Chapter 188

I stay looking at Hou Deming after his words.

“The islands of the Rong River?” I ask him.

And the question comes out with a note of surprise I had not intended to give it, because I have spent the whole morning hearing names of neighborhoods, and in the list of places I expected as an answer, islands did not appear anywhere.

“The islands of the Rong River”, he confirms to me.

I resettle myself in the chair, intrigued by his words.

“You are going to have to explain that to me”, I tell him.

Hou Deming, before answering me, picks up the cup of tea Lianhua poured him when he sat down and takes a short sip from it, and afterward sets it down at exactly the same spot on the table from which he lifted it.

“I’ll explain it to you”, he tells me. “But for those houses to mean something to you, I first have to tell you how this city began.”

“Is that necessary?” I ask him.

“It is necessary”, he answers me. “Because if I give you their current situation without their history, you are going to think I am offering you ruins. And that is not it.”

I think about it for half a second, which is all I need, because this man has just offered me on his own initiative, and without charging me, the kind of story any archaeologist would kill to hear firsthand, that is to say, the beginning of a city.

“Go ahead”, I tell him without letting my enthusiasm leak into the tone of my voice. “It wouldn’t hurt me at all to know something more about the city where I am going to live.”

Hou Deming nods and settles himself in the chair.

“Sanjiang, at the beginning, was built only on the banks”, he tells me. “A strip of houses right against the water on each side, and behind that strip there was absolutely nothing.”

“Why?” I ask him.

“Because here everything moved by river”, he answers me. “The merchandise, the disciples, the travelers and the news. Whoever had a business put it where a boat could reach, and whoever had a house put it where that boat could be moored.”

He shrugs his shoulders.

“Going inland, in those days, was the same as going off to live in the countryside”, he finishes.

I nod slowly, because I understand that perfectly, because a city where everything arrives by water is not a city with a river beside it, it is the equivalent of a Venice.

“And at some point, a few cultivators took to noticing the Rong”, he continues.

“Cultivators from the sects?” I ask him.

“From the sects and from outside them”, he answers me. “People from all three, and also people who had settled here without belonging to any. That, in this city, has always been the case.”

“And what does the Rong have that made them notice it?” I ask him.

“That it is the worst of the three when it comes to how easy it is to navigate”, he tells me.

He says this in the tone of someone who is tired of telling people about that subject.

“The Miao is wide, it is deep and anything that floats can go along it”, he continues. “The Xun, the same at half the width. But the Rong is riddled with islands, islets and rock shoals along practically its entire course. A large ship has to travel it slowly, with a hundred eyes and knowing exactly where it is going.”

He raises a finger.

“But not a small boat”, he finishes. “To a small boat the difficulties of the Rong make no difference at all.”

“But some of those islands had a particular characteristic”, Hou Deming tells me as he continues his story. “And it was that characteristic that made them notice that area even more.”

“What characteristic?” I ask him.

“That many of those islands are not a crag with a tree on top”, he answers me. “They are large enough to raise a house, or even to have a small cultivated field on the largest ones.”

“And someone did it”, I tell him.

“Someone did it”, he confirms to me. “And as soon as that someone did it, others followed.”

He rests both hands on the table.

“What broke out then was a fever”, he tells me. “For years there was not an island on the Rong on which they were not building something.”

“And who was building?” I ask him.

“At first, two kinds of people”, he answers me as he raises a finger. “Those who wanted to live discreetly, without anyone keeping count of who went in and out of their house.”

He raises the second finger.

“And those who wanted to stay out of things”, he continues. “Because in those days the three sects of this city still fought among themselves. And in a city where three sects fight, having your house on the wrong street can come out very expensive.”

As I listen to him, I realize that what he is describing to me is not people buying a house, it is people buying peace and discretion.

“And afterward came the third kind”, he finishes.

“Which?” I ask him.

“The one that always comes”, he answers me. “The one that finds out important people live on the islands and decides that it wants to live on an island too.”

I let out the air through my nose after hearing that sentence, since it reminds me far too much of something.

“And from there on, living on the Rong became a status symbol”, he tells me. “And it was one for a long time. Having a house on an island meant you could afford not to live in the city proper. But then the three sects stopped fighting.”

