Chapter 224: The Fourth Month Market Ledger

The twentieth day of the Fourth Month, Dragon hour. The Market opened its doors.

Shao Ming hauled the door panels off one by one and leaned them neatly against the base of the wall. Sunlight over Market Street had already cleared the roof ridge and now fell on the flagstones in front of the Market gate, glaring white. On the counter, ten small porcelain vials stood in a row, labels facing the door—the batch from the eighteenth day of the Fourth Month.

Xu Yan spread the market ledger open on the counter, brush resting on the inkstone's edge.

The first man through the door carried a bundle of grass on his back, the hemp rope cutting three deep grooves into it, the loose end knotted at his chest. As soon as he came in, he lowered the bundle to the floor, straightened his back, then crouched and lifted it onto the scale hook. Shao Ming slid the weight along the beam and watched it level out, then called the number.

"Twenty-one jin."

Xu Yan looked up. On the fifteenth day of the Third Month, this man had walked through the Market gate slowly, his face clouded gray.

"You recognize me," the man said first.

"Do your meridians still ache?"

"They don't." He lifted the grass bundle off the hook and carried it to the compartment under the counter. "Haven't for a while now. This bundle I cut myself, up the mountain. Took two days."

Another man came in behind him, also carrying a grass bundle, his step quicker than the first. He slung his grass onto the scale, pressed his palm down on the knot, and said, "Mine first—we're in a hurry to get back."

"Hurry for what?" Shao Ming asked.

"There's another stretch of grass left once we finish that patch." The man watched the scale beam. "Got to dry it while the weather holds. If it doesn't dry out, carrying it down was a waste."

Shao Ming called the number and steadied the weight. Xu Yan wrote in the market ledger: date, goods, weight. When he reached the price column, he slid the charcoal stick across.

"Write it yourself."

The first man waved a hand. "I can't read much."

"He can." The second man took the charcoal stick, crouched in front of the counter, and wrote two price labels stroke by stroke. He stood up and slipped them into the crack of the cabinet doors, labels facing outward. He stepped back to look, then reached out, pulled the first one free, lowered the price by two, and tucked it back in.

"If it won't sell, I'll change it next market day," he said.

"You don't have to wait for market day to change a price," Xu Yan said. "You can change it on any market day you come."

The man who had written first stopped at the counter, picked up one of the small porcelain vials, and held it up to the light by the doorway to read the label.

"The eighteenth day of the Fourth Month," he recited. "Yours came out on the eighteenth day of the Fourth Month?"

Xu Yan opened the furnace log, turned to that line, and pushed it over.

The man bent his head, one finger pressed to the paper, and read the line aloud. When he finished, he looked up. "I can't read. I just know these numbers." He counted eight spirit stones onto the counter, one by one, tucked the vial against his chest, and walked to the door. Then he looked back. "That Steward Miao who came last time said: check the date. I remembered. If the date on the label isn't in the furnace log, then it isn't yours."

"That's the way to check," Xu Yan said.

"Then I'll buy again next time. I've been too scared to buy for a month."

The two men went out one after the other, their grass bundles left in the compartment under the counter, roots facing roots.

Shao Ming wiped down the scale hook, hung it back on the wall. The weight dropped into the scale pan with a clink.

"Dry grass, all the way through," he said. "Drier than the sect families'."

"They come down the mountain road—one trip takes a full day," Xu Yan said.

Shao Ming set the weight straight in the pan and went over to sort through the compartment below.

Around Snake hour, people came and went through the Market. A rogue cultivator carrying grass rope put his grass on the scale, then crouched by the counter to compare the thickness with the bundle he'd left last time. A woman with a basket poked her head through the doorway and asked whether Willow Bank Gate's spirit bamboo splints were still in stock. Shao Ming said what was stacked in the cabinet was other sects' goods—if she wanted to buy, she could read the price labels herself.

At mid–Snake hour, Elder Kuang of Azure Brook Sect came through the door in an old kudzu-cloth robe. He didn't go straight to the counter. He stopped just inside the threshold and let his eyes travel from the countertop down to the compartment beneath before stepping forward.

"Sect Master Xu."

"Elder Kuang." Xu Yan shifted the market ledger aside to clear half the counter.

