Chapter 252: The Date Line Left Blank

Xu Yan wrapped the ledger and furnace log into a cloth bundle, cinched it with two lengths of hemp rope, then pressed a hand over his chest to check the thin book tucked inside his robes before heading out.

The sky hadn't fully brightened. Smoke rose from the kitchen chimney first, climbing straight up. From the East Courtyard came the sound of a sword cutting air—twice, then silence. In the front courtyard, Shao Ming stood waiting below the steps. Qi Qi squatted on the steps, biting a loose cord-end from his shoe while retying it.

"What are we bringing today?" Qi Qi finished lacing his shoe and stood.

"The joint testimony was filed on the twenty-fourth day of the Eighth Month," Xu Yan said. "Today we only bring our mouths."

"Then we've brought too few." Qi Qi said. "Three sects, three people. Tower Master Jin's mouth, Shopkeeper Teng's mouth, and the three of us. Eight mouths."

Shao Ming didn't answer. He started down first.

The three of them left through the mountain gate and headed down the slope. The Ninth Month grass was heavy with dew; the one walking in front got his trouser cuffs soaked first. Below the halfway point, thin mist rose, and the roof tiles of Luoxia Town emerged from the fog piece by piece. A boat moved on the river. By the time they reached the north end of town, daylight had come. People were hauling water and pushing carts along Market Street. It wasn't a fives day or a tens day, so the street was empty. An old man selling flatbread pushed his cart past the market gate, the axle squealing like a saw.

The market gate was shut. Above the door panel where the lantern hung, a patch had been smoke-stained by the lamp; someone had scrubbed it, but the color still showed darker than the wood around it.

Shao Ming unlocked the door and pushed it inward. The smell of old planks and damp straw drifted out. The three of them propped open the front and back windows. A draft came through, and the hook of the scale hanging by the door tapped lightly against the counter.

The long table had been wiped down when the market closed on the fifth. Shao Ming wiped it twice more, from one end to the other, then back again. He brought the benches out from the back room—two set east of the table, one at the west end. The lock on the counter he didn't so much as glance at.

"No weighing today," he said. "Nobody touches the goods in the counter."

At the end of the Snake hour, Miao Zhong arrived first. He looked at the table, then the benches, and asked Shao Ming, "Which side do we sit?"

"East," Shao Ming said.

Miao Zhong sat on the east side, pushed his sleeves up a little, and rested both hands on his knees. Zhuo Ying came next, then Kuang Lun. Both sat east as well. None of the three carried goods. Kuang Lun sat for a while, then asked Shao Ming, "That market day on the tenth—will the market be open?"

"It will," Shao Ming said.

"Then I'll bring my spirit herbs on the tenth," Kuang Lun said. "Once a year, there should be a place to put things on the scale."

Zhuo Ying smoothed her sleeves and asked Miao Zhong, "After today's hearing, will there be a ruling?"

"Ruling or not, the Rank Evaluator decides," Miao Zhong said.

"My goods are still in the front room counter," Zhuo Ying said. "I've waited nearly a year to hear that answer."

Outside the market gate, two rogue cultivators with bamboo baskets on their backs stood watching for a while. Seeing the long table and benches set up inside with sect people seated, they didn't enter, drifting off toward the wharf instead.

At the Snake hour, the Branch's carriage stopped outside the market gate. Wen Su entered first, her official robe's sleeves bound tight, a water flask in one hand. Two clerks followed—one carrying a wooden box, the other with a satchel of registers. The trunk on the carriage was carried in by the two clerks together, one at each end, and set down beside the long table.

Crossed over the lid were two seal strips pasted in an X. The paper had yellowed, and the characters were pressed so faint most of them couldn't be read. Wen Su looked at the two strips for a moment, but her hand didn't move.

"The seal strips haven't been touched," said the clerk with the registers.

Wen Su sat down behind the long table, placing the water flask at her left hand. She swept her eyes around the room, saw the west end of the table still empty, and said nothing.

Someone coughed outside the door. Jin Buhuan entered, with Teng Mao half a step behind him.

