Chapter 193

I watch Lin Quingyu stare at the box Lianhua has set on the table.

She doesn’t lean over it or reach out a hand. She simply looks at it, with her hands joined on top of the table, while the only thing that moves on her face is one eyebrow, and only barely.

She takes a good while to answer, but she finally does.

“That looks like a lot of talismans”, she says at last.

Although she says it in the same tone in which someone would say it looks like rain, which doesn’t exactly convey much enthusiasm.

I straighten up in the chair, and I do it because this is the first time since I left the Empire that I have put something I made on a table to sell it directly.

“They are a hundred Fire Arrow Talismans”, I tell her. “A hundred Air Barriers, fifty Spiritual Shields and fifty Cutting Winds.”

And I say it slowly, type by type, with a pride I don’t bother to hide, because behind each of those figures there are whole hours with the brush in my hand, there are sheets turned to ash by a tremor in the last stroke and there is money invested.

Lin Quingyu nods slowly.

“The Tower of the Five Dragons would be very interested in the contents of this box”, she tells me. “Of that you may have no doubt at all.”

She lifts her hands from the desk after those words.

“But I can’t handle this type of transaction”, she continues. “My work with the associated companies is their contracts and their accounts. The buying and selling of merchandise is managed by the saleswomen on the ground floor.”

On hearing her, I picture myself in one of the lines downstairs, with the chair wedged between a man with a bundle on his shoulder and a woman in a hurry, moving forward one step each time the line moves forward one step, while half the hall entertains itself by looking at me.

But Lin Quingyu hasn’t finished.

“However, the House of the Long Journey is an associated company”, she continues. “And besides, since you fused the token you gave me with the seal, it has preferential treatment status.”

And I, who since the day I was given that token have been calling it a VIP membership inside my head, have to make a considerable effort not to smile at discovering that it seems to have more uses than it appeared to.

“So you can request a liaison”, she finishes. “A person from the Tower, assigned officially and permanently to your company, to take care of all the transactions you want to make with us. Purchases, sales and whatever else is needed.”

I fall silent for a moment, because in my other life that had a very specific name, and it was personal account manager. That person banks assigned you when you had enough money that it didn’t suit them to have you standing in line at the window with everyone else.

And I don’t have enough money for that, not by a long shot. But it turns out I have a membership, thanks to Master Mu, that says otherwise, so I join my hands over my legs and make the most courteous bow the chair allows me.

“I am very grateful to you”, I tell her. “And I am especially grateful that you can arrange this, because in my situation it isn’t advisable to be standing in line among a crowd.”

I say nothing more, and there is no need, because Lin Quingyu has my chair right in front of her and is perfectly capable of imagining the rest.

And I suppose she imagines it, because she looks at me for a moment and gives a short nod, the kind that is not courtesy but understanding.

“Wait a moment”, she tells me.

She reaches toward her right and rests her hand on the cube of pale stone, which lights up exactly as it did the first time I saw her use it, with the most complex grouping of runes I have seen in my life.

Lin Quingyu keeps her hand on it for a few moments and then withdraws it, and the cube goes dark.

“Someone will be here shortly”, she tells me.

And someone is, because I have barely had time to resettle myself in the chair when there is a knock at the door.

“It’s Lu Zhiyu”, a voice says from the hallway, a woman’s voice.

Lin Quingyu doesn’t even turn toward the door.

“Come in”, she tells her.

The door opens and a woman comes in.

She looks young, although in this city that means nothing. She wears her hair gathered in a high bun and the Tower’s uniform, the same one worn by the women at the counters downstairs.

Or almost the same, because when I look at her more closely, I see that the cut is different. The sleeves are a little narrower, the collar closes in another way and the fabric falls the way only good fabric cut to measure falls.

In my other life, in any branch, the difference between the uniform of the counter staff and that of the managers upstairs was exactly that. The same color, the same corporate image and a cut that said, without needing to say it, who handled the truly good deals.

So I imagine her rank is above that of the women on the ground floor. And probably well above.

Lin Quingyu indicates her with an open hand.

“This is Lu Zhiyu”, she tells me.

Then she looks at her and points to me.

“Sun Wen, owner of the House of the Long Journey”, she continues. “And her companions. It is a company associated with the Tower of the Five Dragons, with preferential treatment status.”

“And from this moment on, you will be in charge of managing their commercial transactions”, she finishes. “Whether they are many or few.”