Kuang Lun untied the bundle from his back and opened it layer by layer: three bundles of sun-dried spirit grass, the binding still caked with yellow mountain mud; several old talismans, corners curled. He wrote the prices himself, characters large, settling each stroke onto the label. When he finished, he tucked them into the cabinet door crack. At the third label, he bent down and looked over the labels in Willow Bank Gate's half of the compartment.

Shao Ming weighed the bundles one by one and called out the numbers.

"Linchuan," Kuang Lun said once the last bundle was weighed. "What was the final word?"

Xu Yan used the counter as his desk and told it from the beginning, just as he had for Steward Miao. When he got to the part where the alchemist personally inspected the medicinal dregs, Kuang Lun's fingers curled where they rested on the bundle cloth. When he got to the chest in the outside-city warehouse—inside it, pre-printed labels with the dates left blank, the Branch sealing the chest—Kuang Lun's eyes lifted briefly, then dropped back to his own three grass bundles on the counter. When he got to the Rank Evaluator arriving in Luoxia before the Autumn Evaluation, Kuang Lun nodded once and said nothing.

He listened with one hand resting on the bundle the whole time. When Xu Yan finished, he asked, "The seal strip on the chest was the Branch's."

"The Branch's. Stamped."

"A whole stack of labels, every date blank."

"Every one blank."

Kuang Lun drew his hand back from the bundle, straightened the ends of the binding rope, and stacked the three grass bundles into the compartment under the counter, knots facing outward.

Xu Yan said nothing more either. Outside on Market Street, someone called out a price, the voice filtering through the door panels.

"Noted," Kuang Lun said.

He folded the empty cloth, tucked it into his robes, and walked to the door. He looked up once at the plaque over the lintel, then left.

At the tail of Horse hour, Shao Ming set the door panels back in place one by one, tapping the wedges in with the heel of his palm. Xu Yan turned the market ledger to the Fourth Month's pages and counted the squares page by page—each market day had more than the last.

Shao Ming pushed the final panel tight.

The twenty-fifth day of the Fourth Month, another market day like the last.

Before dawn, Qian Duoduo and Du Xiaochuan each carried a pot down the mountain, and the two pots sold out by the end of Snake hour. The number of people weighing goods at the Market was up again from the twentieth, and the compartment under the counter was stacked to overflowing: Willow Bank Gate's spirit bamboo splints, Azure Brook Sect's grass bundles, the rogue cultivators' stuffed beneath, only Ink Pool Gate's slot standing empty.

A rogue cultivator pulled two grass bundles from the deepest part of the cabinet and checked the price label, brushed a layer of dust from its corner with his sleeve, and carried them toward the door. Stock that didn't sell, the owner took back—that was Market rules; no one stopped him. He paused on the threshold. "Next batch of pills—still on the tenth-day market?"

"The tenth-day market," Xu Yan said.

"Then I'll come on the thirtieth." He hoisted the bundles onto his shoulder. "This time I want to see the date on the label with my own eyes."

At mid–Snake hour, Miao Zhong came in carrying a bundle of talisman paper on his back, put it on the scale, and had it recorded under his name as usual. He stacked the talisman paper into the cabinet, pushing each pile toward the back. When he finished, he didn't leave right away; he stood at the counter looking down at the compartment below.

"They've come back," he said.

"Most of them have," Xu Yan said.

Miao Zhong nodded, picked up his empty rope, and went out the door.

The thirtieth day of the Fourth Month, the last market day of the month.

The eighth batch of Qi-Gathering Pills came out on the twenty-eighth day of the Fourth Month—ten pills—and was set on the counter at Dragon hour. This time Xu Yan didn't need to show anyone the furnace log. The buyers read the labels themselves: the twenty-eighth day of the Fourth Month. The twenty-eighth day of the Fourth Month. Then counted spirit stones onto the counter.

By the end of Snake hour, only two vials remained. The woman with the basket and a rogue cultivator coming up from the wharf—one each. They took them and went. The rogue cultivator paused at the threshold and looked back. "Will you be selling next month?"

"Tenth-day market," Xu Yan said.

