Chapter 98: Five Names

At Dragon hour on the eleventh day of the First Month, Xu Yan took the regulation sheet from inside his robe and smoothed it flat on the table in the Main Hall. At some point a corner of the paper had been lightly singed, so he tucked that corner under the inkstone and looked up.

Yesterday, he had read this paper alone. Today, others would be the ones to speak.

"The rules say each sect may register five disciples from its roster. Once registered, no substitutions, no stand-ins." He said, "I'll ask one by one: who is willing to go up."

The hall went quiet for a moment. Huo Qing stood by the door, right arm hanging at his side. He answered first and fastest: "The third day of the Third Month."

"What about the third day of the Third Month?"

"That's the day I go up."

Xu Yan nodded and continued down the line. Shi Po sat on the third bench, both hands resting on his knees. "Endure."

"Endure until when?"

Shi Po thought for a while. "The incense burns out."

"No striking before the incense burns out."

"No striking."

Bai Xiaoman pulled her right hand from her sleeve. Her palm still had dirt on it from setting out pebbles earlier. "Formations. I practiced in the Front Courtyard all winter. I can trap one person. Can't trap two."

"How long can you hold it?"

"A bit under half an incense stick. If I'm emptied out, I sit down on the ground. No shame in it."

Qi Qi got up from the threshold and dusted off his trouser legs. "I'm fast."

"Fast isn't enough. You need to win."

"I circle around him. He'll step out on his own."

"If he steps out on his own, that counts as leaving the ring. You win." Xu Yan said, "But if you run out, you lose. The difference is one step."

Qi Qi turned the words over in his mind. "Got it."

Jiang Wan was still standing by the west pillar, sword at her waist, and had not spoken the whole time. Xu Yan looked at her. "What about Senior Sister?"

"Whichever match you put me in, I'll go." She said, without lifting her eyes. "No need to ask."

Among the rest, Shao Ming stood up first. A stool leg scraped against the brick floor.

Cheng Banshan didn't look at him.

"What I said on the twelfth day of the Twelfth Month." Cheng Banshan set the wine gourd from his waist onto the table. "Early Foundation Establishment, foundation still soft. For three months, he's not to fight anyone."

"That's not fulfilled until the twelfth day of the Third Month." Xu Yan said.

Shao Ming stayed standing, heard the words through to the end before sitting back down. "I know. The third of the third is nine days before the twelfth of the third."

Only then did Cheng Banshan turn his face toward him. "So I'm speaking first."

"I've trained twenty years, just waiting for a stage like this."

"The stage is still there." Cheng Banshan said. "First, settle the layer you're sitting on."

"Watching from inside the sect gate — not even that?"

"Sitting is fine." Cheng Banshan said. "You sit. I'll watch you sit."

Qi Qi let out a laugh from the threshold, then quickly pressed his lips shut.

Du Xiaochuan stood at the very back, both hands clenched at his sides. When he spoke, his voice was lower than usual: "I'm not going up."

No one in the hall answered.

He finished what he was saying: "On the other side of the ring stands someone from Chixiao. The moment I walk in, my legs go weak first."

Xu Yan looked at him for a while, then said only one word: "Good."

No persuasion. Du Xiaochuan's shoulders actually loosened a little. He took half a step back and settled against the door frame. From the threshold, Qi Qi said in a low voice, "The first time I climbed over someone's wall, my legs shook too." Du Xiaochuan didn't respond, but the corner of his mouth twitched. Shao Ming raised his eyes. "Saying it out is better than forcing yourself up."

At this point A He raised his hand halfway. When he saw Xu Yan look over, he stopped there.

"You two keep practicing breathing first." Xu Yan said. "As for the ring, we'll talk again next year."

A He lowered his hand. A Sui tugged at his sleeve from beside him, but he didn't turn his head.

Qian Duoduo still had his apron on, the front splattered with oil spots. He knew it too: "If I go up, the pot goes cold. Pot goes cold, seventy Spirit Stones a market day are gone."

"The stove can't stop." Xu Yan said.

"Then I'll guard the pot."