Jin Buhuan wore a half-new gray-green long gown. He looked toward the counter first: the scale hung there, its beam polished bright; the market rules were posted on the wall by the door, one corner curled up by the draft. Only after looking did he walk to the west end. Shao Ming had already moved the bench over, but Jin Buhuan didn't sit. He stood. Teng Mao stood behind him, hands at his sleeve edges.

Xu Yan stood at the side of the counter, his bundle resting on the countertop—unopened, his hand still on it.

The clerk opened the wooden box and took out a rolled paper, spread it on the long table, and pressed it flat with both palms.

"Alliance Year 302, the twentieth day of the Eighth Month. Qingya Sect filed complaint, jointly signed by Ink Pool Gate, Willow Bank Gate, and Azure Brook Sect." He read slowly, each word dropping one by one. "Article One—"

He read out the third day of the Tenth Month: at the Wanbao Tower shop at the north entrance of Linchuan Market, in front of witnesses, Shopkeeper Teng Mao said, "The Tower's decision. Qingya's business, the Tower won't do." The same day, the formation shop at the west end of the market said they were out of stock, and the medicine guild said those two ingredients were cut off. When he read "the Tower won't do," Teng Mao's chin twitched.

Article Two concerned Luoxia Wharf: starting the fifth day of the Tenth Month, the buyer there put out word—anyone selling to Qingya, the Tower wouldn't take his goods. On the twentieth day of the First Month of Alliance Year 302, Azure Brook Sect's spirit herbs were taken to the wharf to sell, and the buyer refused them, saying, "Anything consigned through Qingya Market, the Tower won't take."

Article Three concerned Willow Bank Gate: on the seventeenth day of the Sixth Month, the Wanbao Tower Master for Dongzhou came to Willow Bank Gate and said, "Qingya Market won't last past the Ninth Month," telling them not to send goods to Qingya Market but to bring them to the wharf instead, where the buying price would be ten percent higher.

The clerk finished reading and pushed the paper toward the middle of the table.

"Steward Miao," Wen Su said. "Those two lines about the wharf—you heard them?"

"I did," Miao Zhong said. "The twentieth day of the First Month. I was right by the scale."

"The buyer's exact words were, 'Anything consigned through Qingya Market, the Tower won't take'?"

"Yes." Kuang Lun answered for himself. "He didn't even flip through the bundle of spirit herbs. That line came first."

"Steward Zhuo," Wen Su said. "The Willow Bank Gate incident. What did he say?"

"He said the market wouldn't last past the Ninth Month—told them not to send goods here." Zhuo Ying said. "Also said to take them to the wharf, ten percent higher buying price. He was talking about goods, not people. I added nothing and subtracted nothing."

She said this without looking toward the west end.

"That's what's written in the complaint," Wen Su said. She turned to Xu Yan. "Sect Master Xu. Article One. Who recorded it?"

"I did," Xu Yan said. "Written on the back of the ledger, set down the day after I returned to the mountain. That line was said in front of me and Qi Qi."

"Qi Qi."

"Yes," Qi Qi said from by the door. "The third day of the Tenth Month, around the Horse hour, behind the counter of that shop."

"The formation shop and the medicine guild—who was present for those two lines?" Wen Su said.

"I was," Xu Yan said. "The medicine guild's shop hand said to my face that those two ingredients were cut off. The formation shop's hand never looked up—sold a piece of flint to the man behind me. I wrote those two lines together because they happened the same day."

"Good that you can separate them," Wen Su said. She stacked the three sheets together before turning to the west end.

"Shopkeeper Teng. That line on the third day of the Tenth Month—did you say it?"

Teng Mao stepped forward half a pace, glanced at the back of Jin Buhuan's head first, then answered: "I said it. It was the Tower's decision."

Xu Yan's lips parted.

"The rules don't ask who's in the Tower," Wen Su said.

Her voice was quiet, and she didn't look toward Xu Yan. He closed his mouth, swallowed the question, and kept his hand on the bundle.

The clerk moved the wooden trunk to the center of the long table, drew a small knife from his waist, and cut the two crossed seal strips one by one. The lid came open. No one in the room made a sound. Inside, two layers of oiled paper lined the bottom.

