Chapter 207

I trace the last rune of the Spiritual Shield, after which I lift the brush, rinse it in the water bowl, tap it twice against the rim and set it in its rest.

Then I pick the talisman up by the edges, with my fingertips, and hold it up to the light. The joins between the runes are clean and there isn’t a single doubtful stroke, so I place it beside the others on the desk.

They are the first of the next batch I have started making, because the previous one left this morning inside Lianhua’s backpack on its way to the Tower of the Five Dragons, so after setting the talisman in its place, I stay a moment looking at the row, with my hands resting on the edge of the desk while I run the numbers on my accounts.

Since the morning of very expensive shopping in the Ten Thousand Trades Quarter, the funds of the House of the Long Journey have been recovering. They still don’t look like they used to, but they no longer make me sad when I think about them.

And for today, I decide that I have done enough work, so I decide that I deserve a break, and that it is time to keep reading one of those novels I bought at the bookshop.

I smile as I think it, and then I make one of the books I bought on my birthday float over to me from the pile where I keep them set aside.

It is the story of the two merchant families who have spent a hundred years ruining each other, although it is missing a pair of teenagers in love, which, given the ending the novel would have to have in that case, may be just as well.

But I set it in my lap anyway, after which I lower my hands and grip the push rims of the chair’s wheels.

They are made of a smooth wood, so polished that, to look at it, anyone would say your palms are going to slip on it. But they don’t slip, and however much force I apply, my hands don’t skid.

I push the left rim forward, pull the right one back, and the chair turns on the spot until it is facing the door.

As simple as that.

Not so long ago, that same turn cost me a good while of tugging against the posts in the walls, repositioning the chair with the Myriad of Hands and with a rope digging into my waist, whereas now it costs me nothing more than moving my arms a little, so I push both rims at once and leave the study on my own two feet, or what in my case amounts to the same thing, which is my own two hands.

The chair leaves the doorway behind and starts to rattle over the stones of the courtyard, and there, beside me, I see the first of the row of posts we put in so I could use them with the Myriad of Hands.

And not for the first time, I feel like asking Lianhua to pull them all out, but I hold back, just as I have held back every time before.

Because a wheel can break, a rim can crack and an axle can bend, however much it is made of spirit wood. And the day this chair has to go back to the workshop, I am going to have to use the old chair, which is still at home, and go from post to post again.

And on that day it will come in very handy that the posts are still where they are.

Also, as I push, I think, and not for the first time either, that the boost in strength from the Muscle Tempering is almost too useful for this chair.

Because it is bigger than the previous one, which is what I asked the craftsman for so it would last me while I finish growing. And although he supposedly used the lightest materials he could find, the wheels, the axle and the rims are made of spirit wood, and the rest is good wood.

And good wood is heavy.

In my other life, wheelchairs were made of aluminum, or of titanium if you didn’t mind the cost, with air-filled tires, bearings in the axles and a weight so ridiculous that you could lift them with one hand. And even so, people who moved them with their arms all day ended up with wrecked shoulders.

But unfortunately, this one has none of that, so for an ordinary person, moving this chair with someone sitting in it by pushing the rims would be practically impossible.

Or at the very least, they would run out of arms before getting halfway across the courtyard.

But I don’t have that problem, so I give two pushes to get past the first post without touching it, and when I have crossed half the courtyard I look up toward the magnolia, because I notice that the stone table is already occupied.

Xia is sitting on one of the benches, with a book open on the table, her elbows on either side and her face so close to the pages that, if she gets any closer, she is going to end up inside them.

Wheels on the courtyard stones aren’t exactly silent, so she hears me before I arrive, which makes her lift her head and watch me as I approach.

I reach the head of the table, the gap between the two benches, and squeeze the brake lever.

The wheels stop with a short click, and I end up with my forearms at just the right height for the stone tabletop.

“Hi, Xia”, I tell her.

“Hi, Wen”, she replies.

But she says it with her hand holding the pages of the book so it won’t close, and that already tells me plenty.

“What are you reading with such concentration?” I ask her.

And Xia’s face lights up.

“How to prepare spirit fruits!” she tells me enthusiastically. “So that part of the Qi doesn’t escape when you peel them.”

She turns the book toward me, although from where I am I can only make out columns of cramped writing and a few drawings of fruits I have never seen in my life.

It is one of the books on spirit food that Lianhua bought her in the city, and judging by how worn its corners already are, it isn’t the first time she has read it, nor the second.

“Did you know that as soon as you break the skin of a spirit fruit, the Qi starts to escape?” she asks me. “And that depending on how you peel it, more escapes or less?”

I didn’t know, but I don’t have time to tell her, because from there on there is no stopping her.

She tells me about fruits I didn’t know existed, and about others we did know from our stay at the sect but which, according to her, we had been eating wrong. About the ones you peel and the ones you must never peel, about cuts, about knives, about bowls, about timings, and about so many different ways of preparing each one that any cookbook from my other life would look like a pamphlet next to it.

