Chapter 192

Lianhua jumps onto the dock with the line in her hand, wraps it twice around the mooring post, finishes it off with a knot, and the boat stops rocking beneath me.

I watch her do all that from the stern bench, with my hands on my knees and my back against the gunwale, which is the only place in this boat where I can ride sitting up without having to hold on to anything.

My chair travels in front, in the bottom of the boat, between two benches, and Xia has kept hold of it by the armrest the whole way so that it wouldn’t slide from side to side with every stroke of the oar.

Lianhua checks the knot with a tug, climbs back down, positions herself on one side of the chair while Xia takes the other, and between the two of them they lift it by the frame, pass it over the gunwale and set it down on the dock, well away from the edge.

Then they come for me.

Lianhua slips her arms under mine and holds me against her, and Xia takes my legs from behind the knees. They lift me at the same time, raise me onto the dock and set me in the chair with care.

I resettle myself, smooth my skirt over my knees and let out the air, because this, exactly this, is what the plan I had in mind to draw up was going to fix.

An anchor point in the bottom of the boat so that the chair doesn’t roll, and a ramp that rests from the dock to the gunwale, so that I can go up and down sitting instead of having the two of them carry me like a bundle.

But the plan still doesn’t exist, and not for lack of will, but because every hour I have had I have spent in front of the table with the brush in my hand, turning out talismans until the ink ran out, and a well-made plan isn’t drawn in the time left over between one talisman and the next.

But then, to be fair to myself, I also tell myself that even if I had drawn it that very day, I would have had to find a carpenter, after which the carpenter would have had to modify the boat, and none of that can be done in the few days that have passed since then.

But while I console myself, Lianhua positions herself behind the chair, waits for me to finish resettling myself, and as soon as I finish, she begins to push.

Xia takes her place to my left, a step from the armrest, with her hands behind her back and her head turning toward everything that moves.

And as soon as we leave the planks of the dock behind, the looks begin.

I count on them. Since I arrived I have been the girl in the strange chair, and this city hasn’t had time to get used to me, because it is too big for everyone to have seen me in my brief appearances.

A stevedore stops with a sack on his shoulder, two men who were arguing over a bill fall silent at the same moment, and a woman tugs at the hand of a little boy who has stopped to stare at my chair with his mouth open.

I do nothing, as always, but this time I don’t devote myself to separating the noise of the port into layers or to looking at warehouses, but to looking at everything that is fixed to the ground.

Because in the last few days I have learned to move around on my own at home, with difficulty, admittedly, but on my own. And the question I ask myself while Lianhua pushes me is a very simple one, which is whether I could do the same out here, alone.

I have the answer before we leave the port.

My reach is eight Chi, so to move I need, roughly every two and a half meters, something fixed and large in the direction I want to go, and firm enough that when I pull, I am the one who moves and not what I grab.

And in the port there are fixed things, that much is true. There are the stone bollards, which not even an ox would move, but they are all at the edge of the dock, in a row, facing the river, and I have no desire to end up taking a bath. There are the iron rings on the walls of the warehouses, but those I couldn’t grip with several hands. And there are the door frames, wide and solid, but people go in and out of those doors loaded down at all hours, and grabbing a frame while a man is trying to get through with a bundle is the fastest way I know of crashing into someone.

So there are few of them, pitifully few. And once we leave the port behind and the street fills with shops, there are even fewer.

Because here the only things near the path are the awning poles, the rods the signs hang from and the trestles of the stalls, and all of them are there to hold up a piece of cloth, a signboard or a basket of fruit, not to withstand a thirteen-year-old girl, sitting in a bamboo chair, giving them a tug.

I don’t know how much any of them would hold, and I have no intention of finding out in front of its owner.

Because even if they held, each of those poles belongs to someone, and that someone is usually sitting right underneath, on a stool, watching over the merchandise. And I can picture the scene perfectly, with the shopkeeper getting up on seeing the pole of his awning bend without anyone touching it, looking around for the culprit and finding a kid in a strange chair two meters away moving straight toward that pole.