Xu Yan pulled the half sheet of paper out from under the inkstone — it had been cut from an old account book, one edge still ragged with a torn margin. He dipped the brush once in the ink.

Jiang Wan.

Huo Qing.

Shi Po.

Bai Xiaoman.

Qi Qi.

A line and a half to write it out. By the fifth name, the ink on the brush tip had gone dry, so he dipped again.

"These five." He lifted the paper and blew on it. "On the fifteenth, we take the roster down the mountain. Whoever's name is on the entry slip is who goes."

Jiang Wan glanced at it. "Who is this paper for?"

"For me." Xu Yan folded it in half and tucked it into the account book. "Once it's written down, I'll remember: no substitutions."

The gathering broke up. Bai Xiaoman went out to the Front Courtyard to draw a circle. The half-basket of lime left over from changing the West Wing tiles in the Ninth Month was under the veranda. It had gotten damp and caked into hard lumps. She smashed them apart one by one with a stone, ground them to powder, and scattered it on the brick ground according to that line in the rules — three zhang.

The circle came out lopsided. She stepped back to the gate to check, then crouched down again to sweep in the part that stuck out.

Shi Po stood outside the circle: "Done yet?"

"Three zhang is the rule. If it's off by even a little, they won't acknowledge it."

"How do you know how long three zhang is?"

"Steps." She stood up and walked from one end to the other, counting each step. "I arranged medicine drawers in the Medicine Shop. Every inch is measured."

Shi Po stepped into the circle and stood at the center. Bai Xiaoman walked a loop around him, checking his feet: "You're too far from the edge. Even if they push, they can't push you out."

"Then I should stand at the center."

"Stand at the edge? What about that?"

"If I stand at the edge, one shove and my heel hits the line first."

Bai Xiaoman thought it over, then crouched down and scattered a small cross at the circle's center: "Then you stand here."

When Jiang Wan arrived, Shi Po was still standing on that small cross. She untied her sword, carried it sheathed in her hand, and stepped into the circle: "Don't let your shoulders rise. Keep them down."

She tapped his shoulder with the sheath. Shi Po didn't move. The second tap hit his side, the third pressed down on the back of his knee. His knee only sank a little.

"Heels don't leave the ground."

"Mm."

"I hit you. You don't hit back. That's what enduring means." She drew the sheath back. "Enduring isn't just holding on. It's letting him hit until his hands go numb, until he realizes on his own that he can't move you."

"I know."

"Then keep your eyes on me."

Shi Po opened his eyes and looked at her. His gaze went a bit dull.

Qi Qi couldn't stand still at the circle's edge. He took off running laps around it. His feet made almost no sound. When he passed Jiang Wan, she thrust the sheath across, and his feet turned with it, brushing under the sheath's tip. One foot landed on the lime line, then past it, outside.

"Out of the ring is a loss." Jiang Wan said.

Qi Qi looked back at his own foot: "I know."

"You know, and you still went out."

"My feet are faster than my body. Can't pull them back."

Jiang Wan rapped the sheath on the ground along that line: "Then train until you can. When you circle him, stay one step away from him. That one step is your own ground. Don't let him step into it."

Qi Qi measured that step on the bricks, set his feet apart front and back, and stood there for a long time.

Shao Ming stood outside the circle, one hand braced on a veranda pillar, never going in. He asked Shi Po: "In that one incense stick, who do you want to tire out first?"

Shi Po said, "Him."

"Right." Shao Ming said. "You tire first, you lose."

Under the veranda, Huo Qing practiced that single thrust against the wooden target. The bullseye had long since been pounded into a hollow. He thrust and withdrew, not fast. When he pulled back, his left hand paused briefly before returning to his side.

Xu Yan walked over and watched from behind three rounds: "If he uses a staff, where do you strike?"

Huo Qing thrust once more before answering: "The hand holding the staff."

"Why not the neck?"

"The staff is long. I can't reach his neck."

Xu Yan didn't ask further. Back in the Accounts Room, he copied that line from the rules again — "Three-zhang trial circle, one incense stick" — into the margin of the account book. After finishing, he looked at it for a while and pressed the paper flat.

