Chapter 81: Warm Palms

Alliance Year 300, the twenty-first day of the Tenth Month. The sky hadn't fully lightened, and a thin frost had settled on the stone steps before the Ancestral Hall.

Shao Ming sat cross-legged below the steps, the collar of his old padded jacket turned up. The two children crouched on the steps, knees close together, an old straw mat under their feet. The Ancestral Hall doors stood open; a lamp burned before the ancestral tablets inside, its flame burning low. A He clutched the yellow paper, its four corners worn soft, the edges curling.

On the tenth day of the Ninth Month the Medicine Hall had lit its furnace, and a furnace needed a keeper, so the Mao-hour lesson had fallen to Shao Ming—it was already his habit to practice before the Ancestral Hall at Mao hour anyway. The paper was the one Cheng Banshan had written back in the Eighth Month: big characters, each stroke cleanly separated. A He could recognize most of them; A Sui somewhat fewer.

"Qi enters through the nose," A He read.

"Travels three paths," A Sui continued.

"Settles beneath the dantian."

"On the release, slower than the draw."

"Half as slow," Shao Ming added without opening his eyes. "Hold what you draw in first. Don't let it all out in one breath."

He drew a breath himself. A year without breakthroughs—so he didn't push upward. Breath after breath, he pressed qi down into his dantian, and when he'd finished, he opened his eyes to look at the two children.

First round: A He's nose was stuffed; his breathing rasped. Second round: A Sui said "two paths" instead of "three," and A He jabbed her with an elbow; she corrected herself. Third round: the two children let their breath out long together, exhaling until their chests felt hollow, their shoulders dropping with it.

"Don't lift the shoulders," Shao Ming said. "Lift the shoulders, and the qi escapes through the neck."

A He pressed his shoulders down and drew another breath.

From the Mountain Gate came the sound of a broom sweeping over blue stone, in fits and starts. On the open ground before the gate, Shi Po had taken up his pillar stance, frost dusting his shoulders. A He turned his head to look, and A Sui tugged at his sleeve.

"Uncle Shao," A He whispered, "can I do pillar training?"

"First warm your hands with your breathing."

A He placed his hands on his knees and drew one complete, solid breath.

Shao Ming opened his eyes. "A Sui, recite it."

A Sui pressed her hands against her knees and recited from the start: "Qi enters through the nose, travels three paths, settles beneath the dantian." At the release line she paused, then went on, "On the release, slower than the draw, half as slow." Not a word missed.

"Better memorized than your brother," Shao Ming said. "But memorized doesn't matter. You have to draw it in."

"I know," A Sui said.

A He turned his right hand over and spread it on his knee.

"Uncle Shao, warm palms."

A Sui spread both her hands out too.

"Which one?" A Sui asked.

A He thought about it. "Both are warm."

Shao Ming rose from below the steps and walked to the first step. He didn't grip A He's wrist—just touched the back of the boy's hand with one finger. "The qi has to move for the hands to warm. It only counts if it settles below the navel and stays."

"Then where did this breath of mine settle?"

"In your hands."

A He flipped his hand back over, then turned it palm-up again.

"Draw two more breaths," Shao Ming said. "Loosen the fingers. Clench them, and the qi blocks up under the ribs."

A He spread his five fingers loose and drew two breaths, shoulders falling first, chest after. A Sui loosened her hands and drew too, and when she finished she turned her palms up to look at them—she saw nothing. Sunlight came over the eastern ridge and licked one edge of frost off the steps; the children's shadows shifted from the steps onto the brick pavement.

A He chased him to the mouth of the slope. "Uncle Shao, will the warmth last all day?"

"Fades when the sun sets." Shao Ming had the straw mat tucked under his arm, heading for the west slope—at Chen hour he had to take Du Xiaochuan and Huo Qing to cut firewood.

Chen hour, the Accounts Room.

