Chapter 65: The Tenth Chair

"He said that he had bought every witness," said Yun Tianxiao, for the fourth time, in a voice of rising outrage. "He said it to your face. In his own counting-house. And you did not say anything."

"I said a great deal," said Li Xuan.

"You said no."

"It was a very good no."

They were sitting in a circle on the floor of the Pavilion of Quiet Reflection, in the great central hall, around a low table spread with the remains of an excellent dinner. It was the evening of the first day. The cedar walls glowed in the lamplight. The listening-slips, behind their screens, whispered faintly to themselves, and Gu had arranged the party in a loose ring about a bowl of rice-wine, with a single sheet of paper in the middle covered in tiny black characters, and spoke in the low even murmur of a man reading an inventory aloud.

"The note will be heard before the Covenant," he said. "The Judge presides. There are nine assessors, one from each of the Nine Great Sects. They hear the case, and they vote. A simple majority carries. If the vote is tied, the Judge’s voice decides."

"And the assessors are all in the Jiang Clan’s pocket," said Guo Qing, gloomily, through a mouthful of rice cake.

"That is what the Judge says." Gu’s dark eyes went to Li Xuan. "Is it true?"

Li Xuan did not answer at once.

He was looking at the paper. It was a list, in Gu’s blunt soldier’s hand, of the nine sects, with a small mark by each. Feathered Frost. Iron Orchid. Mist Valley. Twin Moons. Cloud Pavilion. Nine Springs. Black Tortoise. The Poison Sect, whose seat had been sold. And the Blood-Blade, whose seat had fallen vacant on a staircase and had been quietly filled, within the week, by a proxy of the Jiang Clan.

"I do not know," he said. "I have not seen them. The Eye shows me what is owed. It does not show me what a man will do about it." He turned a corner of the paper. "I think that it is not enough to know that a man is bought. I think that one must know what he was sold for."

"And how will you find that out?"

"I should like to see the court."

The Hall of Covenants was open to the public on market days.

It was a very great round hall of white stone, at the end of the Street of Seals, and it was filled to the doors with sightseers. There were so many of them that Li Xuan thought, at first, that something was being sold. They were gawking at the floor, and the walls, and the great gilded dome overhead, painted with the nine emblems of the sects among clouds, and they bought dumplings from a woman at the door and wandered about with their mouths open, saying things like Look, that is where the Poison Sect’s man had his hand cut off, and Is that a bloodstain? and It is smaller than I thought.

It was a handsome room. It was built like a bowl, in rising tiers, with a broad circular floor of black marble at the bottom and benches climbing away on every side. In the center of the floor, on a low round dais of rose granite, stood a single great chair of gilded wood. It was the Judge’s. Facing it, in a wide shallow arc, stood nine others.

They were chairs of stone, high-backed and deep, each carved with the emblem of its sect. A frost-flower. An iron orchid. A coil of mist. Two crescent moons. A tower of cloud. A cluster of springs. A tortoise. A vine. And, in the ninth, a blood-red blade.

Li Xuan walked slowly along them, with his broom on his shoulder, and looked.

The Eye gave him what it always gave: a quiet, soft, steady glimmer at the corner of everything, like a lamp seen through frosted glass. Each chair had its thread. They did not belong to the stone. They belonged to the people who had sat there, year upon year, century on century, and each was a long fine cord of some very faint color, running upward out of the seat and away, across the floor, to a single point in the middle of the dais.

They all ran to the Judge’s chair.

Nine cords. Nine ropes, to be exact. Thick and black as a man’s wrist. They were all bound to the same gilded footrest, and they drew, very slightly, downward, as though the great chair were a hook, and the sects it faced a row of silver fish.

"That is," said a very small, awed voice at his elbow, "a great deal of rope."

He looked down.

Ye’er was standing beside him. She had her black lacquer box in both arms, pressed to her chest, and her small brown face was tilted up toward the chairs with a look of frowning, solemn fascination. She could not see the threads. But she had a way, sometimes, of looking at a thing as though she could.

"What do you see?" he said.

"I do not see anything. I only... it is loud, here." She shook her head, puzzled. "It is like a room where everyone is shouting a very long way off."

He was silent.

"And the box is warm," she added.

He turned his head sharply.

It was not simply warm. It had begun, very faintly, to glow. A thin pale gold line ran round the lid of the small black lacquer box like the edge of a dawn, and through the cracks, in the soft light of that great white hall, a pulse of golden color flickered, and flickered, and flickered again, in time with something that he could feel in his own breast.

It was not leaning south any more.

It was leaning left.

He followed it. He looked across the black marble floor, past the Judge’s dais and the arc of nine stone chairs, to a far corner of the hall where the white wall curved into shadow, and, in the shadow, a little apart from the others, he saw it.

It was a tenth chair.

