Chapter 189

I am sitting in the middle of what can now be considered my courtyard, and I have been like this for a good while.

And I am doing it because this is the first morning in four days on which there is no one crossing the courtyard with a piece of furniture on their back.

“My house”, I say in a low voice as I savor that expression.

Although, if I want to be exact, this is not my house.

This is a house I have rented for ten years, which is not the same thing, because in Sanjiang a residence cannot be bought without a permit from one of the three Sects.

And I don’t have one.

When Hou Deming explained it to me, I came very close to asking him how one was obtained, because that is the logical question everyone probably asks, but in the end I didn’t, because asking one of the Sects to authorize me to buy a house is exactly the kind of tangle I promised myself, on leaving the Empire, to stay out of.

What I did do was ask what the longest lease was that could be signed.

After that question, Hou Deming stayed silent a moment, looked at me in a way he had not used all morning and told me ten years, which was the maximum he could accept without consulting anyone.

Ten years, which in this world, where there are people for whom a century is the equivalent of middle age, is practically nothing, and which for me, with the physical age I have, is almost as much as everything I have lived here.

So they seemed like a lot to me, and with that thought I lift my gaze toward the center of the courtyard, where the only thing about this house that convinced me before Hou Deming opened his mouth stands, since there is a magnificent white magnolia planted right in the middle.

It is large, it is old and right now it is fairly wilted, because its leaves are a tired green and the edges of almost all of them are starting to turn toward yellow, which is exactly the look everything green in this part of the world has had since the fire Qi surge arrived.

And beneath the magnolia there is a stone table with two benches, also of stone, placed one on each side, and that table is the reason I said yes.

Because a stone table beneath a tree is a table at which one can eat on the days when the weather is good, and eating outside is one of those small things that I, in the Palace, almost never got to do, because a princess does not eat in the courtyard like any common handmaiden.

I resettle myself in the chair and begin to run my gaze over the rooms that surround the courtyard, which are the ones we have spent four days furnishing.

Three of them are bedrooms, one for each of us, another is my study and another has been set up as a dining room.

Then there is the alchemy workshop, and for that I have chosen the one at one end, as far as possible from the rest and with the back wall facing the water, because I have read enough about cauldrons and furnaces that explode not to want to have one near other things.

And the last one, the one next to my room, is where I am going to engrave the Qi-gathering formation.

And to that must be added the kitchen, which is the largest room in the house and the only one I have not bothered to check, because the day we moved in Xia planted herself in the doorway, looked inside and said it was hers, and neither Lianhua nor I considered it necessary to argue the point with her.

Next to the kitchen there is a small pantry, and across from it, on the other side of the courtyard, the bath.

And I stay a moment with the count, because seven rooms, a kitchen, a pantry and a bath make this house considerably larger than the one I had in my head when I got off Shen Fei’s ship.

But everything has, mind you, a catch, and the catch is that the island this house is on is little larger than the house itself.

What there is around the walls is a stone path on which two people fit if they go sideways, and at the tip facing upriver it widens just enough to have a small dock, and that is all.

There is no land, there is no garden and, of course, there are no other usable spaces.

But it is not because there were no other options, since Hou Deming showed us four islands that had a house and also a piece of land around it, and on two of them that piece was even big enough for a vegetable garden, and Xia made a face on seeing them that it cost me a great deal not to look at.

But the prices of those four went up in a way that did not correspond to their usefulness.

So I kept this one, which has no land nor particularly good views, and which in exchange costs what it ought to cost while leaving me the rest of the money for everything I am going to need next.

And as I finish that thought one of the doors opens and Lianhua comes out into the courtyard.

She crosses diagonally toward me, without hurrying, with empty hands for the first time in four days.

“Lianhua”, I tell her when she arrives. “Is all the furniture in place now?”

“Yes, Xiaojie”, she answers me. “Xia is in the kitchen putting away all the provisions she took out of the Storage Bag.”

“Has she been at it long?” I ask her.

“Since before dawn”, she tells me.

I let out the air through my nose, because that does not surprise me in the least.

“And the rest?” I ask her.

“The rest is done”, she answers me. “The clothes are put away in the three rooms, the household goods distributed and what was in the Storage Bag is where it has to be.”