And in a city where, as Lin Quingyu herself told me, there are families who behave like petty tyrants on their own street, that scene could end in a complaint, or in something considerably worse.

I sigh after that thought, and Xia turns her head on hearing it, but doesn’t ask anything.

That is when the idea I left half-finished yesterday beneath the magnolia comes back to me, before Xia gave me that fright. A craftsman, someone who works with materials I don’t even know exist and who could make me a chair capable of withstanding push rims.

And it turns out I am heading precisely to the one place in this city that has lists of everything.

So I make a note of it. This visit is an opportunity, and if the meeting with Lin Quingyu leaves me an opening, I intend to ask.

We keep going, and although this time we are only three, a woman pushing a chair, the girl sitting in it and a kid who looks at everything, to my surprise, nothing happens.

People look, that much is true, and one or two turn to follow us with their eyes, but no one comes over, no one gets in our way, no one asks anything and no one tries to come close to take advantage of us.

I don’t know whether it is because the city is too big to stop for one more oddity, or because Lianhua pushes with the face of someone it is not advisable to interrupt. Probably a little of both.

But whatever the reason, we don’t draw enough attention for anyone to bother coming to check who we are, and for me that is enough.

In the end we reach the plaza, and it is just the same as on the first day. Large, square, empty of everything except the building in the center, five stories of good stone with nothing attached to any of its sides, with joints so fine that from a distance they can’t be seen and the tall, narrow windows placed at exact intervals.

And from the other side of the plaza, the building, to me, still shouts the word Bank just like the first time.

Lianhua crosses the plaza, and we pass through the open doors among the people doing the same, and among their looks.

Inside everything is still in its place. The enormous hall without a single partition, the light coming in through the high windows, the gray flagstone floor and the lines in front of the counters, with the same uniformed women dispatching papers without lifting their eyes.

But we don’t get in any line, since Lianhua takes me in a straight line toward the back, to the staircase on the left, the same one we went up behind Chen Mo, and Xia follows us, sticking close to the armrest.

And when we reach the foot of the staircase, the two guards move.

Not much, since one of them takes half a step toward the center, just enough to stand in front of the first step, and raises a hand.

“Halt”, he tells us. “Where are you going?”

Last time they didn’t ask us anything, but last time we came with Chen Mo, and Chen Mo vouched for us.

Today the answer is mine to give.

“My name is Sun Wen”, I tell him. “I am the person in charge of the House of the Long Journey. Lin Quingyu sent me a message saying she wanted to see me as soon as I could come.”

The guard looks at me, looks at the chair, looks at Lianhua and looks back at me.

Then he nods to his companion, and the companion turns around and goes up the staircase without saying a word, so we wait.

The one who has stayed behind goes back to his spot, eyes forward, in that posture that seems to be standard for guards in every world, although every now and then his eyes slip toward my chair.

The other one doesn’t take long. He comes down the staircase at the same pace he went up, stops in front of me and makes a small bow.

“You may go up”, he tells me, after which the two of them step aside to either side of the first step.

They do it properly and without a word too many, but one doesn’t spend thirteen years reading faces at an imperial court without learning to recognize curiosity, and these two have it written all over them.

Lianhua pays them no attention whatsoever; she simply reaches into her clothing, takes out a Minor Levitation Talisman and, without saying a single word, leans over and sticks it to the side of the chair, level with the armrest.

The talisman glows for an instant, the chair rises a few finger-widths and we go up.

Going up a staircase like this is still one of the strangest sensations I know, because there is no jolting and no effort, just Lianhua climbing behind me and the chair floating like a balloon someone is leading by its string. Xia climbs beside me, one step ahead, turning her head every two steps to check that nothing strange is happening.

At the top, Lianhua lowers the chair until the wheels touch the polished wood of the vestibule, the talisman goes out, and we pass in front of the other staircase, leave by the side, cross a hallway, turn and cross another until we reach the door of the office, where Xia steps forward and knocks.

This chapter was taken from the author's publication page without consent; reading the version they posted there supports the writer.

“Come in”, comes from inside.

It is Lin Quingyu’s voice, so Xia opens the door and we go in.