“Just like that?” I ask him.

“Not just like that”, he answers me. “But there came a moment when all three reached the conclusion that, by fighting, they were spending considerably more than they could earn if they stopped.”

I nod without saying anything, because that fits exactly with what I was told about the division of the immortal arts among those three sects, and because a division like that is not signed between enemies.

“And as soon as they stopped fighting, they set about developing the city among the three of them”, he tells me. “And the city, which until then could only grow along the water, began to grow outward.”

“A lot?” I ask him.

“Everything you may have been able to see from the ship”, he answers me. “And a good deal more than that.”

“But in growing outward, things moved”, he continues. “The markets, the shops, the guilds and the establishments that were right against the water because they had no other choice gradually moved inland. Because there was room there, because the land there was cheaper and because that was where the people were now.”

“And the banks?” I ask him.

“The banks were left with what cannot be moved, or with those who preferred to be on the bank”, he tells me. “Docks, warehouses and residential areas of people who liked being on the riverbank. The Willow Terraces are exactly that, a neighborhood of people who decided they liked living beside the river.”

With his words, I can already see the rest of the story coming, but I keep quiet, because telling someone the ending of what they are telling you is bad manners and because, besides, I feel like hearing him tell it.

“And the people on the islands gradually noticed those changes”, he continues. “At first, whoever lived on an island went out the door, got into their boat, rowed to the place they were going and moored in front of that place; they basically went from door to door.”

Hou Deming makes a gesture with his hand here.

“But after that change, they had to row to a dock, leave the boat and cross half the city on foot”, he finishes. “To buy things, for an errand, to see an acquaintance and to go back home with all of the above on their back.”

I listen to that and notice the pattern perfectly, because it is a problem I know. Not for the same reasons, but I know it.

“And the people left”, I tell him finally.

“The people left”, he confirms to me. “But not all at once, and that is where the interesting part is.”

He rests a finger on the table.

“First the most important families left, the ones that were there only for the prestige”, he tells me. “Which were many, far more than would have admitted they were.”

He moves his finger a couple of finger-widths to one side.

“As soon as the families that gave the area its prestige left, it stopped being a place of high standing”, he continues. “And as soon as the area stopped giving prestige, the ones who remained there for the same reason left.”

And I go very still, because he has just described to me, without knowing it, something that in my other life happened sooner or later in every city.

No one leaves because the neighborhood is bad. The neighborhood becomes bad because everyone leaves, and everyone leaves because they see their neighbors going, and when the last one closes the door there is not a single person left to blame.

“And with that, young lady, I don’t need to tell you how it ended”, he tells me. “It can be deduced on its own.”

“I can imagine it”, I tell him. “But I would rather you told me, because I am imagining it with more ruins than there probably are.”

“Then you are mistaken there”, he answers me. “There are very few ruins.”

“And why is that?” I ask him.

“Because the houses are not allowed to collapse”, he tells me. “The buildings are maintained, and whichever one falls is raised again. And that is not always paid for by its owners.”

“Then who pays for it?” I ask him.

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“The three sects”, he answers me. “Because the Rong is a way into this city, just as the Miao and the Xun are. And none of the three is at all pleased that whoever arrives in Sanjiang from that side spends half a morning sailing among islands full of rubble.”

I stay silent another moment, because I have just had described to me an expense sustained over generations, shared among three rival organizations, with the sole objective of making the city’s entrance look good.

“And how many are inhabited?” I ask him.

“Permanently, fewer than a third”, he answers me.

He makes a pause.

“And almost all those who live there are not there by chance or for lack of anywhere else”, he finishes. “They are people who have decided, for one reason or another, to live far from the bustle of the city.”

I stay a moment without saying anything, and not with a silence of deciding, but with a silence of enjoying.

Because I have just been told a story that sounds familiar to me, and it sounds familiar because in my other life there was a country that decided the best way to spend the money earned with its infinite-money trick was to sell islands.

And it went badly. It went so spectacularly badly that for years its photographs could be seen from the air, with the buildings half-finished and the sea little by little eating away at the sand they were made of.

