Chapter 304: Just the Two of Us

Qingluo’s packing list arrived that afternoon in Ah-Ping’s handwriting, and most of it was things he couldn’t bring.

No oiled leather. No new rope. Nothing waxed, nothing perfumed, no fresh-tanned anything, and no pills in his coat that he hadn’t shown her first. At the bottom, underlined twice: wash everything you’re wearing, including the belt.

"She means it about the belt," Ah-Ping said, from the doorway. "A man from the second bench took one in six years ago and it was the belt that did him."

"What was on it?"

"Boot oil. Two weeks old." She set a bundle of food on the chest. "It isn’t the animal that gets people at the sink. It’s what people carry in with them."

He washed the belt. He washed everything else as well, including a shirt that had never been within reach of a stable, because the list had been written by somebody who does this for a living.

Lian found him in the yard after dark, going over Marrow Dragon with a cloth that had nothing on it, which felt wrong and was the point.

"I want it in glass, not bamboo," she said. "If she offers you bamboo, argue. It’ll keep three days in glass and about nine hours in anything else, and the road back is two days if nothing goes wrong."

"You could come as far as the treeline."

"I’d be in the way and I’d hate myself for it." She sat on the step. "Kang has asked me to write my method for the base into their record."

"Is that an honour?"

"It’s their record. Nobody’s method goes in it unless they mean to use it, and nobody’s name goes on it if they’re a guest who’ll be gone in a month." She rubbed at a burn on her wrist. "Four days in a room with nine people better than me, and I haven’t been this happy since I was twenty-one. I’m staying at that bench until somebody removes me by force."

Hao was in the low store with two of the house’s clerks and a lamp, and did not look up when Xuan put his head in.

"Three days," Hao said. "When that name comes out of the ledger it’ll be a merchant house or a factor acting for one, and a name on its own is worth nothing to you."

"You’ll know who they are."

"I’ll know who they are, who they owe, which port they use and who they’d run to." He was writing while he talked. "I’ve got a courier going north tomorrow with a letter to Anhu and the man’s taking it for free, because of the roof business. I no longer wish to discuss the roof."

Tianming was waiting by the east rooms, which meant he’d been standing there a while working out how to say it.

"Take me with you."

"I can’t." Xuan said it straight, without softening it. "The air at that sink kills a Foundation cultivator in two minutes and there’s no bravery you can do about it. I’d spend the whole time watching you breathe, and she needs me watching the animal."

The boy took that better than he would have a month ago. "Then I’m staying in the yard."

"Ren Zhuo?"

"He’s stopped putting people behind me." Tianming shifted the bandaged shoulder. "Two of the others tried the wall trick yesterday, and one asked me where I got it."

"What did you tell him?"

"That I’d tell him when he beats me." He said it flatly, without any swagger in it, which was new. "I want the week."

Cao Zhen and Pei Song were going back down to the rest house at the ford with the mules, because two men in imperial grey loitering around a poison sect for a fortnight would end up being somebody’s problem. Cao Zhen took the order with the air of a man who had been waiting to be told he could leave.

"Write us in as an inspection of the southern trade road," Xuan said.

"I already have, my lord. Nine days ago." Cao Zhen tucked the case under his arm. "The empire is very slow, but it is not stupid, and neither am I."

Qingyue came to the room late with her hair already down. She sat on the chest by the window instead of on the bed, which was what she did when she had come to say something rather than to sleep.

"I’m staying," she said.

"You don’t have to justify it to me."

"I’m not justifying anything, I’m telling you the reasons so you don’t invent worse ones on the road." She pulled her sleeve straight. "If I go, there are three of ours in this house with nobody standing near them. Lian is about to sign her method into somebody else’s book. The boy is in a yard with twenty people who fight dirty. Hao is going to walk into a room in three days and read a name out loud, and somebody in this valley is going to be very unhappy about that."

"That’s a fair list."

"There’s a fourth. That sink is a place where one person does the work and one person keeps them alive, and a third body in there is a second thing you’d have to watch." She looked at him levelly. "I’d be the second thing. I’ve thought about it all day and I can’t make myself be anything else, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise to be included."

Xuan sat down on the end of the bed. "That can’t have been pleasant to work out."

"It was extremely unpleasant. I did it anyway." She crossed her ankles. "Now the part you’ll like less. If it goes wrong in there, tell her."

He waited for the rest of it, and the rest of it didn’t come, and after a second he understood that she had finished.

"Tell her what?"

"Whatever it is you’ve never told me."

The lamp was doing its usual thing in the corner. Down on the second terrace somebody was rolling crates, and the sound came up through the floor, and Xuan found he had nothing in his mouth at all.

"Qingyue."

"I’ve known since the ship. Probably before the ship." Her voice didn’t change at all. "There’s something you’ve carried since you were a boy and you’ve never said it to anybody, and I’ve watched you decide not to say it about forty times, and I’ve never once asked. Don’t mistake that for not noticing."

"Why now?"

"Because a physician who’s working on you blind is a physician who kills you by accident." She said it plainly. "She’s going to have her hands in you when something goes wrong in there. If she’s guessing, you die of her guess. I’d rather she had whatever it is than have you come back in a box with your secret intact."

"And if I tell her before I tell you?"

"Then I’ll be angry about it later, in private, and I’ll get over it." Qingyue stood up and put a hand flat on the top of his head for a second, which was not a thing she often did. "I didn’t marry a simple man. I’ve made my peace with the arithmetic."

She went to bed after that and said nothing else about it. She was asleep inside ten minutes, which he found almost offensive.

’Mira.’

[ I heard her.]

’She’s been carrying that since the ship.’

[ Longer.] A pause. [ For what it’s worth, and I’ve thought about it all evening: she’s right about the physician. If that thing puts something in you at the sink and Qingluo doesn’t know what she’s working with, she’ll treat the wrong man.]

’You’ve changed your position.’

[ I’ve had four years of being the only one who knows and it hasn’t made you safer.] A longer pause. [ I’m not telling you to do it. I’m telling you I’ll stop arguing if you do.]

They left at dawn with the mist still coming off the terraces. Qingluo had one pack, a flat case strapped across her back, and a wide hat that went on the moment the sun cleared the ridge. Xuan had everything else, which he had agreed to in a moment of weakness and was already regretting.

At the second gate she put her hand out for his pack and went through it in front of him, on the ground, item by item.

"Sheath oil," she said, and dropped a rag into the dirt. "Two of your alchemist’s pills, which I’ll allow, and this one, which I won’t, because I don’t know what’s in it and neither do you." The pill went into her own pocket rather than the dirt. "Now the boots."

"There’s nothing on the boots."

"There’s three days of a mule on the boots." She sat back on her heels and looked up at him from under the hat. "Everything I take off you now is a thing that isn’t going to kill us on the fourth day. Take them off."

Ah-Ping came down as far as the second gate with a bundle of food, handed it over, and stood there with her hands on her hips.

"Bring her back," she said.

"That’s the plan."

"It isn’t a plan, it’s the only bit I care about." She turned around and went back up the steps.

The road south dropped fast. By the time the sun was properly up the terraces were behind them, and there were two people on an empty track with nobody else in any direction.