Forty bowls."

"One pot each."

Qian Duoduo looked back at Du Xiaochuan's load, then up at the sky. "Then we'll need another carrying pole."

There was one behind the kitchen. Qi Qi dug an old shoulder pole out from under the firewood pile, both ends split. Shao Ming sat on the low stool by the kitchen door, planed off the two cracked ends, cut two grooves, and threaded new rope through. They tested the pole on the shoulder twice. Du Xiaochuan said the heavy end pulled left, so Shao Ming adjusted the knot by one loop. They tested again. It balanced.

"Forty bowls. Enough?" Xu Yan asked.

Qian Duoduo squatted in front of the stove, calculating. His finger traced lines in the ash: how much rice per pot, how much for two pots, how many more firings a day. He finished and looked up. "Rice is enough. Water needs two extra trips."

"Then carry it," Xu Yan said.

At lamp-lighting on the fourth, there were two more people in the kitchen. A He came bucket by bucket, pouring into the vat, stopping two fingers below the rim and asking if it was enough. A Sui crouched by the carrying pole counting bowls. She reached twenty and started over; on the third attempt she laughed and said she couldn't keep track. Shi Po tested the ropes on both poles at the door and said this knot was loose.

"You loosen it, you tie it," Qian Duoduo said.

Shi Po undid the knot and retied it, slowly. He pulled at the finished knot before straightening up.

On the fifth day of the Fourth Month, before dawn, both pots in the kitchen burned red.

Qian Duoduo moved between the two pots, lifting the lid on one, adding water to the other, easing the fire each time the spirit rice hit the water. Two pots going at once cost half again as much firewood and half again as much labor as one. He walked a step, stopped, walked again, a fine layer of sweat on his forehead, no time to wipe it, pressing the back of his hand against his brow instead.

When the pots came off, the two carrying poles sat side by side at the kitchen door. Qian Duoduo wrapped the pots with reed mats, two layers, rope ends cinched to the crossbar. Du Xiaochuan squatted to test the weight, lifted it to his shoulder, and stood.

"Heavy," he said.

"Heavy means walk slower," Qian Duoduo said. "As long as it's still hot when we reach town."

They left the Mountain Gate before daylight. Nie Bo was sweeping at the base of the stone steps, his broom edging aside to leave half a step of room. The two of them went down one after the other, a thin line of white steam leaking from beneath the reed mats, drifting ahead along the mountain path.

At the halfway slope, Du Xiaochuan switched shoulders. At the official road crossing, Qian Duoduo called from behind asking if he wanted to switch again. Du Xiaochuan said no.

They entered town at Chen Hour. The stall board went up, the two pots set side by side, the reed mats peeled back halfway.

The first pot was half sold when a rogue cultivator with an empty back basket came from the east end of the market, saw the pot, and quickened his pace. "Any left?"

"One pot left," Qian Duoduo said.

He pulled the mat off the second pot. Steam billowed out, climbing along his arm. The rogue cultivator stood watching for a moment, then said, "One more pot."

"Starting the Fourth Month, two pots a fair," Qian Duoduo said.

The cultivator set down his basket, ordered a bowl, and squatted against the wall to eat.

The first few fairs of the Fourth Month were like that. Two pots sometimes sold clean, sometimes left half a pot. Before the market broke up, Qian Duoduo ladled the rest out to whoever hadn't left, money set on the stall board. That extra pot was measured out rice by rice, fair by fair.

Back at the mountain at Shen Hour, Cheng Banshan sat at the Medicine Hall door. He saw the two pots on the poles and asked, "Two pots now."

"Two pots," Xu Yan said.

"Where's the rice coming from?"

"Out of the Fourth Month rations. What's short, we buy at the market."

Cheng Banshan tapped the furnace hook against the rim, knocking the ash from the tip, and said nothing more.

The batch of Qi-Gathering Pills that came out on the eighth day of the Fourth Month: ten pills, not one cracked. When Cheng Banshan collected the pills, the formation hand held the tray while the other hand worked the pill fire, holding the furnace chamber down. Afterward he scraped the bottom with a bamboo sliver, and Xu Yan wrapped the powder in medicine paper, wrote the eighth day of the Fourth Month, and set it on the shelf.

The market sold that batch at the tenth-day fair.

They opened the doors at Chen Hour. Shao Ming took down the door panels and leaned them against the wall. Ten small porcelain vials stood in a row on the counter, labels facing the door. By Si Hour, only two had sold.

Each buyer was different from the last. Some held the vial up to the light at the door to read the label. Some scraped a corner of the label with a fingernail. Some pulled the stopper, sniffed, and plugged it back. One man set a vial back on the counter and asked, "How do I read this date?"

"The dates on the labels—they're all in the furnace log." Xu Yan spread the furnace log on the counter and turned to the last page. "The eighth day of the Fourth Month, ten Qi-Gathering Pills. These ten vials on the counter are that exact batch."

The man studied it, read that line in the log out loud, and only then counted spirit stones onto the counter.