Xu Yan set the cash box on the table and counted it stack by stack. He only put brush to paper on the third count—the first two times he'd missed a piece and started over. Balance on hand: 765 spirit stones, pressed into the corner of the box. The few at the bottom were from the first market of the Ninth Month; their edges were worn smooth.

Bai Xiaoman came in carrying the silver ledger, turned to the Ninth Month's page, and read: "The fifteenth day of the Ninth Month, converted twenty taels. Tiles, lime, one sheet of window paper—one tael. Cotton batting and coarse cloth—seven taels. Eight spent, twelve remaining." She looked up. "Nothing after that."

"Eleventh Month rations, fifty spirit stones." Xu Yan wrote that line on another page—two sacks of spirit rice, forty; one sack of coarse grain, ten. The line below he left blank.

"What about charcoal?"

"Waiting for Elder Cheng to set a number."

"I went up to the formation eye on Back Mountain the day before yesterday," Bai Xiaoman said. "All five stones are in place. No need to move anything before winter."

"Tell me early when they do need moving."

"When they need moving, I can't do it alone—I'll need two people to carry stones." She laid a finger on that line in the ledger. "I'll record that under formations, not rations."

"Under formations," Xu Yan agreed.

His brush-tip hesitated beneath the numbers again. Shi Po ate three meals a day by himself, more than anyone; when the cold set in, his appetite would only grow. Fifty might not last to month's end. He didn't write that down—only shifted the end of the "Eleventh Month rations" line forward by a small half-inch, leaving a blank space.

He started a new line: the twenty-first day of the Tenth Month, third day since water returned to the spirit fields. Beneath it he added: Twelve mu are soaked. Uncle Wang says to soak until the ground freezes.

He set the brush on the edge of the inkstone and stepped back half a pace to study the page. The month before, this page had been all carriage fare, inn charges, petitions, judgments. Today the page held only water.

He flipped back two pages. The judgment from the fifteenth was still tucked inside, ink gone dark at the edges, corners uncreased. The judgment named two things: the boundary stele returned to its old base, and the weir dismantled within three days. The three days began that same day; on the third day's sunset, he had stood on the ridge and watched.

Jiang Wan came in from the courtyard, the sword-polishing cloth in her hand, and stood by the table looking at the box.

"How much."

"765."

"Enough?"

"Rations fifty, charcoal pending Elder Cheng."

"Then it's enough."

"Enough to month's end."

Jiang Wan tucked the cloth into her waistband. "A month of litigation, and then suddenly it's over. I don't even know where to put this sword."

"Put it down."

"It'll rust sitting there."

"Then polish the rust off."

She turned to leave, then stopped at the courtyard's edge. "That recitation the two children do—how much longer?"

"Uncle Shao couldn't say."

"The teacher couldn't say?"

"He said he can't remember how he himself first drew the qi in."

Jiang Wan stood in the courtyard for a while, then headed for the East Courtyard. Shi Po was waiting outside the threshold.

"Wood ash. I'll carry it down."

"How many baskets?"

"Three."

"Dump it on the west side of the fields. Don't pile it on the embankments—one rain and it'll wash away."

"Mm."

Shi Po returned in the afternoon and said it was done. Uncle Wang hadn't been in the fields, so he'd piled the ash beneath the old tree on the west side of the field and covered it with a layer of dry hay.

That night, Xu Yan took the ledger from inside his coat and spread it on the table, flipping to the roster page. Ten names arranged line by line, each stroke written by the person's own hand that day, the ink varying dark and light. A Sui's line was the shortest, her horizontal strokes slanted, sagging downward. He looked at it for a while, then closed the ledger and tucked it back inside his coat.

The 22nd and the 23rd passed much the same: before full daylight they stood before the stone steps, three rounds, sometimes four. Every day A He announced "warm palms," his voice louder each day; every day A Sui spread her hands. Silent when she spread them, silent when she drew them back.

The 24th, noon, the Medicine Hall.

