Chapter 241: The Last Line of the Market Rules

On the fifth day of the Seventh Month, during the Dragon hour, Shao Ming lifted the door panel facing Market Street off its track and leaned it against the inner wall. Turning back, he hung the scale. The hook latched onto the iron ring beneath the door lintel, the beam hanging straight. He flicked it with the back of his hand; the beam swayed a few times and stilled. The oil lamp on the counter he moved to the inner corner, clearing space for the market ledger.

Behind the counter, Xu Yan opened the market ledger and turned to a fresh page, writing "Seventh Month" at the top. The ink had been ground that morning on the mountain, still wet. On this page, each line recorded one consignor: what they'd left, how many catties and taels, and the price they'd written themselves. Anything sold, he added a stroke at the end of the line; anything unsold, the line stayed blank at the tail. On the tenth day of the Eighth Month, he would read down this page line by line.

The first through the door was an old man with a back basket. The basket held half a load of dried mushrooms. He stood outside the threshold for a while before stepping in, asking if they took this sort of thing.

"We can weigh it, or take it on consignment." Shao Ming lifted the basket onto the scale hook. "You write the price yourself."

The old man watched the scale, watched Shao Ming take the basket down and hang it up again for a second pass, the number unchanged. Only then did he pull a charcoal stick from the clay jar on the counter, crouch down, and write his price label. When he finished, he wedged it into the crack of the cabinet door and pressed it with his hand, afraid it would fall.

Halfway through the Dragon hour, a rogue cultivator with a bamboo back basket came in from the Market Street end. In the basket were three bundles of spirit herbs, loosely tied. Shao Ming hung the bundles on the scale hook and called out the number twice—same both times. The cultivator carried the herb bundles to the counter and wiped the sweat from his neck.

"Spirit herbs like yours—the wharf takes them," Xu Yan said, brush in hand.

"They do. Price is still up ten percent there."

"Then why carry them back here?"

"Up ten, then down twenty." The cultivator clapped his hand on one of his bundles. "I dried them three days. He flips them over to look and says they're damp. Up ten, down twenty—I'd be paying them ten. You don't squeeze here."

Xu Yan noted the entry. The consignor left no name, so he recorded what the man carried: one with a bamboo basket, missing half a finger on his left hand. The price was the man's own writing; Xu Yan didn't alter it, only added a small line below the price, noting the date.

"What gets paid out on the tenth day of the Eighth Month—spirit stones?" the cultivator asked.

"Spirit stones," Xu Yan said. "The market box doesn't take silver."

"Good. Spirit stones spend anywhere."

The next two rogue cultivators came in together, each carrying a bundle of spirit herbs. Neither wanted consignment. They said at the door they'd just borrowed the scale for a weigh. Shao Ming wiped the scale beam clean and called the numbers one bundle at a time. When they'd heard, the two scratched the figures into their palms with a fingernail and headed off toward the river—weighing here first, then carrying it to the wharf to see if the herb buyer's scale matched.

"They come twice a market now," Shao Ming said, hanging the scale back, watching the door. "Didn't used to."

"Let them come." Xu Yan said, "Weighing is open to anyone."

At the end of the Dragon hour, the two cultivators came back from the river, herbs still on their backs. One stopped at the door and said to Shao Ming, "Numbers matched. Price got squeezed." Without stepping inside, the two carried their herbs off toward Market Street.

Before the Snake hour, the cabinet's stock had filled half a shelf more than in the Sixth Month. The price labels wedged in the cabinet door gap had gone from one to nine. The man with the animal hides came last. He walked in and spread four hides across the counter, saying that at the wharf there was a table buying only spirit herbs—anything else they wouldn't even lift onto the scale. Shao Ming weighed the hides one by one, called the number twice, identical. The man crouched before the counter writing his own price; when he finished he looked up: "The tenth day of the Eighth Month—you really pay?"

"We pay," Xu Yan said. "It's written in the market rules."

"Then these hides of mine stay here."

Qi Qi came running through the market gate at the Snake hour, ten bottles of Qi-Gathering Powder tucked in his cloth satchel, the bag bouncing on his shoulder. He set the bottles out one by one on the counter, only wiping his face when he was done: "Ten at the stall is enough. I counted twice." Xu Yan picked one up, checked the date on the label, and told him to carry them to the stall and hand them to Qian Duoduo.