The office is exactly the same. The tall window on the left, the two-section cabinet at the back, the row of chairs against the walls and the solid table in the center, with its piles of papers lined up and the cube of pale stone on the right.

And behind the table, Lin Quingyu looks up and sets down her brush.

“Sun Wen”, she tells me. “Welcome. Thank you for coming so soon.”

She indicates the chairs by the wall with her open hand.

“Please, sit down”, she adds.

“Thank you”, I tell her, and I turn my head. “Sit down, you two.”

And this time no one argues with me, since Xia takes a chair, places it to my right and sits on the edge with her back very straight while Lianhua takes another, places it to my left and a little behind, in the same spot where she put it the first day, takes off her backpack, sets it on the floor at her feet and sits down.

I settle myself, join my hands over my legs and look at Lin Quingyu.

“Lin Quingyu”, I tell her with all the kindness I am capable of. “Your message said you wanted to see me as soon as possible. May I ask what is so urgent?”

Lin Quingyu sighs after hearing my question, and it is not a courteous sigh, but one of those let out at the end of a very long day, which, in the middle of the morning, says quite a lot.

“The backpack”, she tells me.

On hearing her, something inside me shrinks, because the last thing I expected was problems with something so simple.

“Is there some problem with it?” I ask her.

The question comes out faster than I intended, and it must show on my face, because Lin Quingyu raises a hand at once.

“No”, she tells me. “There is no problem at all. Quite the opposite.”

She lowers her hand.

“The trials have gone too well”, she finishes.

I blink.

“Too well?” I ask her.

“Too well”, she confirms to me. “To test it, we made three following your patterns and gave them to three of our couriers. The idea was that they would use them in their everyday work and afterward give us their impressions.”

“That seems a very sensible trial to me”, I tell her.

“It was”, she answers me. “The problem is that they used them for three days. And during those three days, besides telling us their impressions, they also told their colleagues.”

She rests her fingers on the edge of the table.

“And now I have half the delivery department asking to be issued a backpack”, she continues. “And the other half isn’t asking only because they are the ones in charge of driving the carts for the large orders and the bulkiest merchandise.”

After hearing her, I try to hold it in, I truly try.

But I can see it. I can see those three couriers going out in the morning with their hands free and the load on their backs, and their colleagues watching them with bundles on their shoulders. And the conversation at lunch, and the one in the afternoon, and on the third day a line of men outside some supervisor’s door asking why they still didn’t have one.

Because in my other life that happened in any office the day someone’s chair was swapped for a good one, since the next day half the floor had back pain when before they had been perfectly fine.

And I burst out laughing.

Not much and not very loudly, but I burst out laughing, and it lasts exactly until I see Lin Quingyu’s face, because she is looking at me with an expression of grievance so deep and sincere, probably the result of spending days receiving in her office people who are pestering her with demands she can’t meet, that my laughter stops dead.

I clear my throat after that, straighten up in the chair, place my hands properly on my legs and recover all the composure I was taught in my imperial princess lessons.

“Then I imagine you have called me here to formalize the contract for the backpack”, I tell her.

Lin Quingyu sighs again.

“Yes”, she tells me. “Because it isn’t only the delivery department pressuring me, the design department is pressuring me too.”

“Forgive me”, I interrupt her, raising my hand a little. “The delivery department I understand perfectly. But why would the design department be pressuring you? The backpack is already designed.”

And Lin Quingyu, faced with that question, joins her hands on top of the table, and the grievance leaves her expression, because she is once again the same functionary who explained my contract to me on the first day.

“Because the Tower of the Five Dragons has a new proposal for you regarding the backpack”, she tells me. “A three-tier agreement.”

“I’m listening”, I tell her, clearly intrigued by that shift.

She raises a finger.

“The first tier is the backpack just as you presented it”, she continues. “Your patterns, your measurements and ordinary materials, under the standard agreement the House of the Long Journey already has. A fourth of the profits.”

I nod, after which Lin Quingyu raises a second finger.

“In the second tier, the Tower would design a new type of backpack based on yours”, she tells me. “But made entirely with spiritual materials. And in that tier you would receive a fifth instead of a fourth.”

