Chapter 196

The next morning, fortunately, the river is calm.

I am sitting on the stern bench, with my back against the gunwale, and my chair travels in the bottom of the boat, between two benches, held by the Dragon’s Grip so that it won’t slide from side to side, because today Xia isn’t here to hold it by the armrest.

Lianhua rows with a long, steady rhythm, in no hurry at all, and the boat moves among the islands of the Rong, dodging rock shoals she already knows by heart, while the sun is still low and the water has that early-morning gray before anyone has stirred it up.

We reach the dock without incident.

Lianhua jumps out with the line, ties it off with two turns and a knot and comes back down for me, and this is where Xia’s absence shows, because today there is no one to help her lift me.

So Lianhua picks me up in her arms by herself, which is something she can do without any effort even though it is awkward for both of us by now, and while she lifts me onto the dock, I use the Dragon’s Grip on the chair again.

The chair rises from the bottom of the boat, passes over the gunwale with its wheels turning slowly in the air and settles on the planks of the dock, well away from the edge, just in time for Lianhua to set me down in it.

I resettle myself, smooth my skirt over my knees, Lianhua positions herself behind the chair and we start up toward the interior of the city.

The way is long, but quiet.

The looks are there, as always, and as always I let them be. A water-carrier stops with his buckets halfway along, a group of kids follows us at a run for half a street until one of them looks at Lianhua’s face and they decide they have something very urgent to do in the opposite direction, and an old man sitting in the doorway of a shop follows my chair with his eyes from start to finish without the slightest attempt to hide it.

But no one comes over, no one asks and no one gets in our way.

And as we move away from the river, the streets widen, the houses spread apart and the buildings begin to have that air of having had room to spare when they were built, which is exactly what Hou Deming told me. The guilds left the riverbanks as soon as the city began to grow outward, and here is the reason, in the form of spacious lots and streets wide enough for three carts at once.

The Talisman Makers’ Guild is at the end of one of those streets.

I recognize it before I read the sign, because above the door, carved into the stone, are the runic symbols of the seven elements. Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Nature, Yin and Yang, in the same order and the same arrangement as on the door of the Hall of Ten Thousand Talismans in the Empire, which makes me suspect that in this profession those seven symbols are something like a universal emblem.

And the sign beneath them reads Pavilion of a Thousand Strokes.

The building is three stories tall, of gray stone and dark wood, with no dragons on the roof and considerably more windows than the building in the Empire, and I can’t decide whether that is because here they have no need to impress anyone or because here they impress in a different way.

What it does have are three wide steps at the entrance.

Lianhua takes out a Minor Levitation Talisman, sticks it to the side of the chair and we go into the vestibule.

Inside there is a large room with a wooden floor, a long counter at the back and, in front of it, a group of people waiting, who turn toward us as soon as they hear the wheels.

There are five of them, all young, although in this city that means nothing. Three men and two women, in good-quality clothing, each with a brush case or a roll of paper under their arm and the faces of people who have been waiting for something important for a good while and have suddenly found a distraction.

Although clearly the distraction is me.

Behind the counter there is a young woman, with her hair gathered up and a plain tunic with the seven symbols embroidered on the chest, who looks up from a register as soon as Lianhua stops me in front of her.

What is strange, though, and it throws me for a moment, is that she looks at me.

Not at Lianhua, as almost everyone does the first time they see an adult and a girl in the chair. She looks at me, directly, and she smiles at me.

“Welcome to the Pavilion of a Thousand Strokes”, she tells me. “How may I help you?”

And with that, I already like her.

“I would like to sit the examination for the talisman maker’s certificate”, I tell her.

Behind me, someone snorts with laughter.

The receptionist pays no attention, or pretends to pay no attention, which comes to the same thing.

“You’re in luck”, she tells me. “There’s a session this very morning and it hasn’t started yet.”

She opens the register to a half-filled page.

“But first I have to ask you a question, because it’s a requirement”, she continues. “Do you have any Gate open?”

“Two”, I answer her.