And she tells me all of it with her hands, with her eyes wide open and with such evident pleasure that, at some point, I realize that the book about the two merchant families is still closed in my lap and that I don’t feel like opening it, so I lean back and let her talk.

Although, as I listen, there is one thing I keep checking, fruit after fruit, and it is that nothing poisonous appears in any of her descriptions, which is a relief considering that, when she was reading the book on mushrooms, she told me plainly that the best part was the one about the poisonous ones.

But halfway through what, if I haven’t lost count, is the fourth way of preparing the same fruit, the courtyard door opens to reveal Lianhua.

She comes in, closes the door behind her and crosses the courtyard toward us. She has the backpack hanging from one shoulder, slack and without the square bulk of the box she was carrying this morning, so there is no need to ask her whether she delivered the shipment.

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I raise a hand toward Xia.

“Sorry, Xia”, I tell her. “You can tell me the rest later.”

Xia closes her mouth halfway through a word, although she keeps the book open with her hand.

“How did the trip to the Tower go?” I ask Lianhua.

Lianhua slips the backpack off as she approaches, and when she reaches the table she leaves it folded at the end of the bench and stays standing on my left, as always.

“Lu Zhiyu asks, as always, that you bring her the next shipment as soon as possible”, she tells me.

I nod, because Lu Zhiyu asks for that every time a box reaches her, as if asking me were going to make me speed up my talisman-making any more than I already have.

“And then she made me a special request”, she continues.

I listen to Lianhua’s words with curiosity, since that isn’t normal.

“She told me that if you know how to create any kind of high-level talisman, or one that is extremely rare, you should make it before next month”, she finishes.

I stare at Lianhua, puzzled, after those words, because in all the time I have been selling talismans to the Tower, Lu Zhiyu has given me lists of the most requested ones and has talked to me about prices, but she has never asked me for anything with a deadline.

“Did she explain why?” I ask her.

Lianhua doesn’t reply right away. Instead, she reaches inside her clothes, takes out an envelope and holds it out to me, so I take it and examine it with curiosity. It is thick paper, of good quality, and it bears the seal of the Tower of the Five Dragons on the flap.

“When she made the request, she gave me this”, she tells me. “It is an invitation of honor to the annual auction of the Tower of the Five Dragons, which is being held in a month.”

I turn the envelope over between my fingers.

“And she told me that if you manage to create a talisman that is rare or valuable enough, it can be included in that same auction”, she finishes.

Invitation of honor.

In my other life, that was called a VIP invitation. And I have already learned the hard way that, in this world, what I call VIP usually ends up being considerably more than it seems.

To my right, Xia has forgotten her book, which has closed, and is looking at the envelope the same way she was looking at the drawings in her book a moment ago.

“An auction?” I ask Lianhua. “The Tower holds auctions here?”

“According to what Lu Zhiyu explained to me, the Tower holds a regular auction every year”, she replies. “And a special auction every ten.”

I set the envelope down on the table, next to the book I haven’t opened, and look at her with narrowed eyes.

“And by any chance”, I tell her. “Wouldn’t it turn out that this year is the special one?”

“No, Xiaojie”, she replies. “Lu Zhiyu told me there are still four years to go until the special auction.”

I sigh with relief after hearing Lianhua and let myself drop back against the backrest.

Because, with the track record of bad luck I have been accumulating in this life, I was practically certain she was going to tell me yes, that it was this year, and that the venue was going to be full of the big shots of the city and of the three sects, just in time for all of them to see the girl with the strange chair who draws attention wherever she goes.

The only auction I have ever been to was Master Mu’s, in the Empire, and what I remember most about it are two noble families shouting at each other from one box to another over a ginseng root, until she reminded them that at an auction neither family nor background matters.

And Master Mu isn’t going to be here to remind anyone of that, although I have no doubt that, holding auctions regularly, the Tower is more than capable of keeping order.

Although, if I have to go to one, I would a thousand times rather it be a normal one, but that can wait a month, and there are things that can’t, especially if I intend to be able to buy something at it.

“Apart from that”, I tell her. “Were you able to buy the materials for the ink and the talisman paper?”

“Yes, Xiaojie”, she replies. “They will bring it to us as usual.”

I open my mouth to ask her something else, but Xia gets there first.

“Wen”, she tells me. “Why do you keep buying talisman paper?”

I look at her, since it is strange for Xia to interrupt a conversation with Lianhua.

“You already know how to make it”, she continues. “With the materials you bought to experiment, you managed to make your own paper in the end.”

Out of pure reflex, I look toward the courtyard door, which Lianhua closed when she came in, and then toward the wall, on the other side of which there is nothing but the river.

No one can hear us here, but some reflexes are hard to give up.

“If I were an unknown talisman maker, I probably would”, I reply.

Xia frowns.

“But I’m not anymore”, I continue. “Now there are people who know that I am the maker of the talismans the House of the Long Journey sells.”

I rest my forearms on the table and lean toward her a little.