Lu Zhiyu, meanwhile, has been looking at us since she came through the door.

She has looked at Lianhua, who is still seated to my left and a little behind, and she has looked at Xia, who is still on the edge of her chair with her back very straight. But on me she has lingered considerably longer.

First the chair, then my hands joined on my legs and finally my face, with the expression of someone who has just been given an assignment and is trying to work out on her own what it consists of.

I let her look. I have spent my whole life letting people look at me, and I have learned that what someone sees in the first few seconds says considerably more about that person than about me.

Finally, Lu Zhiyu looks away and turns her gaze to Lin Quingyu.

“I will follow your orders”, she tells her, and inclines her head.

Lin Quingyu doesn’t answer; she simply points at the box, which is still open on the table, just where Lianhua left it.

“Then your first task is to deal with that merchandise”, she tells her.

Lu Zhiyu looks at the box, and I see the exact moment she realizes what is inside, because her eyes widen.

Not much, because it is evident that in this building everyone is taught to control their expression, but enough for it to show.

Lin Quingyu ignores her completely and turns back to me, as if no one had come into her office.

“Is there anything else you would like to discuss with me?” she asks me. “Or for the moment do you only need to see to other kinds of business?”

And at that moment I remember the craftsman, and that this morning, on the way to the plaza, I promised myself I would ask about one if the meeting left me an opening. And the meeting is leaving me one.

But I decide not to take advantage of it for the moment, because a chair made with spiritual materials is a question that is going to cost money, and the only money I have decided to spend today is inside that box and doesn’t yet have a price.

So first you sell, then you buy what is needed and then, if there is anything left over, you ask.

The craftsman can wait.

“Right now I only want to sell the contents of the box”, I tell her. “And buy some supplies.”

“In that case, you need only follow Lu Zhiyu”, Lin Quingyu answers me.

Lu Zhiyu, who seems to have recovered from her surprise, steps forward.

She lowers the lid of the box, fastens the clasp and lifts it from the table, holding it from underneath with both hands, close to her body, like someone carrying a tray with something that mustn’t spill.

Then she turns toward us and makes a bow.

“If you would be so kind as to follow me”, she tells us.

After those words, I realize that Lianhua is already on her feet.

I didn’t hear her get up, as I almost never do, but she has already slung on the backpack and returned her chair and Xia’s to the wall, to the exact spot they were taken from.

I turn toward Lin Quingyu.

“Thank you”, I tell her. “For the backpack and for this.”

“It is my job”, she answers me, and picks up her brush.

I smile, because I already knew she was going to answer exactly that; I take my leave with one last nod, Lianhua positions herself behind my chair and we follow Lu Zhiyu out of the office.

Lu Zhiyu leads us along the same hallway we came by, but instead of following it to the end, she turns off much sooner.

And she doesn’t turn once, but twice, and at the second she stops in front of a door that is, at most, twenty paces from the landing of the staircase we came up. From Lin Quingyu’s office to that same staircase there are, I calculate, four times that.

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence, because in my other life the personal account managers’ offices were always next to the entrance, and never at the back, behind accounting.

A client who brings you money isn’t made to cross the building.

Lu Zhiyu opens the door with her elbow, without letting go of the box, and steps aside to let us through.

The room is smaller than Lin Quingyu’s office and considerably emptier. A high window, a low cabinet against one of the walls and a round table of dark wood in the center, with four chairs around it.

And on the table, to one side, a cube of pale stone.

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Exactly like Lin Quingyu’s, with the same size, the same color and the same look of an expensive paperweight.

Lu Zhiyu sets the box on the table, beside the cube.

“Please, make yourselves comfortable”, she tells us.

Lianhua doesn’t wait to be told twice. She takes one of the chairs from the table, moves it aside, sets it against the wall, and then pushes mine into that gap, so that I am seated at the table like anyone else, with the edge at just the right height to rest my forearms.

Then she takes another chair, places it to my left and a little behind, as always, and sits down.

Xia sits to my right, in the one left free, and joins her hands on her knees.

She hasn’t said a single word since we came through the doors of the Tower, and that, in her case, is worth noting. But she has the face of someone who is looking at everything and saving her questions for later.

Lu Zhiyu takes the last chair, directly across from me, with the box between the two of us.

“Before anything else, I would like to look over the merchandise more calmly”, she tells me. “If you will allow me.”