Cheng Banshan squatted on the threshold, holding a herb sieve in one hand, shaking the dust from sun-dried herbs—one shake, one rap of the sieve's rim. His empty sleeve was tucked into his belt.

Xu Yan stood at the door. "Elder Cheng, how much charcoal does the Medicine Hall need for winter?"

"Charcoal?" Cheng Banshan didn't look up. "Firewood's burning fine, and you're already thinking about spending money."

"Only one stack of firewood left against the east wall."

"That stack will last until the ground freezes." He tipped the sieved herbs into a bamboo tray. "Once it freezes, if I say it's not enough, then you go buy."

"Then I'll just note it down."

"Note it down." Cheng Banshan set the sieve by his foot. "Accounts Room people—they start asking about money the moment they walk in. The old Sect Master was the same. Asked first, then he'd sit."

Xu Yan didn't answer that. He glanced inside: the clay pot sat empty; two racks of bamboo screens lay drying by the herb garden; Shao Ming's poison-suppression herbs were still in place, enough for a while.

The 25th was a market day.

At Mao hour, Qian Duoduo carried the pot down the mountain on his shoulder; Du Xiaochuan carried spirit rice, A He hugged one stack of bowls, A Sui another, all following the little path behind the kitchen down. Their stall was still under the third pillar by the wall, beneath a stretch of old tile eaves that the sun couldn't reach even after it rose.

Once the pot was steadied, A He went out beyond the eaves to call: "Spirit meals! Hot bowls!" By the second call his voice cracked, and A Sui took over, louder than him.

The second batch of spirit meals sold out by the end of Snake hour; all ten bottles of Qi-Gathering Powder were gone before Horse hour. One rogue cultivator bought two bottles, slid them into his sleeve, and asked, "This medicine—same price in winter?" Qian Duoduo was collecting bowls and answered without pausing: "Same price. Won't go up before spring opens."

An old vegetable seller hailed them from across the stall line: "That water up your mountain—it really came back?"

"It came back," Qian Duoduo said. "One night and it rose to the embankment."

"That's good," the old man said. "Next year's rice has hope."

A He crouched behind the stall counting bowls, jumped up halfway through to help Du Xiaochuan take money, came back and kept counting—lost the count, started over.

After they packed up, A Sui crouched by the ditch washing bowls. The water came down off the mountain; put her hands in, and the cold bit to the bone. Halfway through, her knuckles had gone red. Qian Duoduo came over from the stove platform: "Don't soak in cold water so long. Soak too long and your hands won't warm up for half a day." A Sui said "mm" and kept washing.

Market over, Qian Duoduo restocked that day's spirit rice at the grain shop—ten spirit stones. Back at the mountain by You hour, he set a hundred on the Accounts Room table and counted them twice with both hands on the table's edge before pushing them over. "Eighty from the second pot, thirty from ten bottles, ten back into spirit rice. Net one hundred."

Xu Yan counted once, matched it, and entered it into the daily ledger.

On the road back, A Sui asked A He, "When your palms are warm—is it on the draw, or on the release?"

A He thought for a long while. "Don't know."

A Sui didn't ask again, just walked along behind him. Qian Duoduo's pot bobbed above her head.

After the lamps were lit, A Sui sat alone on the back threshold of the kitchen.

Inside, Qian Duoduo was washing dishes, one splash after another. The door stood open, lamplight spilling out at her back. She spread both hands on her knees, palms up. The lamp lit her palms, the creases all in shadow. She looked at her left hand first, then her right.

At the market she'd spent the afternoon washing bowls at the ditch. Qian Duoduo said cold water soaked too long leaves the hands slow to warm. She held her palms open and waited for the warmth to come back.

The pot of water on the stove was still steaming. She leaned a little toward it, then pulled back, hands still spread on her knees.

"A Sui, come give me a hand," Qian Duoduo called from inside.

She answered, got up, pressed her hands once against her trousers, then went into the kitchen.