“And a talisman maker who suddenly stops buying paper is a very odd talisman maker”, I add. “If anyone notices, the next thing they’re going to wonder is where I’m getting it. And from there to suspecting that I know how to make it without being a Master is a very short step.”

And I promised Master Mu that no one would find out about that, at least until I was one.

“Besides, Lu Zhiyu assured me that everything I buy through her is confidential”, I continue. “But ever since Master Mu had to cross two continents to erase every trace of her relationship with me from this branch, I don’t trust that confidentiality quite so much.”

I shrug.

“So I’d rather not take the risk just to save a little”, I finish.

Because that paper, really, I am not paying for as material; I am paying for it as an alibi. And alibis, from what I have seen in this life, always come out cheaper than explanations.

Xia thinks it over for a moment, with her hand on the book even though it is already closed, and then nods.

“I understand”, she tells me.

At that moment, Lianhua speaks again.

“Xiaojie”, she tells me. “There is also something else I need to warn you about.”

She says it in her usual flat, polite voice, but I turn my head to look at her, because if Lianhua says she wants to warn me about something, it means it isn’t something good.

“On my last two trips into the city, I have been followed”, she tells me.

I look at Lianhua with concern.

“How serious is that?” I ask her.

“For the moment, it doesn’t seem very serious”, she replies.

She folds her hands in front of her.

“From what I have been able to deduce, there are at least three different groups, and they have no connection to one another”, she continues. “And I am certain they are members of information-gathering groups.”

She pauses briefly.

“How serious it ultimately is would depend on whom they sell what they find out to”, she finishes.

I don’t ask her how she can be so sure, since Lianhua was a Yushi of the Yushitai for years, and if there is anyone capable of recognizing people who earn their living spying on others, it is her.

So if she says she is sure, she is.

And I don’t ask her what they are after either, because I doubt she knows, since if she knew she would have told me that too.

It could be the talismans, it could be the chair, or it could be what Master Mu told me, sitting at this very table: that my relationship with her was on record in the Tower for several months and that it wasn’t impossible someone had found out and sold it.

Or it could be all three at once.

In my other life, people’s data was bought and sold in bundles, and no one asked the buyer what they wanted it for. Here I don’t think it is very different, except that the information is obtained the old-fashioned way, and therefore by following my handmaiden through the streets.

And whoever ends up buying it, the first thing they are going to know is where I live.

I stroke my chin as I let my gaze wander over the courtyard. The magnolia, the row of posts, the door Lianhua has just closed and the wall, which until this afternoon seemed more than enough to me.

“I had doubts about what my next steps were going to be”, I tell them.

Lianhua and Xia look at me.

“But this settles everything”, I continue. “The next thing is going to be going to the formation makers’ guild to try to find a master.”

Master Mu told me before she left that if I wanted to know more about formations, I would have to find myself formation masters, because she wasn’t one. She also told me that diversifying too much might mean I never excel at anything.

But I very much doubt that learning to protect the house I live in counts as diversifying.

“The books I was given at the Palace only cover small formations”, I add. “At most, formations that affect a single room, like the Qi-gathering one I carved into the floor.”

I point with my chin at the wall and, beyond it, the river.

“But with what you have just told me, I need to learn to create a defensive formation capable of surrounding the whole island, not just a room”, I finish. “And I don’t have the slightest idea how that’s done.”

Xia is the one who breaks the silence that settles over the courtyard after my words.

“And why don’t we just hire someone to make it for us?” she asks me. “If there are people in this city who know how to make protection formations, we pay them and save ourselves all that.”

It is a reasonable question. In fact, it is the one anyone with a bit of common sense and some money would ask.

“Because whoever creates a formation decides its rules”, I reply. “And whoever decides those rules can leave hidden ways in them to ignore that protection.”

Xia frowns.

“Hidden ways?” she asks me.

“A condition that shouldn’t be there and that only he knows about”, I tell her. “Something that makes the formation let through whoever he decides, like, for example, someone with a medallion bearing a particular mark.”

In my other life, that was called a backdoor. Someone installed an impeccable security system for you and left himself an entrance that only he knew about, just in case, and the day someone else discovered it, it was already too late for you.

And in this world it is even easier to hide, because formations already hide their real runes among runes that serve no purpose at all, precisely so that no one outside the trade knows which are which.

So I could have that door right under my nose and not recognize it, since I don’t know that kind of formation.

“And there are people who do that?” Xia asks me.

“Probably ninety-nine out of every hundred formation makers would never do it”, I reply. “Because if it were common, no one would trust formation makers.”

After that, though, I raise a finger.

“But I don’t want to risk running into the one who would”, I continue.

To my left, Lianhua says nothing but nods just once, since, where my safety is concerned, she clearly approves of my way of thinking.

Because that one maker wouldn’t even need to get in himself. It would be enough for him to sell the information about that door, and right now, out there, there are at least three groups watching us who earn their living doing exactly that.

“So the formation that protects this island, I would rather draw myself”, I finish. “It is the only way for us to be completely safe.”