Another customer came in, wiped his hands on his front placket, and turned the vial over to read the characters on the label. He looked for a long time. Finally he said, "I'll buy one first. If it works, I'll be back next time."

"Done," Xu Yan said.

Mid-Sì Hour, Zhuo Ying came in carrying two bundles of spirit bamboo splints.

"Sect Master Xu."

"Steward Zhuo." Xu Yan nudged the market book aside. "Time to weigh."

Shao Ming hung the bundles one by one on the scale hook and called out the numbers. Zhuo Ying wrote her own price tag in charcoal pencil and tucked it into the gap by the cabinet door, tag facing out. Only then did she straighten and wipe the charcoal dust on the hem of her robe.

"That stall at the south end of Linchuan," she said. "What exactly is the story?"

Xu Yan went over it from the beginning, the same way he'd told Steward Miao.

When he finished, Zhuo Ying neatened the rope end on the second bundle.

"Willow Bank Gate has heard too," she said.

"Heard what?"

"That it's Qingya's pills." She tucked the rope end into the bundle and pressed it down. "Disciples in my gate have asked me if the pills from this market are still safe to buy."

"What did you tell them?"

"I said I still buy them myself." She looked up. "Sect Master Xu, I'm not speaking for you. But the things my gate eats in a year need to be reliable. Your market is reliable."

Xu Yan didn't answer.

Zhuo Ying studied the row of vials on the counter. "Selling slow."

"Slow."

"My first fair, not a single bundle sold." She laughed a little at herself. "Then we go slowly." She moved the two bundles to the compartment under the cabinet, squatted to align the root ends, and stood. "I'll come next market."

At the threshold she paused and looked back. "How are those three doing?"

"Two are better," Xu Yan said. "The one from Ink Pool Gate still needs a little more time."

Zhuo Ying nodded once and went out, heading toward the north end of Market Street.

That batch of pills took until Wu Hour to sell out. The last two went to a rogue cultivator who came up from the wharf. He asked first, "You write these labels yourselves?" Xu Yan picked the brush off the shelf and showed him. The man bought both.

On the fifteenth, just after opening at Chen Hour, Miao Zhong arrived.

A man followed behind him, a bundle of talisman paper on his shoulder, the rope crossing his chest at an angle. He walked slowly and stubbed his foot on the threshold as he came in. Miao Zhong didn't look back. He took two steps and stopped in front of the scale to wait.

"Ink Pool Gate," Miao Zhong said. "One bundle of talisman paper."

Xu Yan glanced at the man behind him. "He's here too."

"Warmer weather," Miao Zhong said. "He can move now."

The man set the paper on the scale pan. The rope went slack and the paper spread halfway across the pan. His wrist shook as he let go, and he braced it against the scale's edge. Shao Ming added weights, watched the beam level out, and called the number. Xu Yan wrote in the market book: Ink Pool Gate, one bundle talisman paper.

"Rest a moment," Miao Zhong said.

The man shook his head, both hands braced on the scale pan's edge. It took him a while to straighten.

A rogue cultivator with straw rope slung over his shoulder came in and set his bundle down beside the scale, but his eyes went to the man. "You're the one, aren't you—the one who took the fake pill."

"I took it," the man said. "One pill."

"Which house did it come from?"

"The label said Qingya." The man paused. "It wasn't Qingya's."

The cultivator's hand stopped on the straw rope. "How do you know?"

"Sect Master Xu showed me the furnace log." The man said, "On the day written on that label, the furnace in the Medicine Hall hadn't even been lit yet."

The cultivator didn't ask more. He hung his bundle on the scale hook, got it weighed, mumbled the weight to himself twice, then carried the straw to the cabinet, squatted, and lined it up with the other bundles. After a moment he looked up. "This whole month, I haven't dared buy a single pill."

"From now on, when you buy, check the date," the man said. "Whatever day's on the label, ask them what came out of the furnace that day. If the furnace log is empty for that date, it's not theirs."

Miao Zhong was at the far end of the counter, stacking the talisman paper, pushing each stack inward, corners aligned. He didn't look toward the scale. When he'd stacked the last pile, he eased the cabinet door shut.

"Leaving," he said.

The man turned to go, then at the door looked back at Xu Yan.

"Still tight in the chest?" Xu Yan asked.

"No," the man said. "Yesterday I could draw qi again."

The two went out, Miao Zhong in front, the man behind. Shao Ming stood at the door and watched until they turned onto Market Street, then came back, lowered the scale hook half a finger to let the weight settle, and turned to tidy the bundles under the cabinet.

A quarter hour short of Wu Hour, the last few jin of straw went over the scale.

They closed at the end of Wu Hour. Shao Ming fitted the door panels back one by one, pounding the wedges in with his palm. Xu Yan spread the market book on the counter and turned pages from the tenth-day entry ahead. Today's row held several more lines than the tenth.

He set the brush on the inkstone's edge and did not add a single character.

Beyond the door panels, people still walked on Market Street. The fair had long broken up. The footsteps were coming down from the wharf.