Not a muscle of her face moves on hearing me, so I suspect that in this city a girl of my apparent age with two Gates open isn’t something that surprises people, and I don’t yet know whether that reassures me or depresses me.

“Your name?” she asks me.

“Sun Wen”, I tell her.

She writes it down in clean, rounded handwriting.

“The examination has two parts”, she tells me as she writes. “The first is theoretical, in writing. The second is practical, and consists of making a talisman in front of the examiner, with the Guild’s paper and ink. The examiner chooses the talisman from among the basic ones.”

She looks up at me.

“And the fee must be paid before starting”, she finishes, and tells me the figure.

It isn’t a small amount, but it’s nothing I wasn’t expecting either, so I look at Lianhua, and Lianhua, without saying a word, takes out the purse and sets the spirit stones on the counter.

The receptionist counts them, puts them away and closes the register.

“You can wait with the others”, she tells me. “The examiner will be out shortly.”

And then, lowering her voice a little without ceasing to smile, she adds one more thing.

“Don’t pay them any attention”, she tells me.

Lianhua takes me over to one side of the room, by the wall, a few paces from the group.

And the group, which until now has limited itself to looking at me, decides it has looked enough.

“They’re examining little girls now?” says one of the men, the tallest, addressing no one in particular and loudly enough for the whole room to hear.

“They examine anyone who pays”, another answers him. “It’s good business.”

One of the women covers her mouth with her hand.

“Maybe the one being examined is the maid”, says the other. “And the girl is just keeping her company.”

“She gave her own name”, the tall one answers her.

“Then I have a question”, says the second man, and turns toward me with an enormous smile. “Who’s going to hold her brush for her?”

The three of them laugh. The other two don’t, but they don’t say anything either, which in a room like this comes to the same thing.

I don’t answer, since I have spent my whole life letting people talk about me, and I have learned that what someone says in the first few minutes says considerably more about that person than they intend. And what these three are saying about themselves is that they have spent the morning sick with nerves and have just found the cheapest way to stop being so.

But there is another person in this room who, unfortunately, doesn’t have the same patience I do.

Lianhua hasn’t moved, hasn’t said anything, hasn’t turned her head and hasn’t changed her expression, and that is precisely why I know she is listening to every word with enormous attention, because I have seen that stillness on her before.

I saw it once in the village of the Yao clan, and that day didn’t end well for anyone, so I raise my left hand and rest it on top of hers, which is still on the back of my chair.

I don’t say anything to her, because I don’t need to, although I could give her a whole speech through the Golden Chains of Ogma.

Lianhua takes a breath to answer my gesture, and she does it by loosening her fingers a little beneath mine.

At that moment a door at the back of the room opens and a middle-aged man comes out, thin, in what I assume is the Guild’s tunic, with a beard trimmed to a point and a roll of papers under his arm, who looks at the group, counts it with his eyes and stops at me.

Well, not at me, at the chair.

“And what’s this?” he asks.

“Sun Wen”, the receptionist answers him from the counter. “Registered for this morning’s session. The fee is paid.”

The examiner looks at me the way one looks at a piece of furniture someone has left in a place where it doesn’t belong.

“This is an examination”, he tells me. “Not a social call.”

“I know”, I answer him, holding his gaze. “That’s why I paid the fee.”

One of the group laughs, but this time he isn’t laughing at me, and the examiner shoots him a look that cuts his laugh in half.

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Then he looks back at me.

“Come in”, he says, and turns around. “All of you.”

The examination room is behind that same door, on the ground floor, which I am silently grateful for, because I had no desire whatsoever to spend another levitation talisman going up another floor.

It is a long room, with a large window at the far end and two rows of low tables, each with its stool, its inkwell, its brush rest and a bowl of water. And on the wall by the entrance, at mid-height, there is a wooden gallery with a railing from which the whole room can be seen without going down into it.

In the gallery there is an old man.