“Of course”, I answer her.

Lu Zhiyu opens the box and begins to take out talismans.

Not all of them, but a few of each type, some from the top and others from further down. And I like that, because the best ones always go on top when someone wants to swindle somebody.

She looks at them one by one, holds them up against the light of the window and follows the runes with her eyes without quite touching them.

And I let her get on with it, with my hands joined on the table, because yesterday I checked them all precisely with this moment in mind, and I know she isn’t going to find anything.

Even so, I notice my back is considerably straighter than usual.

When she finishes, she puts them back in their places, closes the box and rests her hand on the cube, which lights up for a while and then goes dark again.

“The Cutting Winds and the Spiritual Shields are the ones that pay best”, she tells me. “They are combat talismans and of a higher level. After them come the Fire Arrows and the Air Barriers, but since they are the simplest and there is always a surplus, they are the ones worth the least.”

I have to stop myself from turning my head toward Lianhua, because that is, almost word for word, what she was told in this very building several days ago, only this time it comes with a figure.

Lu Zhiyu tells me the figure. First for each type, and then for the whole box, with the tenth that corresponds to my company for its preferential treatment already added.

And when I hear it, I let out the air very slowly.

It isn’t a fortune, nor does it resemble what Chen Mo got out of the merchandise from the ship. But it is a figure my inventions, at the rate they are selling right now, would take years to put together, and I put it together on my own, sitting in front of a table with a brush, in a few afternoons.

No wonder they say talisman makers are rich.

“That seems a fair price to me”, I tell her.

“Then it is accepted”, she answers me, and rests her hand on the cube again for an instant. “The amount has already been credited to the funds of the House of the Long Journey.”

At that point I ought to be satisfied and move on to the purchases, but I don’t, because that box isn’t what I came to sell today.

What I came to sell today is the next one, and the one after that.

“Lu Zhiyu”, I tell her. “I would like this not to be the last box.”

Lu Zhiyu, who was about to move the box aside, stops.

“I’m listening”, she tells me.

“I would like to reach a long-term agreement with the Tower”, I continue. “To supply it with talismans. Of these four types and of others, as I become able to offer you more.”

Lu Zhiyu leans forward a little.

“The Tower buys every talisman it is offered”, she tells me. “With no limit on quantity, so on that side there is no problem at all.”

She tilts her head a little.

“How often could you bring us a box like this one?” she asks me. “If we could count on a fixed quantity every month, I could propose a somewhat…”

“I can’t give you a quantity”, I interrupt her gently.

I raise a hand.

“And not because I don’t want to”, I continue. “It’s that right now I don’t know how many I’ll be able to bring you next month, and I’d rather not promise you something I don’t know whether I’ll be able to deliver.”

Which is true, although it isn’t the whole truth.

The part I don’t tell her is that I don’t have a single drop of ink left, that I want to make the next batch myself, that I have never made it and that the first ones are going to come out wrong, because the first ones always come out wrong. And I have no idea whether that is going to take me a week or two months.

And committing to a figure you don’t know is, in either of the two worlds, the fastest way there is to end up working for the contract instead of the other way around.

“So I propose something else to you”, I continue. “Let’s set the price of each type of talisman today for the batches that come afterward. No minimum quantity and no exclusivity on either side. I bring you what I have when I have it, and you pay me for it at that price.”

Lu Zhiyu stays thinking it over.

“And in exchange, I would like you to tell me which talismans the Tower needs most”, I add. “The ones most requested and the ones it is most short of.”

“What for?” she asks me.

“To bring you those”, I answer her. “If I am going to bring you talismans, I’d rather bring you the ones you can sell tomorrow and not the ones that sit in a warehouse for a year.”

And Lu Zhiyu, on hearing that, looks at me one second longer than necessary, because that sentence, said like that and by a thirteen-year-old kid sitting in a wheelchair, makes it quite clear where those talismans come from, and we both know it.

But she doesn’t ask who makes them, or how, or where, or since when. She just looks at me for that second, and then she turns toward the low cabinet behind her, takes out a sheet and a brush and begins to take notes.

And I remember what Chen Mo told me on the first night of the journey, that the Tower doesn’t ask.

Until today I had understood it as one of Chen Mo’s rules; now I realize it is a rule of the house.

“That seems a reasonable agreement to me”, she tells me when she finishes writing. “I will prepare a list for you of the types most in demand at this branch right now, and the prices will be fixed just as we have discussed them today.”