With an aggravating factor, besides, which is that there the islands were not natural, but had to be manufactured first, so, compared with that, here at least the islands were already there.

But with that thought, I finally look at Hou Deming.

“I am going to tell you two things”, I tell him.

“Tell me both”, he answers me.

“The first is that I am considering your offers very seriously”, I tell him. “And I don’t say it out of courtesy. You have told me about five places and you have told me the bad side of all five without my having to drag it out of you, and that, in my experience, is not usual.”

Hou Deming inclines his head a little and says nothing.

“And the second is that you will understand that I cannot decide this this morning”, I continue. “I need to think about it, and I need to consult about it.”

“I understand perfectly”, he tells me. “And I will tell you more, it would have worried me quite a bit if you had answered me immediately. People who decide in a single morning where they are going to live for the next few years usually come back looking for me six months later.”

But next he raises a finger.

“That said, allow me a warning”, he continues. “And it is not to rush you, it is so that you know what you are playing with.”

“I allow it”, I tell him.

“In this city people come and go every day”, he tells me. “The two empty houses in the Whitethorn I mentioned today may not be empty in fifteen days. What I have told you today has an expiration date.”

Then he smiles, and it is not the short professional smile from before, but a considerably wider one, and he even laughs a little as he finishes the sentence.

“Everything except the islands of the Rong River”, he tells me. “Of those we always have too many.”

I laugh with him, politely, but also because the joke is good.

“I don’t think I’ll take that long”, I tell him. “In two or three days at most I’ll let you know something.”

And with that Hou Deming seems satisfied, because he gets up from the chair.

“Then I will be waiting for your news”, he tells me.

Next he makes me a bow. Courteous, measured and not a finger more nor a finger less, just like when he came in.

I return the courtesy with the best inclination that can be made from a chair, which after years of practice is quite good.

“Lianhua”, I tell her. “See Hou Deming to the door, please.”

“Yes, Xiaojie”, she answers me.

And the two of them go out while I stay alone in the dining room thinking over what I have been told, but Lianhua does not take long to come back.

“Lianhua”, I tell her as soon as she comes in. “Go to the room, where Xia is almost certainly cultivating, and tell her to clean herself up and come, that we have to discuss the options among the three of us.”

Lianhua nods, goes out again and doesn’t take even a minute to come back in, and as soon as I see her cross the room I remember the other errand she had to run.

“How did it go with the material for the talismans?” I ask her.

“Well, Xiaojie”, she answers me.

And instead of positioning herself behind my chair, she stays standing beside the table, to my left, which is what she does when what she has to say takes up more than two sentences.

“Explain it to me”, I tell her.

“The Tower of the Five Dragons has its own system”, she tells me. “They have lists of the available products where one can choose what interests them, pays right there after choosing, and afterward can go pick up the merchandise wherever it is, or can pay a little more and they take charge of having someone bring it to whatever address they are given.”

“And what did you do?” I ask her.

“Pay that little more”, she answers me. “It was little. And going across half the city to fetch the paper from one place and the ink from three others would have been wasting the whole day.”

“And when does it arrive?” I ask her.

“Tomorrow at the latest”, she tells me. “They bring it here, to the inn.”

After her words, I stay with that a moment, because I have just found out that the largest commercial organization I know of, the one with branches on five continents, also has a system of catalogues and personalized delivery.

And I am about to start pulling on that thread, which is a long thread that has every appearance of leading somewhere, when Lianhua keeps talking and cuts it off for me.

“There is something else, Xiaojie”, she tells me.

“Tell me”, I tell her.

“While I was there I spoke with Lin Quingyu”, she answers me. “And since the authorization you gave me allows me to access the funds of the House of the Long Journey, she told me that Chen Mo’s payment had already arrived.”

I lift my head all the way.

“The one for the salmon?” I ask her.

“The one for the salmon and the one for the serpent”, she confirms to me. “I checked it myself before leaving.”

And after hearing that, my spirits rise as I forget about everything else.

“And how much does my share come to?” I ask her.

“Four hundred thirty-two spirit stones”, she answers me.

I stay looking at her.