Xu Yan recognized this trunk. In the Third Month, in the corner of the west room of the city-outskirts warehouse, it had sat under a layer of dust while he watched two porters called from the carriage yard carry it away.

"A stack," the clerk said, lifting them out and spreading them on the table. "And a pile of empty bottles."

The paper labels were cut neat, one pressed over another. The top one he turned over. On the label, "Qingya" was printed from a carved block, the ink so even it couldn't have been done by hand. Beside it, a pile of small porcelain vials, mouths empty, not a single stopper among them—the same size as Qingya's bottles.

Wen Su pulled out one label and held it toward the window. Under "Qingya" on the label, there was a square blank space.

"The date line's blank," she said.

Xu Yan saw it too. His own labels were written by brush: after "Qingya," he wrote the date that batch came out of the furnace. Every single bottle, from the Eleventh Month of Alliance Year 301 through this month—hundreds of them. On the stack on the table, the date section was empty. Fill in whatever date you liked, and that's what it said.

Wen Su set the label back down without comment.

"Three ledgers."

The clerk pulled three rolls of paper from the register satchel and spread them one by one, the corners curling, weighed down with the wooden box.

"This roll is Qingya's furnace log," he said. "This one is the purchase ledger for the stall at the south end. This one is the shop ledger for Wanbao Tower's Linchuan shop. Copied on the nineteenth day of the Third Month at the Market Office. The copies bear the office's seal."

The three rolls lay spread across the table in three sheets. No one touched them. Miao Zhong leaned over to look at the purchase ledger, reading only the first few lines, then sat back.

The clerk took two more packages from the box. One in oiled paper, opened to reveal a small porcelain vial—its label also printed with "Qingya," the date below reading "the first day of the Third Month." The other was a medicine paper packet, wrapped tight, a date written on the outside. The ink had faded but was still legible: the twenty-eighth day of the Second Month.

"One counterfeit pill," the clerk said. "One retained sample, from the batch of the twenty-eighth day of the Second Month."

Wen Su picked up the vial, looked at the label, set it down. She looked at the medicine packet, pressed a finger to the date on the paper, then withdrew her hand. What was in the pill—the Medicine Guild's alchemist had tested it back in the Third Month. The report was in the box. She didn't have anyone read it aloud.

Zhuo Ying had been staring at the vial at the corner of the table. Only now did she look away.

"The confession," Wen Su said.

The clerk drew a sheet from the bottom of the box, more wrinkled than the previous ones, with several pressed marks and darkened edges. Wen Su took it, spread it on the table herself, smoothed it flat.

"Steward Miao. Is that your mark on the confession?"

"Yes," Miao Zhong said.

"Steward Zhuo."

"Yes," Zhuo Ying said.

Wen Su turned the paper slightly so the people at the other end of the table could see it too.

"Shopkeeper Teng. Cen Si is a shop hand at Wanbao Tower's Linchuan shop?"

"Yes," Teng Mao said.

"The two taels of silver—you gave them to him?"

The room went quiet.

Teng Mao's eyes flicked half an inch toward the west end, then came back. His hands squeezed at his cuffs. He waited, and kept waiting. Jin Buhuan stood there, hands hanging at his sides, the hem of his long gown motionless, not a word.

"...The silver. I don't know anything about it," Teng Mao said.

Wen Su didn't press, and didn't look west. She pointed at the marks on the confession one by one, from the first to the third.

"Three people put their marks on this confession," she said.

Qi Qi stood by the door, one hand behind his back, the other gripping the doorframe. Shao Ming was beside him, feet planted. The street outside was silent—the flatbread cart long gone. Someone was washing things down by Luoxia River, the sound of water drifting in waves.

Wen Su pressed the confession flat on the table as before, raised her head, and looked west. Not at Teng Mao. At the man standing in front of Teng Mao.

"Tower Master Jin," she said. "Anything to say?"

Jin Buhuan didn't open his mouth, and he didn't look at Xu Yan. His eyes rested on the stack of paper labels on the table—on the blank space beneath the word "Qingya."