Chapter 234: The Goods Are Yours

The bottom corner of the market box knocked against the threshold with a thud. Xu Yan shifted the strap from his left shoulder across to his right ribs and pulled it tight.

Mao hour. The sky wasn't fully bright yet. Night leaves lay scattered over the stone slabs in front of the mountain gate. Nie Bo's broom swept across, gathering the leaves into a pile. He stepped forward half a pace, then swept again.

"Going down the mountain," Xu Yan said.

Nie Bo straightened up, his eyes lingering on that box for a moment. The broom rested against the stone, then lifted and swept on.

Ten li of mountain road. Shao Ming waited on the west slope, a carrying pole over his shoulder, hemp rope wound around its ends. He walked behind, half a step back, glancing up at the box every so often. The sky brightened layer by layer. Mist sat on the ridge, pressing south, thinning out halfway down the mountain to reveal the fields below. Water stood in the paddies, a thin line of white on the surface.

"Cold at night now," Shao Ming said.

"Mm."

"A little over a month until the autumn harvest. Wang Shuan's twelve mu — the water's holding."

Xu Yan grunted in acknowledgment. The pill in his dantian rose slowly, broke apart on its own at his chest, then settled back down. He didn't chase it.

Chen hour. The town gate.

Market Street ran from the town gate clear to the wharf. Stalls were already set out — vegetable sellers, cloth sellers, charcoal sellers, people crowding in front, voices stacking up layer on layer. Xu Yan threaded through the crowd, not walking fast.

A rogue cultivator squatting behind his stall sorting spirit herbs looked up, saw him, paused for a moment, then lowered his head and went back to sorting.

Further on, two men carrying firewood turned sideways to give way, eyes fixed on their own feet.

Xu Yan passed between them without stopping. On the sixteenth day of the Fifth Month, two bolts of lightning had struck behind the mountain, and everyone in Luoxia Town had seen it. These past few market days, no one had asked him about it face to face. They just lowered their heads when they saw him.

By the third pillar against the wall, two pots of spirit meals were already set up, white steam rising along the old tile eaves. Qian Duoduo squatted by the pots, laying out coarse bowls one by one. Du Xiaochuan used a bamboo pole to lift the wind-blocking cloth over the eaves.

"Sect Master." Qian Duoduo looked up. "Pot's boiling. A bowl first?"

"Not eating. The market gate's about to open."

"I'll save you a bowl. If you don't come back before closing, I'll bring it over."

Du Xiaochuan braced the pole and turned. "Today's business is thin. First pot's been going and it's not half gone."

"If it's slow, keep it simmering longer," Xu Yan said.

"Simmer it too long and the spirit rice turns to mush." Qian Duoduo tapped the pot rim with his ladle. "I've got a feel for it."

Xu Yan grunted and headed for the grain shop's back courtyard.

The door panel on the courtyard's east side was newly replaced; the hinge creaked when it opened. Someone inside was dragging sacks across the ground. He looked up, then lowered his head and kept dragging. The plaque reading "Qingya Market" hung straight above the door. Xu Yan glanced up at it — he'd written the characters himself. The ink had bitten deep into the wood, and after half a year of sun, the edges hadn't peeled.

A man sat on the stone steps by the door, a small cloth sack resting on his knees. When he saw Xu Yan coming, he stood and stepped aside, watching Shao Ming hang the scale. Once the scale was hung and the hand scale was up too, he picked up his sack and walked off toward Market Street.

Xu Yan didn't call after him.

The door panel wedged against the wall. The scale hook went on the nail inside the door, the beam lowered, the weight sliding on its own to the bottom. The hand scale came out of its wooden case and hung on the nail beside the scale. Shao Ming wiped down the counter with a rag, then pressed down the bottom corner of the market rules posted on the door — the paper had been up for half a year, and the edge was starting to curl.