“Four hundred thirty-two?” I ask her.

“Four hundred thirty-two”, she repeats to me.

“Well, it seems our lack of funds has just come to an end”, I tell her as I try to process the amount Lianhua has told me.

I make a pause while I reconsider our situation.

“Pending what it costs to rent or buy a house in this city, which I still don’t know”, I finish.

“There is one more thing”, Lianhua tells me.

“Go on”, I tell her.

“When I heard the amount, my intention was to withdraw a good part of it”, she answers me. “So as to have the money in our hands when the time came to pay for the residence.”

“That seems reasonable to me”, I tell her.

“Not to Lin Quingyu”, she tells me. “She told me it wasn’t necessary.”

“And why wasn’t it necessary?” I ask her.

“Because the seal is not only for signing authorizations”, she answers me. “It is also for paying.”

And next she brings her hand to the inside of her clothing and takes out a paper folded in four.

“She also told me something else”, she continues as she unfolds it. “That she had not explained this to you the other day because she did not think the House of the Long Journey was going to have enough funds in the near future for you to need it.”

That sentence, said in Lianhua’s voice, which is a voice that never rises or falls, strikes me as quite funny because it is true. Explaining to someone with seventy-three spirit stones how large payments are made is explaining to them how to drive a carriage they don’t have.

“Show it to me”, I tell her.

Lianhua goes around the corner of the table and puts the paper directly into my hand.

“She gave it to me as an example”, she tells me. “It is the way a payment authorization is drafted. It is written, it is sealed, and the person who takes it to a branch of the Tower of the Five Dragons is given the amount written on it.”

She makes a pause.

“At any branch”, she adds.

“And is there any condition?” I ask her.

“One”, she answers me. “And she said it twice, so I will repeat it to you just as she said it to me. That we never make an authorization for an amount greater than what is in the account.”

“And if it is done?” I ask her.

“The Tower takes a very dim view of that practice and takes very severe measures against whoever commits it”, she tells me.

“Did she say which?” I ask her.

“No”, she answers me. “And I didn’t ask her.”

I lower my gaze to the paper, look at it, look at it again and finally decide that my eyes are not deceiving me, that what I have in my hand is a check.

A primitive check, handwritten and without any of the thousand precautions that were added to the ones of my other world over two hundred years, but a check all the same.

And right away I realize that this system works because the seal’s signature cannot be forged, since that signature is created by an object the Tower manufactures, that the Tower hands out and whose signature the Tower knows how to recognize with what I imagine is a technique only they know.

While I am thinking about that, the dining room door opens and Xia comes in.

Her hair is still a little damp and gathered up any old way, and she has the face of someone who has crossed the courtyard considerably faster than necessary.

“What did you want to talk about?” she asks me.

I leave the example paper on top of the table, face up.

“Sit down, both of you”, I tell them. “We have to decide where we are going to live.”

Xia drops into the chair across from me, and Lianhua pulls out the chair to my left to sit in it.

And from there on we spend a good while debating this morning’s places, which we go over briefly and in the same order in which they were told to me.

The Willow Terraces fall first as soon as I say the word stairs.

The Hundred Furnaces Quarter holds out a little longer, because Xia asks about the rents and the rents are the cheapest of the first four, until I explain to her that there I would be making talismans in the middle of the neighborhood of a guild that is not mine, surrounded by people whom, according to the Tower itself, it is never advisable to correct in public.

Lianhua knocks down the Reed Bank with a single sentence.

“Hundreds of different strangers every day”, she says. “No.”

And the Whitethorn Compound, which on paper is the best fit of all, falls for the same reason it seemed unsuitable to me this morning, which is a local family with the habit of knowing what each of those who reside on their street does for a living.

“And why don’t we look for someone else?” Xia asks.

I look at her.

“Explain yourself”, I tell her.

“That if that man has given us four places and none of them works for us, let’s find another one who has another four”, she answers me. “There must be more people who do this in a city of two million people.”

“I’m sure there are hundreds”, I tell her. “And none of those hundreds has what Hou Deming has.”

“And what does he have?” she asks me.

