Chapter_43_Breaking_the_Seal

The summons came before first light, the same two lines as before: hearing at chen hour, all parties present. This time there was half a line more at the end: open to observers.

Those three words were new since the roster of names had gone in. When Chen Jin left the arsenal the old hand led the way, and the bundle stayed on Chen Jin's own person—no one else carried it. The morning fog had not lifted. The sentry at the shop gate went by the book and asked after his pass, then recognized him halfway through and closed his ledger without writing anything.

People were already lining the street. They did not crowd, and did not shout; they stood along both sides and left the middle open. The grain queue had come first, the scales not yet working, the whole tail of it gathered at the corner; those from the shelter came behind, old and young together, steps kept soft.

Chen Jin walked down the middle of the road with both sides watching him in silence. A woman with a child on her arm pressed a fistful of roasted beans into the child's hand; the child closed its fist and made no sound and did not cry. When Chen Jin had passed, footsteps followed for a stretch before the defense officer's men politely cut them off. The bundle pressed against his ribs through his coat.

The hearing room was the same room. The long table had been turned crosswise: the committee in a row, the defense officer at the side seat, and Bi Chengzhang across from them with his book already open before him. The three charges still sat at his hand—private command of troops, self-sustaining economy, overstepping procedure.

Last time he had read them out one by one, each with a ledger to back it, and when the session ended the right of it had been his. This time nobody read the charges. But nobody had taken them away either, and they lay at the corner of the table like troops that had never been pulled back.

Wen Heng sat at the far end, her medical box at her feet, her book closed on her knees.

The chairing member had just said "we resume," when Chen Jin took the bundle from inside his coat and set it on the table.

"Seven days under summons," he said. "What I waited for was an accounting. Here is one. Let this be opened first."

Nobody stopped him. The committee did not, the defense officer did not, and neither did Bi Chengzhang—his hand had been resting on his own book, and it drew back slowly, steadying itself; only the knuckles went white on the cover and took their time fading. The chairing member nodded once.

The hemp cord came off, and the wax cracked in half on the tabletop, the medic's seal breaking with it. Three pages came out, the originals of the night-fight casualty roster, the old folds worn pale. Behind them, two receipts and one fair-copied sheet of shortfall.

The committee passed the shortfall sheet down the row. The first member to take it counted the pages; the second went straight to the approval stamp at the end; the third held it under the lamp and checked it box by box. More and more came to look, and the sound of pages turning grew slower and slower. By the end the sheet had made a full circle of the table, and when it came back to the chairing member its edges were furred from thumbs.

Wen Heng stood to give her testimony. She spoke without hurry, in the same tone she used for dressing times in the tent: eleven heavy cases, one page to a man in her book—wound, dressing days, grain owed, every line kept. On the three pages of the night fight, two names were circled: the old soldier who had lost half the plate off his shoulder, and the recruit whose leg had closed but would not yet bear him. A circle meant that if the extra ration broke, the man went back flat.

The grant was a month's allowance, four hundred bags. The first issue came to four parts in ten — one hundred sixty bags, and those reached the tent. The second issue, two parts in ten, was approved on paper, but the grain never came down. All told, one hundred sixty bags arrived. The missing two hundred and forty, she said, and put her finger at the last line of the shortfall sheet—walked out on this requisition slip, approval stamp attached.

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The lifted stamp was light, and half of one character—Bi—came off clean, even the gap in the stroke legible.

Bi Chengzhang said, "A worksite drawdown has always had precedent. The berth works are large and the crews must eat. A drawdown is ordinary business, and every ticket is in the record."

The chairing member asked, "The names on the drawdown slips. Who drew the grain?"

Bi Chengzhang went through his book. He went through two pages, found nothing, and started over.

Wen Heng read it out for him: "Three names on the slips. I checked all of them. The works register has no such men."

The room went still for a breath. The works register lay within the defense officer's reach—rule since the day of the handover: to work, a man goes on the register first. Men not on the register had drawn away two hundred and forty bags of grain.