“I’m grateful to you”, I tell her.

And then comes the part I have been thinking about since we left home this morning, because what I am going to buy today isn’t only a cauldron and the herbs for the ink, but also the materials to begin making talisman paper.

But the fact that I am able to make that paper has to remain a secret.

Not from the Tower, but from the Masters and the guilds, who make their living from no one but them knowing how to make it. And I promised Master Mu that I wouldn’t tell anyone I know how to make it, at least until I reached the rank of Master.

But a promise like that isn’t broken only with words. It can be broken just as well with a shopping list, because anyone who knows the trade and sees someone buy the ink supplies and the paper supplies at the same time doesn’t need anything else explained to them.

So, before ordering anything, I ask.

“Lu Zhiyu”, I tell her. “Before starting on the purchases, I need to know one thing.”

“Tell me”, she answers me.

“Is everything I buy from the Tower through you confidential?” I ask her. “What I buy and in what quantity.”

Lu Zhiyu doesn’t hesitate.

“It is”, she confirms to me. “An associated company’s transactions are known only to the person who manages them.”

She makes a brief pause.

“And they are not discussed with anyone else”, she adds. “Neither inside this building nor outside it.”

She says it so seriously that I believe her.

Not because she tells me so, but for the same reason Lin Quingyu explained to me on the first day, with the contract on the table, which is that breaking its word costs the Tower far more than keeping it.

“Then let’s go on to the purchases”, I tell her. “The first thing I need is an alchemy cauldron.”

And on hearing that, Lu Zhiyu’s face lights up, because clearly this is the part of her job she likes best.

“In that case, I can recommend several”, she tells me.

And she begins to recommend them to me.

The first, she tells me, is the one an alchemist with many years in the trade would use, with thick walls and a reinforced bottom. The second is of a considerably higher level, with runes engraved all along the rim. And the third she doesn’t even tell me the price of, but assures me it is an exceptional piece, which, in either of the two worlds, means exactly the same thing.

I listen to her with all the patience in the world, because I recognize perfectly what she is doing, since it is what any salesperson in my other life did as soon as they saw someone walk in with a preferred-customer card, which was to show them the most expensive thing in the shop first, just in case.

So, before she has time to start on a fourth, I raise my hand.

“Thank you”, I tell her. “But I don’t need anything at that level.”

Lu Zhiyu blinks.

“I’m not an alchemist”, I continue. “I’m not going to make pills or anything like that. The only thing I am going to make in that cauldron is ink for talismans.”

I rest my forearms on the edge of the table.

“So an ordinary cauldron is enough for me”, I continue. “A common, well-made one. Or, at most, one designed specifically for making talisman ink, if such a thing exists.”

Because a high-level cauldron in my hands would be like buying a race car to drive it on village roads. Hugely expensive, with all its virtues wasted in an area that can’t handle its speed.

Lu Zhiyu looks at me for a moment, and I think it is the first time since I met her that something like disappointment shows on her, but it doesn’t last.

“Let me check what we have”, she tells me.

And she rests her hand on the cube.

This time she keeps it lit considerably longer, and I wonder how many different things these cubes can do, because so far this morning I have already seen them summon a person, pay for a box of talismans and, by the looks of it, check a warehouse.

I increasingly suspect it is practically a miniature computer, only controlled with the mind.

Finally she withdraws her hand.

“I have two that meet what you’re asking for”, she tells me.

She raises a finger.

“The first is an ordinary alchemy cauldron”, she tells me. “Well made, of good material and nothing special. It serves for any liquid preparation, and ink is one.”

She raises the second.

“The second is made expressly for talisman ink”, she continues. “And it is much better than the first. It distributes the heat better and the ink comes out cleaner.”

She lowers her hand after those words.

“And it is also much more expensive”, she finishes.

“How much do they cost?” I ask her.

Lu Zhiyu tells me the two prices, and the second one hurts.

It doesn’t hurt because I can’t pay it, because I can, but buying it takes a very large bite out of what I have just earned, and besides I have no need to buy it, since the other one also works.

Because that is the worst of it, that the first one works for me just as well.

But ink is half a talisman. If the ink comes out better, I fail less, and if I fail less I throw away fewer herbs. And a cauldron isn’t used up like ink; it is paid for once and then used for years, so that with every batch it earns back a little of what it cost.