And finally she raises the third finger.

“In the third tier, the Tower would accept custom orders”, she finishes. “Backpacks made to the client’s measurements, including whatever enchantments the client wants them to carry. And in that tier you would receive three parts in every twenty.”

She lowers her hand after her explanation.

“The difference is because, in those two tiers, the Tower would have to invest”, she adds. “Both in developing those versions and in the enchantments they are able to bear. And that is neither cheap nor quick, I assure you.”

She makes a very brief pause.

“And that is why the design department is pressuring me”, she finishes. “They have seen the patterns and they want to start.”

Then she falls silent and lets me think, just as she did on the first day with the token, so I think.

And the first thing that crosses my mind, I won’t deny it, is to haggle.

It is almost a reflex. As soon as someone puts three figures on a table, there is a part of me, the part that comes from my other life, that is already looking for where to squeeze. That three in twenty sounds like a figure set so that the person across the table will ask for four, and that no first number is ever the last.

But before I open my mouth, I ask myself the usual question, which is what the real alternative is, and the real alternative is that I don’t have the faintest idea how to make either of those two types of backpack.

I don’t know whether spirit wolf leather is better than spirit cow leather for the job, nor do I know whether there is some other animal I have never heard of in my life whose leather is better than either. And then I would have to start on the frame.

And that’s not even mentioning the enchantments, which right now are something I know from books but haven’t even begun to attempt.

So what the Tower is offering me is not to take a piece of my business away from me; what it is offering me is to open up two new markets for me that I, on my own, couldn’t aspire to in ten years, and in exchange it asks me for a smaller margin on a business that, without them, wouldn’t even exist.

And a fifth of something, however small that something is, is infinitely more than all of nothing.

“I accept”, I tell her.

Lin Quingyu inclines her head.

“But with two conditions”, I continue.

“Tell me”, she answers me.

“The first is a small one”, I tell her. “When the backpacks made with spiritual materials are produced, I want a few for us. The ones we use now are made with ordinary materials, and since a better version is going to exist, I would like to replace them.”

I point with my chin at the backpack Lianhua has at her feet.

Lin Quingyu looks at the backpack, and I would swear the corner of her mouth moves a little.

“And the second?” she asks me.

“The second is the usual one”, I tell her. “That the Tianjing Empire remains outside the trading zone for the backpacks, in all three tiers, as we had already discussed.”

I pause while I think it over better.

“Unless, of course, you reach some agreement with the Emperor”, I decide to add.

And I say it without changing my tone, although inside I picture that negotiation, with my father sitting on one side of the table and someone from the Tower on the other, and I don’t really know which of the two I would bet on.

“Of course”, Lin Quingyu tells me. “There is no problem at all with that.”

She takes a sheaf of papers from the pile on her left, which had evidently been sitting there ready since before I came in, wets her brush and writes something at the bottom of the last sheet. Two lines, quickly, without pausing. Then she blows on the ink, evens the sheets by tapping their edges against the table and lets go of them.

But the sheets don’t fall; instead they stay floating a handspan above the table, cross the air slowly and come straight toward me.

I catch them out of the air, this time without surprise, and stay thinking about the gesture for a moment, because she could have left them on top of the table, at the edge, as she did with the blank sheet on the first day. But I suppose she does it out of courtesy, the kind that isn’t remarked upon, and I thank her for it in the same way, without remarking on it.

But I start to read, and it is exactly what I expected. Legal jargon and all that apparatus that turns six words into forty, and which, now that I have seen it twice, I am starting to suspect is taught somewhere in the Tower as part of its employees’ training.

But beneath the jargon is what we discussed, and only what we discussed.

The three tiers, with their three figures, and the exclusion of the Tianjing Empire. And at the foot of the last sheet, with the ink a little glossier than the rest, the two new lines, which state that the House of the Long Journey will receive a few second-tier backpacks for its own use and that the exclusion of the Tianjing Empire may be negotiated with its Emperor.

I read it all twice, slowly, looking for any trap, because in a contract the fine print always exists.