The defense officer pushed the register forward. "The berth crews draw rations through the fleet's channel," he said. "It is written on the work tickets. The words drawdown—from where?"

"A copyist's error," Bi Chengzhang said. "Those three may have been hands hired by the day."

Wen Heng opened her book to last winter's page and slid it to the center of the table. "Last winter's ration slips are here too, and the stamp on them is whole. This year's is chipped. Day-labor grain goes by a separate book, not by requisition slips—and of that rule, the man who stamps the slips knows more than I do. A seal used a dozen years does not chip itself in one winter: either the seal was changed, or the man behind it was. Either way, this office must answer."

Bi Chengzhang made to speak again, then, finding the row of faces all turned toward him, swallowed it. His fingers pressed on the cover of his book until the leather took shallow dents, then withdrew.

Nobody spoke. The sound of pens had stopped. Zhou Zhengting, at the record desk, looked up at Bi Chengzhang—Bi Chengzhang was reaching to square his own book, and his sleeve slid half an inch, and the pendant on his wrist showed itself for a moment, thorns turned inward. Zhou Zhengting looked once, then looked down and wrote a line in his own book. This time, somebody had seen it.

The chairing member asked Chen Jin, low, "Did you know of these accounts before?"

"My accounts—grain, guns, brass—your people went through them once, and they held," Chen Jin said. "Her book, I saw whole for the first time today." He paused. "And having seen it whole, I know one of the books in this room is not accounts at all. It is men."

The member asked nothing more, and moved the shortfall sheet toward himself.

The ruling was read short. In the matter of the ration: the authority of the requisition slips was sealed for audit the same day. Bi Chengzhang was suspended pending inquiry. The shortfall for the casualty tent would be made good from the public account at once, with actual issue reported within three days. As for the three charges, the man reading the ruling did not mention one of them—nobody raised them, and nobody withdrew them; in the end the pages went into the record, shelved together with Wen Heng's three originals.

Bi Chengzhang closed his book, stacked it, squared the edges. The motion was slow, and when it was done he rose. He packed with no one's help—pen, seal box, book, into the case one by one. At the seal box he stopped, and asked, "May the record be filed by my own office?"

"Sealed," the chairing member said. "While under inquiry, nothing leaves."

He nodded, left the seal box on the table, and pushed it to the center, pushed it straight. At the door, the men on either side made way—no more room than one man needed, and no less. The procedure still stood; the hearts had gone. When he reached the door, the room was still saying nothing.

Chen Jin, from his seat, said, "Take care."

As soon as it was out he regretted it. The last time he had seen this man out, he had said a polite thing too. Twice now he had spent courtesy on him, and twice regretted it. Polite words were cheap; what they saved always came due later.

Bi Chengzhang paused, did not turn, and went out. The door closed behind him, the hinge gave one note, and with that one note the room seemed to fill with people again.

Before the session ended, the defense officer asked Chen Jin, low, "The matter on the wall, last night—" Chen Jin said, "The wall is yours. Own the lamps yourselves, and teach the sentry calls until they come out right." The defense officer asked nothing more, wrote both lines into his book, closed it, and added one of his own: "The ration accounts, I will audit myself."

Wen Heng gathered her book; the three originals stayed on the table, entered into the record. She picked up her medical box and went, and at the door looked back once. "No dressing was late," she said. Then she was gone. Two helpers from the tent took the box from her in the corridor, one on either side, their steps as even as hers.

When they came out, a whistle sounded from the bay mouth. Long, pressing flat across the water. The scales at the grain desk stopped; the sentries on the wall turned their heads; people inside and out looked toward the bay. The patrol fleet's flag had been seen changing beyond the bay the day before. The old hand, half a step behind Chen Jin, lowered his voice: "That ship draws deep water."

Chen Jin looked once toward the bay and said nothing. Deep water meant heavy cargo—grain, or the kind of hands that could carry off a whole ledger.