The Market's alchemy ingredients had to be picked from consignment stock. Xu Yan crouched in front of the compartment under the counter and pulled the bundles out one by one to inspect: stone lichen, purple-skin root, eclipta leaf—enough for one batch. The three came to twenty spirit stones. He counted them out and dropped them into the market box, then added a line in the market ledger for each: which day it had been left, which item, how much.

Qi Qi bought a load and a half of charcoal at the wharf—fifteen spirit stones—carried it on a pole to the Market gate, rested a moment, then attached it to his own carrying rig. Qian Duoduo and Du Xiaochuan bought the Fifth Month's rations at the grain shop—fifty spirit stones: two sacks of spirit rice, one of coarse grain. The two sacks of spirit rice went on top of Du Xiaochuan's empty pot; the coarse grain sack Qian Duoduo hung behind his own load. The two carrying rigs went out of the grain shop one after the other.

Out of town at Wei hour, back to the mountain gate at Shen hour. Nie Bo swept beneath the gate; his broom paused as Xu Yan passed, then settled back down.

Lamps lit. The Accounts Room.

Xu Yan turned up the oil lamp. Three things lay spread on the desk: the account book, the furnace log, the market ledger. He looked at the furnace log first. One batch per line: the eighteenth day of the Second Month, the twenty-eighth day of the Second Month, the eighth day of the Third Month, the eighteenth day of the Third Month, the twenty-eighth day of the Third Month, the eighth day of the Fourth Month, the eighteenth day of the Fourth Month, the twenty-eighth day of the Fourth Month. The ink on that last line was still fresh: the twenty-eighth day of the Fourth Month, Qi-Gathering Pills, ten.

He flipped the account book to the page for the first day of the Fourth Month and worked down, adding line by line.

Six market days, one hundred per day—six hundred. Qi-Gathering Pills three times: the tenth, the twentieth, the thirtieth—eighty each. Ingredients and charcoal also three times: twenty per batch, fifteen for a load and a half of charcoal. Rations once, fifty—the Fifth Month's, purchased today.

Midway through, he stopped, flipped back to the page for the thirtieth day of the Third Month, and reread the number carried over from the previous month. Then he turned back and kept adding.

The brush tip paused on the paper, and he wrote a line: Balance on hand—spirit stones, 7,937.

The ten taels of silver were in the smaller book, managed by Bai Xiaoman—not a tael touched this month.

He carried the market box to the edge of the desk, opened it, and counted. The total he wrote on a slip, and the slip he pressed inside the market ledger. That was not Qingya's money, so the slip was kept separate.

The market box was locked and set a foot apart from the iron cash box, pushed back beneath the ledger rack. The furnace log went on top of the account book, both pressed together beneath the board at the bottom of the rack. The account book itself went back inside his robes.

He blew out the lamp and stood at the door of the Accounts Room.

The front courtyard was empty. Against the wall beneath the veranda stood the wooden target, the hole in its center lit by moonlight—a single dark point. Under the veranda pillar lay Huo Qing's sword sheath, the cloth wrapping half unraveled, untied.

There was still the sound of water from the kitchen. A He came around from behind the kitchen carrying two small buckets. He saw the lamp in the Accounts Room was out and stopped anyway.

"Sect Master."

"The vat's full?"

"Full. Took three trips." He set the buckets down at the foot of the steps. "Going down the mountain again tomorrow?"

"Not tomorrow," Xu Yan said. "Tomorrow the Medicine Hall fires up."

A He nodded and ran back.

There was movement over by the Medicine Hall.

Xu Yan walked over. The Medicine Hall's door stood half open, no lamp inside—just a line of red at the base of the furnace. Cheng Banshan crouched before the furnace, one hand on the furnace hook, dragging the ash out into the clay basin below the firebox mouth. After a while, he tapped the hook's point against the stone at the bottom of the chamber; ash fell. Charcoal was already stacked along the wall beneath the reed mat, boards between each layer.

"The ash is cleared," Xu Yan said from the doorway.

Cheng Banshan didn't turn around. "The iron's thinned a layer. Add a fresh one in the morning."

"In the morning."

"In the morning." He slid the furnace lid back over the mouth. The iron ring clanked against the rim. "Batch nine."