Xu Yan opened the market ledger and ground ink. The ink was the leftover stub from last time, hardened. He added two drops of water, worked it around once, dipped the brush, and wrote the date at the top of the page.

The fifth day of the Sixth Month.

From Chen hour to Si hour, few people came through the door.

The first was a rogue cultivator with a bundle of spirit herbs over his shoulder. He set it on the counter. "Consignment."

Shao Ming hung the herbs on the scale hook. The beam rose; he read the measurement and called it out. Then he hung the weight back on its nail, the beam tilted, and stepped back to stand against the wall inside the door.

"What price?" Xu Yan asked.

The man hesitated. "What did other people sell for last time?"

"Your goods, your price," Xu Yan said. "The market sells at your price. If it doesn't move, we won't lower it for you."

The man thought it over and gave a number. Xu Yan wrote it on a paper tally, stuck the tally into the bundle, and added a line in the market ledger: who, what, how many bundles, what price, sold or not.

The second only wanted a weighing. A small cloth sack, emptied out to half a bag of grass seed. Shao Ming weighed it. The man noted it down on a piece of paper he'd brought, poured the seed back into the sack, and left carrying it.

The third asked about prices — how much for a bundle of spirit herbs. He asked, didn't buy, and paused at the threshold on his way out.

All morning, only one person brought spirit herbs in for consignment.

Xu Yan went to the doorway and stood there for a while. Market Street wasn't empty. There was a short line at the grain shop, and people stood in front of every stall. But few turned toward the market gate.

Late Chen hour, a rogue cultivator came in and asked, "Does the market buy spirit herbs?"

"No," Shao Ming said. "Weighing and consignment only."

"I need money now."

Shao Ming glanced at him and jutted his chin toward the street. "Then go to the wharf."

The man left.

Si hour. Qi Qi came running from the far end of Market Street, pulled up at the door, and braced both hands on the frame to catch his breath.

"Ten bottles set out at the stall," he said. "Sold three loose. There's still a pot and a half of spirit meals."

"Got it."

"Market?"

"Two transactions."

Qi Qi made an "oh" sound and went inside. By the back room door lay a stack of empty baskets, accumulated since the Twelfth Month. He carried them two at a time to the base of the wall and stacked them up. At the fifth one he clapped the dust off his hands.

"These baskets in the back — should we haul them up the mountain?" he asked. "They're just taking up space."

"Keep them. We'll need them when consignment goods pick up."

Mid-Si hour, a man came through the door.

He carried a bamboo back basket slung mouth-down over his shoulder, empty inside. Coarse cloth clothes, trouser legs tied, wet mud on his shoe soles — he'd come by the river path.

He didn't head for the scale. He stood in front of the counter.

Xu Yan looked up. This man had been here several times. The market ledger had several lines for him, all marked "Back-Basket Man" — that line had been Bai Xiaoman's edit, and her characters were a size bigger than his own. In the three market days of the Fifth Month, every load he'd brought had been spirit herbs.

"Basket's empty," Xu Yan said.

"Empty."

The man took the basket off his shoulder, set it against the counter, looked once at the scale by the door, then spoke.

"I've come to say something."

"The spirit herbs I consigned in the Fifth Month — they sold, right?"

Xu Yan opened the market ledger, found the line, and checked it. "Sold. The money's recorded under your name. You pick it up the tenth day of the Eighth Month."

The man nodded.

"The Wanbao Tower outfit at the wharf that buys spirit herbs raised their price ten percent starting today. Cash on the spot." He said it evenly. "The market's money has to wait until the tenth day of the Eighth Month. I can't wait."

He paused.

"From now on, my spirit herbs go to the wharf. For the ones already sold, I'll come back on the tenth day of the Eighth Month."

The brush in Xu Yan's hand still stood on the ledger, that drop of ink at the tip threatening to fall. He lifted it.

"The goods are yours," he said.

The man waited. There was no second sentence.

