Chapter 56: Entry the Second

They counted the pearls for six days.

It was Elder Fang who insisted. He had said it on the first evening, standing in the Archive hall with his abacus in his hand and an expression of the most resolute, rigid, unshakeable stubbornness: They must be counted. Every one. A thing that has not been counted has not been returned. And so they had counted, with great solemnity, in the cold gray light of the Third Terrace, the Registrar and nine of his clerks and a great many frightened disciples, one by one, on long trays of black lacquer.

They came to eleven thousand, seven hundred and twelve.

They were laid out on tables in long rows, in the great hall, among the humming scrolls. They gave off a faint, soft, pearly light. They did not look like blood. They looked like something that had been made in a very deep sea, by a very patient creature, and had been waiting a long time for someone to find it.

In each, very small and very clear, a face looked out.

"They are alive," said Aunt Liu, quietly.

She had come to stand beside him at the end of the long table. She had a medicine-box in the crook of her arm and her seamed old face was set. She was looking, with the cold clear professional gaze of a woman who has seen a great many things, at a pearl in the first row. It held the face of a little girl of about six, in a patched jacket, with a gap in her teeth.

"The essence is intact," she said. "It is dormant. It is not dead. It is a very cruel thing, and a very delicate one, and I do not understand how it was made." She drew a slow breath. "But if it can be given back, in the proper time, they will wake. The people. Whoever they were. I think that they have only been sleeping."

"They have been sleeping for thirty years," said Li Xuan. "Some of them."

"I know."

"There is a woman in this tray whose pearl was taken before I was born."

They stood in silence. Behind them, the scrolls hummed on, low and soft.

In the jade hall of his spirit, a plain gray book stirred, and opened, and a page turned. It was very quiet. There was a faint dry rustle, as of a very old hand dipping a very old brush. He had been waiting for it, for six days. He had not wished to look.

He looked.

ENTRY THE SECOND.

Borrowed: By the Blood-Blade Sect, from the people of the southern marches, eleven thousand, seven hundred and twelve measures of living blood. Taken without their knowledge or their leave over a period of thirty-one years. Held in a pool.

Surrendered: By the Sect Master of the Blood-Blade, on the three hundred and eighty-second step of the Third Terrace of the Sky-Clearing Sect, in the presence of the Stair. Unwillingly. After a long delay.

Held in trust: By the Custodian.

Returned: ____

He read it again.

It was the same careful, quiet, mild, clerkly hand. But beneath it, in a margin that had not been there before, the same bolder, more careless writing appeared, small and a little crooked, and rather pleased, like a student who has set a very hard question and has watched a clever pupil solve it.

You have not got the gift yet. The gift comes with the return. You must do it properly. A thing held in trust is not a thing returned.

I should hurry, if I were you. There is a young man coming up the road with a golden abacus.

He looked up.

He came on the sixth evening, as the sun went down.

He came on foot, up the long road to the First Terrace, with a single servant carrying a lacquer box, and he did not hurry. He was a slight, slim, extremely well-dressed young man of about twenty-three, in a robe of pale gold silk embroidered with tiny black coins, and he carried himself with the beautiful, easy, unforced politeness of someone who has been very rich for a very long time. His face was smooth and pleasant. His hands, which he kept folded before him, were soft. And on a chain about his neck, bright against the pale silk, hung a small golden abacus, no longer than a man’s finger.

He stopped at the foot of the stair.

He looked at the first slip, and the bowl of tea. He looked up at the silver ribbon of steps. And with a small, rueful, charming smile, he took off his hat and bowed, very low, to the empty air.

"I am so sorry to trouble you," he said, in a light, pleasant, carrying voice. "I am Jiang Ming, of the Jiang Clan’s counting-house, at the Sky-Fall Platform. I understand that I have the honor to address the new custodian of the Third Terrace."

He waited.

"I should be so glad," he went on, "if I might come up. I have a message, and a very small matter of business, and I promise that I carry nothing at all that is not my own." He smiled. "I have had the weight examined."

Li Xuan came down the stair to meet him.

They stood at the foot of it, in the dusk, the slim young man in gold silk and the thin one in patched blue, and regarded each other with a long, polite, courteous, mutual interest, like two cats on a garden wall.

"Jiang Ming," said Li Xuan.

"The scholar," said Jiang Ming. "I have heard a great deal about you."

"I should be surprised if it were all good."

"It was rather mixed." The charming smile widened. "I am told that you read ledgers. I am told that you have found an error, in a note that has lain in a strongbox for twenty-two years. I find that I am not at all surprised. It is a very old trick." He tilted his handsome head. "The Blood-Blade was a fool. They brought a hammer to a thing that needed a pen. I told them. They would not listen."

"You sold them the note."

"I sold them a note." He did not blink. "The original is in the vault at the Sky-Fall Platform, as it has been since the day it was written. The one in your Registrar’s strongbox is a copy. You will find that if you compare them, character for character, they are quite identical." He lifted one smooth, soft hand. "But the copy has been altered. By a person unknown. At some time in the last twenty-two years. I regret to say that it is a very clumsy forgery."

Li Xuan was silent.

He was looking at the young man’s face. It was smooth and pleasant and kind. There was nothing in it at all, and he knew, with a cold, quiet, interior certainty, that this was the most dangerous face he had met since the capital.

"Then we are at an impasse," he said.

"We are at a court." Jiang Ming smiled. "I am here, Custodian, to offer you the hospitality of the Jiang Clan. At the second new moon from now, the Sky-Fall Platform will hold a hearing of the Southern Border’s Covenant. It is an honorable and ancient procedure. The Sky-Clearing Sect may bring its note, and its objections, and its custodian, and the Jiang Clan will bring its own. Before the assembled sects, in the open, a judge will decide."

"A judge of the Jiang Clan."

"A judge of the Covenant," said Jiang Ming gently. "Who happens, by hereditary right, to be my father."

The wind stirred the black coins on his robe.

"You may refuse, of course," he said. "In which case the note falls due at the new moon, and the Blood-Blade, or another, will have the Terrace. Or you may come. You will be our guest, and under our protection, and the Platform has been very eager to meet the man who made a Core Formation weep on a staircase." He bowed. "Bring the original note, if you have found it. Bring forty thousand taels, if you do not. And bring, if you can, the library’s First Page."

He said the last in the same pleasant, easy tone, as if it were a trifle.

But Li Xuan, who had read a great many faces, saw the gleam, for one instant, behind the smooth, soft, golden mask. It was cold. It was patient. It was very old.

The First Page, he thought. He knows.

"We shall consider it," he said.

"I should hope that you would." Jiang Ming put on his hat. "The Sky-Fall Platform is a month’s journey to the southeast. I should start soon. The roads are dreadful at this season." He turned to go, and then, with a small, pleased, afterthought lift of the head, turned back. "Oh. And one more thing. My cousin Chen sends his regards. He says that he very much wishes to meet the man who hung his guards upon a staircase."

"I have not met your cousin."

"No," said Jiang Ming. "But you will."

He went away down the dark road with his servant and his lacquer box, softly, whistling, in the first stars of the evening.

Li Xuan stood a long time at the foot of the stair, with the iron dustpan in his hand and the silver circle of ninety-nine slips singing softly all about him in the cold. Then he went up, step by step, to the lamp-lit hall, where a stout old Marshal and a girl with an ice-sword and a stern old woman and a small girl with a jar were waiting, and said, quite simply: "We are going to the Sky-Fall Platform."

"When?" said Gu.

"Soon." He sat down at the desk. He took up the brush. "But first, I think, we must take eleven thousand, seven hundred and twelve people home."