He is sitting, with his hands resting on the railing, his completely white hair gathered up on top of his head and a Guild tunic like the examiner’s, only of a darker gray and with the seven symbols embroidered in silver thread instead of black. He says nothing, doesn’t move and no one but me seems to have noticed him, or else everyone has noticed him and prefers to pretend they haven’t.

Lianhua pushes my chair toward one of the tables in the front row, and the examiner turns around.

“No assistants are allowed in here”, he says.

He says it out loud, for the whole room, and the three from before elbow one another.

“She isn’t staying”, I answer him. “She’s only going to bring me to the table.”

The examiner looks at me for a moment and then looks at Lianhua, and something of what he sees in Lianhua makes him decide that part isn’t worth arguing about.

“She’s to leave as soon as she has you in place”, he says.

Lianhua moves the stool away from the table, sets it against the wall and pushes my chair into the gap, so that I am seated with the edge of the table at just the right height to rest my forearms. Then she checks with her eyes that the inkwell, the bowl and the brush rest are within my reach, moves the inkwell a finger’s width to the right and steps away.

“I’ll wait for you outside, Xiaojie”, she tells me.

“Thank you”, I answer her.

And she leaves without looking back, although as she passes the table of the tallest troublemaker she slows her step for half a second, just long enough for him to raise his head and look at her, enough that, after looking at her, he turns considerably paler than he was.

The examiner hands out the sheets for the first part face down, one on each table, and then lights a stick of incense and plants it in a holder by the window.

“You have until it burns down”, he says. “You may begin.”

I turn the sheet over.

There are twenty questions, written in a clean, professional hand, and I read them all before wetting my brush.

The examination is simple, even too simple, since every question on it can be answered simply by having memorized the most basic books I own.

Although at the end there is one question, the longest, about a combined-effect talisman, in which you are given all the runes out of order and instructed to say in what order they must be written and why.

And as I read the examination, I remember Master Mu.

Her fan striking the desk, the threat to cancel the agreement if she discovered I was lying to her, and the long hour she spent asking me questions considerably harder than these.

And how it ended, with her collapsed in a chair, so I wet my brush and begin to write.

I write neatly and clearly, so that no one can say the Calligraphy lessons they gave me at the Imperial Palace were wasted, and I don’t linger on any question longer than necessary, because I don’t need to think out the answers, only to go and fetch them from where I have them filed away.

In the last question, the one about the writing order, I even allow myself to add a line at the end explaining what would happen if the last two runes were swapped, because that is the trap in the question and it seems bad manners to me not to point it out.

When I finish, the stick of incense hasn’t reached the halfway point, but I put my brush in the bowl anyway, shake it twice against the rim and set it on its rest.

After that, I stay still, with my hands on my legs, while all around me the brushes keep scratching.

The examiner takes a while to notice, but when he does he comes over to my table with a frown, looks at the sheet and then looks at me.

“Giving up?” he asks me.

“I’ve finished”, I answer him.

Behind me, someone lets out a giggle.

The examiner picks up the sheet.

And I, who spent a few years of my other life grading exams, recognize perfectly the face he makes next, because it is the face of someone who began reading in search of the mistake that will justify the failing grade he had already decided on and who can’t find it.

He reaches the end, goes back to the beginning, stops at the last question, at the line I added, and reads it twice, moving his lips, just like Xia.

Then he sets the sheet face down on his own table without saying anything, and up in the gallery the old man has leaned forward a little.

I wait without moving for the incense to burn down.

The others finish one after another, the last with the ash already falling, and the examiner collects the sheets and stacks them on top of mine without looking at them.

Then he hands out to each of those present a small packet of papers, an inkwell of talisman ink and a brush.

“Second part”, he says. “One talisman each. The one I tell you.”

And he begins to go around the tables.

“Air Barrier”, he tells the first.

“Water Arrow”, he tells the next.

And so on until he reaches the tall one, who also gets an Air Barrier with a look of relief.

Then he stops in front of my table.

And he takes his time, looking down at me.

“Cutting Wind”, he tells me.

In the room, someone stops breathing for a moment.