It stood by itself, against the wall, a little way off from the rest, in a niche that had been walled off with a rope of faded purple silk. It was a plain chair, with a high straight back, and arms of worn black iron. There was dust on it. There was a great deal of dust. It lay thick and soft on the seat and the arms and the iron, like the dust in a long-sealed room. And on its back, set into the black metal at the height of a man’s shoulder, was a small bronze plate, green with age.

The tourists went by it without a glance.

"What is that?" said Li Xuan, quietly, to a passing old woman with a basket of dumplings.

She peered at the chair.

"That? Oh, that is the Reader’s Seat." She sniffed. "They say it is the Founder’s. It has been empty since the Covenant was written. No one has ever sat in it." She lowered her voice, with the relish of a person who has told the story to many tourists. "It is cursed, you know. They say that anyone who sits in it who is not the Reader will be struck down dead on the spot."

"And who is the Reader?"

"Nobody knows." She shrugged. "It is only a story."

He thanked her. He gave her a copper bit, and took a dumpling, and ate it very slowly, as he crossed the black floor, step by step, to the purple rope.

"Boy," said Gu, behind him, very low. "There are four men on the gallery who have been looking at you since you came in."

"I know."

"They are Nascent Soul."

"I know."

"If you step over that rope..."

"I am not going to step over it." He stopped, a pace from the faded silk, and leaned forward, with a hand on his broom, and looked at the bronze plate. "I should only like to read it."

It was written in the Founder’s hand.

He had known that it would be. It was small and close and upright, with a mild, careful, slightly crooked cast, and it had been cut into the metal with a chisel, many times, in a very patient way, by someone who wished the words to last. There were only four lines.

He read them in the silence of his own mind.

Here sits the Reader of the Ledger.

Let him be heard last, and let his word weigh as the nine together.

Let him sit who can draw the line, and return it.

Let no one else.

The hall was very loud. A child was shrieking with laughter. A man was haggling over a pastry. High overhead, the nine painted emblems drifted among their gilded clouds, and the whole great bowl of white stone hummed with the chatter of the crowd.

But in the little pool of silence at the foot of the purple rope, Li Xuan stood quite still.

As the nine together, he thought.

It was the thing that Jiang Heng had not said. He had said that the hearing was before the Covenant; that the vote was a majority; that he had bought every witness. He had said it with a gentle apologetic smile. He had not said that there was a tenth seat, empty for three thousand years, whose occupant could outvote every other voice in the hall.

Because he did not think that I could read it, thought Li Xuan. Or because he knew very well that I could.

"What does it say?" whispered Ye’er.

He did not answer. He was looking at the black arms of the chair, and the dust upon them, and the faint small mark on the left arm, where something had once been laid down in the iron: a groove, no wider than a finger, and about as long as a forearm.

It was the same groove.

It was the same one that he had found at the top of a long stone stair, three thousand li to the north, set into a bronze wall.

"Do you like our Court?"

He did not start.

He had known that someone was behind him for some time. He had only chosen not to turn. He took one more look at the green bronze plate, and the groove, and the dust, and then he straightened, quite slowly, and let his hand fall from the broom.

Jiang Ming was standing a few paces away, in the aisle between the benches, in his pale gold silk, with his hands folded before him and his little abacus gleaming at his breast. He was smiling. He was, as always, extremely pleasant.

"It is such a fine room," he said. "I always think so. It has so much history. There is a great deal of history in a room that no one has used properly in three thousand years." His black eyes went, lightly, to the empty chair. "You were looking at the Reader’s Seat."

"I was admiring the dust."

"Ah." The smile deepened. "A man of your profession. Of course." He glanced round the hall, at the noisy tourists, the gilded dome, the nine great sects painted in clouds. "We have never been able to decide what to do about it. Father says that it is sacred. I say that it is a nuisance. It takes up a great deal of floor."

"It does seem a little large for a chair."

"It has very particular rules." Jiang Ming’s tone was light and bright and amiable. "Only the Reader may sit in it. And the Reader must prove himself, in open court, before the nine assessors, by performing a certain... gesture." He tilted his head. "Nobody has ever managed it. There have been, oh, I should think, a dozen claimants in the last three hundred years. Every one of them was very sure."

"What became of them?"

"They are all remembered," said Jiang Ming, gently, "on a very handsome plaque."

He did not say anything else. He only stood there, smiling, with his little golden abacus catching the light. And the Eye, patient and perfect, showed Li Xuan once again the thing that it had shown him at the gate. The slim young man in pale gold was surrounded by a faint, bright halo of perfect nothing. There was no thread. There was nothing at all.

It was like standing beside a hole in the world.

"I do hope," said Jiang Ming, "that you will enjoy your stay. And I do hope that your little girl will be quite comfortable. That is such a pretty box that she carries."

He bowed, with a flourish, and went away through the crowd.

It was Gu who spoke first, in a very low, flat, deadly voice.

"He knows about the lamp."

"Yes."

"How?"

"I do not know." Li Xuan looked down. Ye’er was pressed against his side, with both arms locked round the lacquer box and her face white. "But I think that we have a very short time. And I think that I should like, before the hearing, to see a person about a sword."