For three days, there were people in the Front Courtyard before the sky was fully light. Shi Po did his pillar stance first, standing until Bai Xiaoman came over with the lime. Qi Qi ran circles until the lamps were lit, the soles of his shoes wearing a layer of white into the bricks. Jiang Wan came at Horse hour once a day, stood in the circle with Shi Po for an incense stick, the sheath striking his shoulders and back. The sound grew heavier day by day. Shi Po's feet never left that small cross. On the third day, she withdrew the sheath and said nothing. Shi Po didn't move either.

Before the lamps were lit, Qian Duoduo brought a pot of rice water out to the veranda. Whoever finished training drank. Qi Qi was always last, drank fastest, and when he finished, he licked the bottom of the bowl clean in a circle, saying it saved on washing. Bai Xiaoman glared at him.

Each day, Bai Xiaoman scattered a handful of pebbles and had A He and A Sui walk through them. A Sui turned back after three steps, turned back after five, and by the third attempt just crouched in the center of the formation, refusing to come out, muttering "this way, this way." Bai Xiaoman counted the stones to ten and picked up the center one. Only then did A Sui stand, dusting off her knees: "I thought I'd walked all the way to the mountain gate."

"Wherever you walk is still here." Bai Xiaoman said.

A He doubled over laughing outside the circle.

At Dragon hour on the fourteenth day of the First Month, Qi Qi went down the mountain. His feet were quick — ten li of mountain road in under one shichen — and he reached the row of cart sheds at the Town Gate. A carter was brushing down a mule.

"Mao hour on the fifteenth. One cart." Qi Qi said. "To Linchuan."

"How many people?"

"Two."

"Round trip is four Spirit Stones. Pay on the day you board." The carter knocked the brush against the rim of the bucket. "You come a day early to say so, I hold it for you. Not many people go to Linchuan in the First Month. The mule's so idle its hooves itch."

Qi Qi returned to the mountain at Horse hour and repeated the message. Xu Yan noted one line in the ledger and said, "We leave at Yin hour on the fifteenth."

That night at Dog hour, the smell in the Ancestral Hall — incense ash mixed with old wood — was heavier than by day. Xu Yan set the lamp on the brick outside the threshold, knelt on the prayer cushion, and the row of ancestral tablets stood in the dark, the lacquer on the last one still bright. He reached under the offering table and dragged out the wooden box.

Dust was on the lid. He wiped it with his sleeve and lifted it open. The paper copy of the Qingya Sect Roster lay on top, edges frayed, a corner of the cloth spine curling up.

He carried the roster to the doorway and opened it by the lamplight.

The first name was Jiang Wan — the opening stroke long, the closing stroke rushed. Below it came Shi Po. His name was crowded together, crooked; that stroke had been drawn by his own hand, too large for too small a brush. Below that, Bai Xiaoman, each character laid down neatly. Huo Qing's name was written with his left hand; the horizontal strokes all pressed to the right. Qi Qi's writing was small, the final stroke tapering like a flick. Shao Ming's was the neatest, like entries in a ledger. A He and A Sui's names had a finger's width between them, the strokes large and loose, the final stroke dragging past its grid. Qian Duoduo's name was round, each character complete. The last one, Du Xiaochuan — the ink was newer than all the rest.

He read them one by one to the very end, then closed the roster.

His own name was not in it. He had kept the accounts for ten years and would never enter this book — he had long known that. It was only tonight, turning to the blank half-page at the back, that he saw just how wide that blankness was.

He took out a sheet of oilcloth from inside his robe, cut that day from the stores in the Accounts Room, a finger's width larger than the roster. He laid the roster inside, folded the four corners down, and pressed them flat, firm. The wooden box went back under the offering table. It took a scrape of his knee against the brick to stand up.

He pulled the door of the Ancestral Hall shut. The door pivot creaked once. As he walked down the steps, he touched the bundle inside his robe through his clothes. The folded corners of the oilcloth were stiff, and they pressed against him.