“That the Tower of the Five Dragons recommended him to us”, I answer her. “Lianhua went to ask there, and they gave his name there.”

Xia waits, because she knows I haven’t finished my explanation.

“And that means two things”, I continue. “The first is that if he swindles us, he is not only swindling us, he is also staining the reputation of whoever recommended him.”

I make a pause.

“And the second is that he knows it perfectly well”, I finish. “That’s why this morning he told me the bad side of all of them before I asked him.”

Xia wrinkles her nose at my words.

“A stranger we find ourselves doesn’t have that constraint”, I tell her. “With a stranger, the only thing protecting us from being swindled is luck.”

Xia thinks about it a moment.

“Okay”, she tells me. “That hadn’t occurred to me.”

And she doesn’t insist any further, which is one of the things I like most about her.

But then, inevitably, the conversation begins to veer toward the Rong, although we only discuss what Hou Deming told us about them.

“Xiaojie”, Lianhua tells me after a while. “There is a reason we have not yet said aloud.”

“Say it”, I tell her.

“A house on an island is surrounded by water on all sides”, she answers me. “And that means the nearest neighbor is, at the very least, half a Li away.”

She makes a very short pause.

“When you finish cultivating, you leave a void”, she continues. “In any neighborhood of this city, someone could end up noticing that void, especially if we have nosy neighbors.”

After hearing that, I go completely still, because it is the most important argument that has been made this morning when it comes to choosing a house.

“But it’s far from everything”, says Xia.

“It’s far from everything”, I confirm to her.

And Xia stays thinking, so I decide not to bother her and wait for her to say what she is thinking.

“Not that far”, she tells me after a while.

“Why not that far?” I ask her.

“Because we have the Storage Bag”, she answers me. “We don’t have to go to the market every day, we can go every three or four and bring everything back at once.”

She leans forward a little.

“And if you make the formations from the Palace pantries in that house, even less”, she continues. “There the food could last for days.”

“I’ve read something about those”, I tell her after recalling the books on formations for a moment.

But after those words, I realize I have spent a good while looking for faults in an idea I am beginning to like, so I do what I always do when I reach that point, which is to lay everything out on the table.

“There’s something I haven’t said”, I tell them. “And it’s that the matter of the boat could be even better for me.”

“Better?” Xia asks me.

“Better”, I confirm to her. “Think about it for a moment. If we live in the middle of the city and it turns out the place I have to go is at the other end, I have to cross the entire city with the chair.”

I rest my hand on the armrest and give it two little taps with my knuckles.

“And if we live on the Rong, we go by boat to the dock closest to that place, and from the dock only the last stretch is left”, I continue. “A stretch that will usually be short.”

Here I make a pause, because there is one last reason I don’t intend to say aloud, and it is that in my other life a house on an island was exactly the kind of thing I was never going to be able to afford. It was the photograph that appeared in magazines with a millionaire’s name beneath it and a yacht moored in the foreground in case anyone had any doubt left about how much money its owner had.

And it turns out that here, in this world, for the most ridiculous reason I can think of, which is that people can’t be bothered to row, those very same houses are dirt cheap and there are too many of them.

So if it really has more advantages than drawbacks, I can’t think of a single reason not to try it.

“Then we’re going to look at the islands”, I say.

Xia raises both hands.

“The islands!” she says enthusiastically.

“The islands”, I confirm to her. “But not today.”

“And why not today?” she asks me.

“Because half an hour ago I told that man I would answer him in two or three days”, I answer her. “And if I go out looking for him this afternoon, what I’m telling him is that I have no other option.”

Lianhua nods a single time after hearing my reasoning.

“So the day after tomorrow we’ll go see him”, I finish. “And then we’ll tell him we want to see the houses on the Rong and that he should show us all the ones he can.”

With those words the serious part of the morning comes to an end, so I lean back in the chair and look at Xia, who is still sitting very straight and with the face of someone who is furnishing a house she has not yet seen.

“Xia”, I tell her, smiling. “Tell Lianhua about the spirit food.”

Xia goes very still after hearing me.

“And about how you’re going to be a spirit chef”, I finish.

Lianhua, to my left, turns her head very slowly after hearing my words.