The market dispersed at the end of the Snake hour. Both pots of spirit meals at the stall sold out. Qian Duoduo restocked spirit rice for the next market at the grain shop; Du Xiaochuan stacked the pots and empty baskets onto his carrying pole. The market closed at the end of the Horse hour. Shao Ming fitted the door panel back into place and pressed it twice with his hand. They left town in the Monkey hour and were back at the mountain gate in the Shen hour.

At the mountain, the smell of an alchemy batch hung outside the Medicine Hall. The charcoal furnace started on the first was still burning. Du Xiaochuan set down his pole and crouched by the furnace to add charcoal, looking up: "It's the eighth that it comes out." Under the veranda, Huo Qing's single thrust still went out and pulled back, one release, one retract; the hole at the bullseye had deepened another fraction. On the stone steps of the front courtyard, Jiang Wan rested her sword across her knees and wiped it, glancing up to ask, "People came back to the market?"

"A few," Xu Yan said. "The cabinet's half full."

"Hm." She lowered her head and kept wiping the cloth.

By the kitchen door, Qian Duoduo set the pot onto the stove. A Sui crouched on the threshold and stood when she saw Xu Yan: "Sect Master, how many came to the market today?"

"Seven or eight."

A Sui counted on her fingers, gave up before finishing, and put her hand down: "More than last time."

After the lamps were lit, in the Accounts Room, Xu Yan spread the market ledger open and read it over once more. On the Seventh Month page, the goods of the three sects took a line or two each, names written neatly; the rogue cultivators' lines had no names, only what they carried: the one with the bamboo basket, the one missing half a left finger, the one with the hides, the one with the herb basket. He let the brush tip hang over those lines a moment, then closed the ledger.

On the eighth day of the Seventh Month, at the Dragon hour, the lid came off the charcoal furnace at the Medicine Hall doors. Cheng Banshan first pinched off the alchemy flame, holding down the furnace chamber; the formation hand lifted the lid and pulled the tray. Du Xiaochuan crouched beside it counting—ten, and not one cracked. Xu Yan scraped the pill powder from the furnace floor with a bamboo slip, wrapped it in prescription paper, wrote "the eighth day of the Seventh Month" on the packet, set it on the rack, and added a line to the furnace log.

"Don't let the next furnace's materials run short," Cheng Banshan said, tucking the formation hand back into his sleeve.

"They won't," Xu Yan said. "The charcoal for the eighteenth batch—Qi Qi buys it at the wharf on the tenth."

"Eighteenth and twenty-eighth—two batches." Cheng Banshan hooked the iron ring of the furnace door with the furnace hook. "The iron plate at the furnace floor needs replacing after two more firings."

On the tenth, at the Snake hour, the Qi-Gathering Pills went onto the counter. Ten small porcelain bottles, labels reading "Qingya," the date written as the eighth. The moment the bottles were set out, people crowded around. Eight spirit stones each. Some weighed the stones in their palm before setting them down. Two cultivators who'd come together bought two—one each, they agreed. A cultivator in a short tunic held a bottle to his eye to read the label: "This is personally refined by that Elder up on the mountain?"

"Qingya's pills," Xu Yan said. "The label carries the furnace date. Every pill matches up."

Ten pills sold, leaving circles of bottle-bottom imprints across the counter.

Those eighty stones did not go into the market box. Xu Yan tucked them into the cloth pouch at his waist. The money in the market box belonged to the consignors.

Around the Horse hour, he picked two bundles of spirit herbs from the cabinet for the next furnace's materials—twenty stones into the market box, entered in the market ledger under Miao Zhong of Ink Pool Gate's name. Qi Qi took the charcoal money to the wharf and bought a load and a half of charcoal, fifteen stones. Back, he stacked it against the wall, his collarbone dusted gray.

Miao Zhong came through the door at the end of the Snake hour with two bundles of spirit herbs and a roll of talisman paper on his back. Weighed, number called, price label written by his own hand with a charcoal stick, wedged into the cabinet door gap. He didn't leave right away. He stood inside the door, looking up at the paper on the wall, reading from the first line down. At the bottom line, he reached out a finger and tapped it once.