He swung the basket back onto his shoulder, the bottom knocking against his waist. "The tenth day of the Eighth Month." He said it once and went out the door.

He didn't go up the north end of Market Street. He skirted the back wall of the market and took the small path along the river, downstream.

Qi Qi, still holding a basket by the wall, watched the man's back. "He's going to the wharf."

Shao Ming stood at the wall, took the weight off the nail, rehung it level, and said nothing.

Xu Yan tapped his brush against the inkstone's rim and set it back on the brush rest.

The market had no grounds to stop him. The goods sat in his basket; the scale spoke for no one, and the market did business for no one. The man had come to make things clear: the money stayed recorded under his name, and he'd come to collect on the tenth day of the Eighth Month as always. He'd taken away neither the man nor the account.

Xu Yan added no extra characters to that line in the market ledger.

He didn't know the wharf's buying price. What ten percent came to, he couldn't calculate — that ledger wasn't in his hands. What the market sold for was in the books; what the wharf paid was reckoned at that table on the dock.

In the half shichen that followed, three people came in: one to weigh, one to ask about prices and leave without buying, one to consign four talisman papers. Xu Yan counted the talismans, asked the price, wrote it down, and locked them in the cabinet. The bottom shelf still held other people's small items, sitting there a month without a single inquiry.

Late Si hour, the market broke up. The noise on Market Street settled layer by layer; stalls rolled up; pots came down. Qian Duoduo stood in line at the grain shop, restocking spirit rice for the next market day. Du Xiaochuan scrubbed out the two pots and turned them upside down, one at each end of his carrying pole.

Late Wu hour, closing time.

Shao Ming took down the scale, wiped the beam with his sleeve, and hung the weight back in its cloth bag. The hand scale came off its nail and went into the wooden case. Xu Yan closed the market ledger, counted the money in the market box, locked it, and put it on his back.

"Today the scale weighed six times," Shao Ming said.

"The twenty-fifth of last month — how many?"

Shao Ming thought. "Twenty or so."

"Mm."

"Sect Master." Shao Ming took the carrying pole from the corner and settled it on his shoulder. "The market doesn't charge for weighing, and consignment takes no commission. People heading to the wharf aren't turning their noses up at our scale."

"I know."

"Then why keep it open?"

"Keep it open." Xu Yan slid the wooden latch in. "If the market never closes, people always have a second place to go."

Shao Ming said nothing more and went out first.

Wei hour, out of the town. Qian Duoduo and Du Xiaochuan walked ahead with the pots on a pole, cloth padding the bottoms, swinging gently. Shao Ming carried two sacks of spirit rice, the pole bending slightly under the weight.

After a stretch, Qian Duoduo looked back. "Sect Master, how many sellers brought goods to the market today?"

"Two. One with spirit herbs."

"Last month?"

"Three to five per market day."

Qian Duoduo made an "oh" sound, switched the pole to his other shoulder, and didn't ask again.

Up the mountain road, pines on both sides, wind coming down off the ridge with a grassy smell.

Qi Qi walked fast, ran on ahead, then doubled back to walk beside Xu Yan.

"Sect Master."

"Mm."

"I came down at Si hour. Passed by the wharf gate."

He walked up two more steps before saying the rest. "The buyers' table had a wooden sign propped on it. A whole crowd around it — all carrying spirit herbs."

Xu Yan's steps slowed half a beat.

"What did the sign say?"

"Charcoal writing. Top lines: what they buy, what price." Qi Qi thought for a moment. "The price line was new. The old line underneath hadn't been fully erased."

"The people crowded around — were they reading prices or weighing?"

Qi Qi shook his head. "They were in line. Not one left."

Xu Yan hitched the market box higher. The mountain road curved; the rooftops below dropped behind the trees, the white line of the river still bright.

"Move," he said.

Qi Qi ran ahead to take the other end of Shao Ming's load. Xu Yan climbed step by step, the market box on his back, the strap digging into his shoulder.