Because the Cutting Wind isn’t a basic talisman. It is a talisman of a higher level than any requested so far, and you don’t need to know much about this profession to know it, because even one of the group has turned on his stool to stare at the examiner with his mouth slightly open.

“Didn’t the receptionist say it would be chosen from among the basic ones?” asks the woman who covered her mouth, and she asks it in a very low voice, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear her.

“She has shown she has more than enough theory”, the examiner answers her without looking at her. “We’ll see how she does with the practice.”

And he stays standing there, in front of my table, waiting for me to protest.

I look at him, but I don’t protest, because my protest is exactly what he is waiting for, and because, although he has no way of knowing it, asking me for that talisman is like asking a writer to draft a passage from her own novel.

“As you say”, I answer him, after which I ignore him, look at my table and pick up the brush.

But before wetting the brush, I activate Sensing the Qi and look at the inkwell.

And what I see is generic ink, like mine, but with its Qi unevenly distributed, considerably denser at the bottom than at the top, as if someone had left it to settle in that jar longer than they should have, so I stir the ink slowly with the brush and look again.

Better.

Not perfect, but better, and I will have to correct the flaws as I go thanks to Sensing the Qi.

I wet the brush, rest my forearm on the edge of the table and begin.

I trace the first rune unhurriedly, and with the stroke I guide the Qi into the ink in the exact amount, not a speck more and not a speck less, because a speck too much is ash and a speck too little is too.

The second, the same.

Around me, the room has gone silent, or so it seems to me, because I no longer hear anything but the scratch of my brush.

At some point, behind me, something makes a dry sound, like paper burning very fast, and someone swears under his breath. But I don’t look up, because it isn’t my paper.

And I reach the last rune.

The end, which is the most dangerous moment of the whole process, since I have to close the entire circuit without allowing myself a single tremor, but I complete it without trouble.

I lift the brush and the paper stays where it is.

I put the brush in the bowl, shake it twice against the rim, set it on its rest and only then look up.

The examiner is still in front of my table. It seems he hasn’t moved the whole time, and from his face, I suspect he hasn’t blinked much either.

He takes the talisman by the edges, with his fingertips, and holds it up against the light of the window.

He follows the runes with his eyes, one by one, without touching them. He reaches the channeling rune and stays there a long while. Then he continues to the last one and goes back to the beginning.

And starts again.

“May I see it?” says a voice from above.

It is the old man in the gallery.

He hasn’t raised his voice, and even so the whole room turns toward him as if he had clapped his hands. And the examiner, who a moment ago seemed the most important man in this building, suddenly seems considerably less so.

“Of course, Elder”, he says.

The old man holds out his hand, and the talisman lifts from the examiner’s fingers, floats up to the gallery and settles in his palm.

He looks at it for considerably less time than the examiner did.

Then he looks up at me.

“Not a single stroke too many”, he says.

Nothing more. But in a room like this, and said from up there, it sounds like a verdict.

“And the theory?” he asks next, without taking his eyes off me.

The examiner takes a moment to understand that the question is for him.

“No mistakes, Elder”, he answers when he realizes. “None.”

He makes a pause that clearly costs him.

“And on the last question she added an explanation that wasn’t asked for”, he finishes. “It was also correct.”

The old man nods slowly.

“Then record it as what it is”, he tells him. “A perfect examination.”

The examiner goes to his table, wets his own brush and writes something at the bottom of my theory sheet, and he does it in front of the whole room, with his back very straight and his ears considerably redder than a while ago.

Behind me no one is laughing anymore.

I turn my head a little, just enough to see the back row.

The tall one has in front of him a small heap of gray ash where his Air Barrier should be, and he is looking at it with enormous attention, as if at any moment it were going to explain something to him. The woman who covered her mouth has finished her talisman and is looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read, but which isn’t the one from before. And the one who wanted to know who was going to hold my brush isn’t looking at me at all.

I turn my head back to the front and say nothing, because nothing more is needed to show better manners than any of them showed a while ago.

The examiner declares the examination over shortly afterward, collects the talismans and tells us to wait outside while the results are recorded.