"The tenth day of the Eighth Month," he murmured, then turned back. "Still open after the lamps are lit?"

Behind the counter, Xu Yan said, "Open until the beginning of the Hai hour."

"I'll come for the payment that day." Miao Zhong pulled his hand back. "Everything Ink Pool Gate has consigned this year, entry by entry, it's all in here. The rank silver's due before the Autumn Evaluation."

"Fine."

"Tenth is a market day too?"

"It is. Pills will be on sale as usual."

"A lot of people that day." Miao Zhong glanced at the circles of bottle imprints on the counter. "This one room of yours—how many people can it hold?"

Xu Yan didn't answer. He scraped the brush against the inkstone's edge.

"The wharf's ten-percent price mark-up," Miao Zhong asked, "still holding?"

"Holding."

Miao Zhong didn't bring up the herbs from his Gate's disciples again, nor ask how much longer the market could last. He only pressed his two price labels down again, glanced back once more at that paper, and went out the door.

All the markets in the Seventh Month ran the same way: sell pills, buy the next furnace's materials from the cabinet, buy charcoal at the wharf, and people from the three sects saying they'd come collect on the tenth.

On the fifteenth, a spell of rain fell. Few people came into the market. By the Horse hour, not one price label in the cabinet door gap had moved. A passing rogue cultivator, soaked through, stood outside with a bundle of spirit herbs hugged to him. Xu Yan had him come inside to stand, weighed the herbs for him, and recorded a consignment entry. Only when the rain thinned did the man hoist his empty basket and leave. On the twentieth, at the Snake hour, Zhuo Ying came in with two bundles of sun-dried spirit herbs on her back; they were weighed, priced, and she said, "Willow Bank Gate will collect on the tenth day of the Eighth Month. This year's money—the Gate's keeping a record." On the twenty-fifth, at the Snake hour, Kuang Lun carried in Azure Brook Sect's spirit herbs, had them weighed, wrote the price, said Azure Brook would come collect that day, and added that the rank silver was due before the Autumn Evaluation—if the money came even a day late, the mountain would look bad.

"This market—after the year's out, will it stay open?" Kuang Lun asked suddenly, after writing his price label.

"The lease runs to the eighth day of the Eleventh Month," Xu Yan said.

"That's not what I'm asking."

Xu Yan set the brush down. "It's staying open."

Kuang Lun didn't ask again. He nudged the two medicine cauldrons in the cabinet back into alignment. As he left, he paused on the threshold and glanced back once at the oil lamp on the counter.

Before noon on the twenty-fifth, the basket-carrying cultivator came again. This time he brought no goods. At the door he asked, "That day, the tenth, what do I use to claim my money?"

"The market ledger has you," Xu Yan said, turning the book to show him. "Every consignment of yours is recorded. The prices are in your own writing."

"I don't have a name."

"No name needed." Xu Yan pointed at two lines of small script. "The one with the bamboo basket, missing half a finger on the left hand. When I read that line, you answer."

The cultivator lifted his hand and looked at it, then suddenly laughed. "Fine. I'll come early that day."

On the twenty-fifth day of the Seventh Month, at the end of the Horse hour, the market closed. Last out was a rogue cultivator who'd come to carry back a bundle of spirit herbs that hadn't sold. The cabinet stood backlit; Xu Yan lit the lamp on the counter, bent down, dragged the bundle out from under the cabinet, weighed it, and made two strokes beneath that line in the ledger, writing "goods retrieved."

The cultivator lifted the herbs onto his back and stopped at the door, turning back: "Next market still open?"

"Fifth and tenth of every month."

Shao Ming fitted the door panel back. Xu Yan closed the market ledger and tucked it into the cloth pouch, lifted the lamp in one hand, lowered his head, and blew it out.

The red point on the wick sank away. All that was left in the room was a single stripe of white through the door crack. This lamp had sat on the counter since the market's opening day—the market had only this one. On the tenth day of the Eighth Month it would still be burning after dark: a year's consignment money to be counted out entry by entry, people from the three sects pressing their seals one by one, the rogue cultivators queued behind to press their thumbprints, the ledger to be read line by line. For one counter, this lamp was enough. For a room full of people, it was not.