“I’ll take the second one”, I tell her without hesitation after that reflection.

To my right, I hear Xia let out the air very slowly, as if she had been the one holding it.

Lu Zhiyu nods.

“And now the herbs”, I tell her.

I dictate them without reading them from any paper, because I have no need. I have been arranging them inside my head since the day of the meeting in the courtyard, in the exact order in which they appear in Master Mu’s books.

First the ones for the ink, in complete sets. And not one set of each, but many, because practicing means ruining, and ruining means starting over with a new set.

And then the ones for the paper, together with the few instruments I need to make the paper. Not many, only the ones the books say are the bare minimum and which I, obviously, don’t have.

I say those in the same voice and at the same pace as the previous ones, as if they were one more line of the same list. And I notice that Lianhua, behind me, doesn’t move a hair, which is what she always does when she is paying a great deal of attention.

Lu Zhiyu writes it all down, and she doesn’t pause over the paper ones any more than she paused over the ink ones.

And lastly, I ask her for the materials I need for the Qi-gathering formation, which in all the bustle I nearly forgot.

When I finish, Lu Zhiyu rests her hand on the cube again, leaves it lit for a while and then tells me the total of the purchases, with the tenth already deducted.

After hearing her I do the math, and I get something that surprises me. So I do it again, slowly, subtracting what I have just spent from what I have just earned, and I get the same thing again.

I have money left over.

Although not much. So little that, if I told Chen Mo, he would tell me it isn’t a profit, it’s rounding, practically a pittance.

But I have made money, so I stay still in the chair for a moment, letting the figure settle.

Because this morning I left home with a box of papers and without a single drop of ink. And I am going to go back with a better cauldron than the one I meant to buy, with herbs for a good while of practice, with what I need to start on the paper, with an agreement to keep selling and with a person in this building whose job is to attend to me.

And all of that without having to touch what we had set aside to live on.

In either of the two worlds I have lived in, whichever way you look at it, that is a success.

Lu Zhiyu, meanwhile, has turned toward the low cabinet again. She opens one of the drawers, takes out something small and sets it on the table, in front of me.

It is a token of pale jade, smaller than the palm of my hand, with a few characters carved on one of its faces.

“This is for you”, she tells me. “When you come back, show it to the guards at the staircases. With it, they will know they have to let me know.”

I take it and turn it between my fingers.

And as soon as I have it in my hand, the obvious question comes out, because there will be days when the most sensible thing is for Lianhua to be the one who brings the merchandise.

“Can someone other than me use it?” I ask her.

“If they come with a letter of authorization from you, there will be no problem at all”, she answers me.

I nod, open my bag and put the token away next to the seal.

“One last thing”, I tell her. “Everything I have bought, could it be sent to my house?”

Because I imagine a cauldron has to be bulky, and crossing half the city with Lianhua carrying it and Xia pushing my chair is exactly the kind of spectacle I don’t want to put on.

“Of course”, Lu Zhiyu answers me. “The Tower makes home deliveries; I only need the address. Besides, given the amount you have spent, delivery is free.”

I give it to her, and while I give it to her, I have the fairly clear feeling that I am telling her something everyone in this building already knows, but she writes it down anyway.

“You will have it at your house as soon as possible”, she tells me.

And with that, we both know we are finished.

Lu Zhiyu stands up, Lianhua returns the chair she had moved aside to the table and Xia gets to her feet beside me without anyone telling her to.

Lu Zhiyu accompanies us to the landing, and there she stops and makes a bow considerably deeper than the one she made in Lin Quingyu’s office.

“It has been a pleasure, Sun Wen”, she tells me.

“The pleasure was mine”, I answer her, and return the bow from the chair. “We’ll see each other soon.”

Lianhua takes a Minor Levitation Talisman from her clothing 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 begin to go down, with Xia one step ahead and Lu Zhiyu still on the landing, watching us leave.

And halfway down the staircase, Xia turns her head toward me.

“Can I ask now?” she says to me in a very low voice.

“When we get home”, I answer her.

Xia nods and keeps going down, and I see her count the remaining steps with her lips.

And I count them too, although for a different reason.

Because at some point today or tomorrow a cauldron is going to arrive at the island, and with it the herbs, and with the herbs, I am finally going to try to make my first batch of ink with my own hands.

So, for the first time, I am in a hurry to get home to start setting up rooms I haven’t yet set foot in.