When the examiner opens the door, Lianhua is on the other side of it; she looks at him in silence and he steps back, so she comes into the room, looks at my face just once, asks nothing, because she has no need to, and takes me out of the room.

And we are halfway across the vestibule when I hear footsteps behind me.

I look over my shoulder and see that it is the old man.

He has come down from the gallery by some staircase I didn’t see, and he approaches unhurriedly, with my talisman still in his hand, until he stops in front of the chair.

And then he does something I didn’t expect, which is to bend down until his face is level with mine, with one hand resting on his knee.

I don’t know whether he does it out of courtesy or out of the habit of someone who has spent his life talking to apprentices, but I am grateful for it all the same.

“Who taught you, child?” he asks me.

And he asks it without any beating about the bush, with the frank curiosity of someone who has spent a great many years in a trade and has just seen something he didn’t expect to see this morning.

“Someone who knew far more than I do”, I answer him. “And who had a great deal of patience with me.”

The old man smiles.

“They must have”, he tells me. “But what I saw in there isn’t learned with patience alone.”

He looks at the talisman a moment longer and then looks back at me.

“I would like you to be my disciple”, he tells me.

He says it just like that, without embellishment and without preamble, and behind me I feel Lianhua not move a hair.

And I take a second before answering, because this is exactly the kind of offer that isn’t turned down lightly and that, at the same time, I can’t afford to accept.

“I am very grateful for the honor”, I tell him, and incline my head as far as the chair allows me. “But I already have a master.”

“And who is it?” he asks me. “Perhaps I know them.”

“It’s quite possible”, I answer him. “But it isn’t my place to go around saying my master’s name without permission.”

The old man looks at me a moment longer, and then he straightens up and lets out a short laugh through his nose.

“Then tell your master, from me, that it was a job well done”, he tells me.

He gives me back the talisman, which floats back into my hands, and leaves the way he came.

I stay watching him go, and try to imagine the face Master Mu would make if that message ever reached her.

And most likely she would tap her shoulder a couple of times with her fan and say she didn’t need anyone to tell her something she already knew.

A while later, the receptionist calls me to the counter.

She hands me a sheet of thick paper, with the Guild’s seal in red in one corner, my name written in clean, rounded handwriting, and beneath it the rank, which is the lowest the Guild grants, because it is the one everyone starts with, whatever examination they sit.

That seems perfect to me, because the higher the rank the more attention you draw, and right now I prefer to start out discreetly.

“Congratulations”, the receptionist tells me after handing me the paper. “But I have to ask you to let a drop of your blood fall onto the seal of your certificate.”

I look at the receptionist and raise an eyebrow at the request, since it is something I didn’t expect.

“And what is that supposed to be for?” I ask her politely.

“By doing it, the Guild’s seal is infused with your Qi signature”, the receptionist answers me. “That means no one can steal your certificate and pass themselves off as you.”

After hearing the explanation, I very much want to keep asking about how that system is supposed to work, but since this is neither the time nor the place to do it, I simply look at Lianhua while I hold out a hand to her and extend a finger.

Lianhua needs no more instructions, since as soon as she sees me hold out my hand, she takes one of her weapons from her sleeve and pricks my finger lightly until a drop of blood comes out, which I let fall onto the Guild’s seal as the receptionist told me.

I don’t notice any change in the seal, but the receptionist nods with satisfaction after seeing me do it, and then, with the same smile, she adds one more thing.

“I told you not to pay them any attention”, she tells me.

“And I did as you said”, I answer her.

I put the certificate away in my bag, next to the seal of the House of the Long Journey, and at that moment the door of the examination room opens and the other candidates begin to come out, one after another, with the examiner at the end.

None of them looks at me, so I let out the air slowly, resettle myself in the chair and turn my head a little toward Lianhua.

“Lianhua”, I tell her. “Take me home.”

I pause.

“I’m tired of dealing with fools”, I finish, although that I say in a low voice, so that only the receptionist hears me.