But, strangely, I find nothing we haven’t discussed, so I let the sheets slip away from my hands.

With one hand of the Myriad I send them back to the table, where they settle in front of Lin Quingyu. With another I open my bag, with a third I take out the jade seal and with a fourth the little jar of seal ink, which is the only ink I have left at the moment and which, luckily, is no good for making talismans, because if it were, it would already be empty.

The fifth takes off its lid.

And then, without touching anything with my own hands, I dip the seal in the ink, bring it to the table and press it at the foot of each sheet, one after another, while the first hand turns them.

遠行號

Three characters on each one.

Lin Quingyu has followed the whole process with her eyes, just as on the first day, and as soon as I move the seal away, she gathers up the sheets with an expression that in anyone else I would call satisfaction and that in her consists, quite simply, of her forehead relaxing a little.

She rests two fingers on the last impression, leaves them there a moment and nods to herself.

Meanwhile, I send everything back through the air in reverse order. The lid onto the jar, the jar into the bag and the seal after it, and I close the bag.

But as soon as I close it, I ask the question I clearly have to ask.

“And what about the ship?” I ask her.

Lin Quingyu’s face changes.

Not much, because she is a woman who knows how to keep her professional expression. But the satisfaction of a moment ago goes, and what remains in its place is the expression of someone who knew this question was coming and had spent the whole conversation hoping it wouldn’t.

She sighs for the third time.

“That may be delayed”, she tells me. “Beyond the month I told you.”

“Why?” I ask her.

And it comes out with more worry than I would like, because that ship isn’t only mine. Three points of that ship belong to Shen Fei and two to Chen Mo, even if neither of them knows it yet.

“Because of the shipwrights”, she answers me. “They have studied the plans, but before giving their verdict they have decided that they need to build one using that method to test it.”

“Build it”, I repeat.

“Build it”, she confirms to me. “And what’s more, they want to do it on the coast. So I have had to send a copy of the plans to a branch that has the infrastructure needed to build ships, and that alone is going to take its time to arrive.”

She raises a hand to emphasize her words.

“Afterward they will have to build the ship, and that takes its time too”, she continues. “And, of course, they will have to carry out the trials.”

She lowers her hand and rests it on the table again.

“Only after all that will they give their verdict”, she finishes. “So, at the very least, I don’t expect to be able to tell you anything for a year.”

And then she lowers her eyes for a moment and makes me a slight bow.

“I’m sorry”, she tells me. “I told you a month because that is how long it usually takes, but this decision doesn’t depend on me.”

I stay looking at her, but I decide not to get angry.

Because if I think about it coolly, the shipwrights are right. Something this important clearly has to be checked to make sure it is safe for whoever uses it, and the coast is exactly where that ship has to be tested to put it through as many trials as possible.

No one builds a hundred ships from a few drawings and the opinion of a river captain. You build one, use it in real conditions and see what happens.

In my other life that was called a prototype, and no one in their right mind would have skipped it.

But being right doesn’t make a year any shorter, and a year, in a world where there are people for whom a century is middle age, is nothing. But for me, who hasn’t yet reached that kind of mindset, if I ever do, it is quite a lot, so I let the air out slowly.

“If it is something being imposed on you, there is nothing you can do”, I tell her. “And nothing I can do either.”

Lin Quingyu looks up.

“But, as you will understand, I need funds to be able to live in this city”, I continue. “I have a house to keep up and a great many things to buy, and I can’t wait a year for someone to tell me whether a ship floats.”

I pause.

“That’s why I would like to have more dealings with the Tower”, I finish. “Besides the licenses.”

And without waiting for an answer, I turn my head a little to the left and give Lianhua a signal.

Lianhua needs nothing more; she simply leans forward, opens the backpack at her feet and takes out a plain wooden box, the same one I closed yesterday in my study, stands up, sets it on Lin Quingyu’s desk, right in front of her, undoes the clasp with one finger and lifts the lid.

Fire Arrows, Spiritual Shields, Air Barriers and Cutting Winds, arranged by type from edge to edge, without a single gap between them, turning it into a box packed full of talismans.