I nod, satisfied, because four days is less than I had calculated for all this, and next I look toward the corner of the courtyard to my right.

Because the person who lived here before us left prepared, between the corner of the kitchen and the wall, a rectangle of clean sand some four paces long, surrounded by a low stone border, perfectly leveled.

It is, without any doubt, the place where someone intended to make themselves a garden. And it is also, because the sand is still untouched, where that someone never got around to making it.

“Take me over there”, I tell her, pointing at it. “To the edge of the sand.”

Lianhua positions herself behind the chair and takes me without asking why, which is one of the things I am most grateful for in her, and leaves me looking at the rectangle along its long side, with the wheels almost touching the stone.

“And now go get Xia”, I continue. “Tell her to leave whatever she is doing and come.”

“Right now?” she asks me.

“Right now”, I confirm to her. “I want to have a meeting about the situation we are in and what we are going to do starting tomorrow.”

Lianhua says nothing, she simply turns around and goes toward the kitchen, and I am left alone in front of the sand.

Then I look at a dry stick leaning against the wall, just where the stone border ends, and I take hold of it with the Dragon’s Grip.

The stick rises, crosses the air and stays floating in front of me, still, and then descends to the sand and begins to go over it from side to side.

With that stick, I smooth out the rectangle, pass after pass, with the care with which one erases a blackboard that is about to be used, because that is exactly what I am doing.

When I finish I leave the stick floating to my right, at shoulder height, and I stay looking at the smooth sand with a feeling I have not had since I left the Empire, which is the feeling that I am finally going to be able to work.

Lianhua and Xia appear in the kitchen doorway a moment later.

Xia comes first, drying her hands on a rag and with her hair gathered up any old way, and she comes up to the stone border looking at the sand with the face of someone who understands absolutely nothing.

Lianhua comes behind her and positions herself to my left.

I straighten my back, rest my hands on the armrests and look at the two of them.

“I hereby declare open the first meeting of this household to decide what we are going to do while we live in this city”, I say with all the solemnity I am capable of summoning, which after an entire life of imperial ceremonies is quite a lot.

Xia claps three times, with her face lit up, and on the fourth she turns her head toward Lianhua, who is standing still, with her hands crossed in front of her and the same expression with which she would listen to the price of flour.

Xia, on seeing that, stops clapping, tucks the rag into her belt, joins her hands in front of her, copies Lianhua’s posture with remarkable fidelity and stays looking at me as if she had been like that from the beginning.

I don’t react to the scene, because otherwise I would completely break the solemnity of the moment.

“Before planning anything, one always has to start somewhere”, I continue. “And in this case, we have to know where we are starting from.”

I make the stick float down to the sand.

“So we are going to start there”, I finish.

I lower the tip to the sand and write along the top edge, in large and more legible strokes, our current situation.

Sun Wen. Yin and Yang Gates open. Myriad of Hands, Dragon’s Grip, Qi Grip, Sensing the Qi and Golden Chains of Ogma.

I leave a hand’s-width gap below and write the second.

Wang Lianhua. Spiritual roots of Air, Earth, Yin and Nature. Earth Core completed. Vision of Horus, Sensing the Qi, Myriad of Hands and Golden Chains of Ogma.

I leave another gap and write the third.

Ling Xia. Still completing the Tempering of the Entrails and Veins.

And afterward I lift the stick, leave it floating again at shoulder height and look at them.

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“Have I forgotten anything?” I ask them.

Xia leans forward and reads the three lines moving her lips, which is something she has done since she learned to read and which I intend to correct as soon as I can, and when she finishes she shakes her head.

Lianhua doesn’t lean forward.

“I still think the same as the day you decided to learn it”, she answers me. “That learning the Qi Grip when you already have the Myriad of Hands and the Dragon’s Grip is redundant.”

And she says it in that tone of hers that makes it impossible to know whether she is saying it as a criticism or like someone reading a list.

“It isn’t redundant”, I tell her.

“It does the same thing as the other two, Xiaojie”, she answers me. “Even worse.”

“It does the same thing as the other two, worse”, I confirm to her. “On that we agree.”

Xia looks at one and then at the other.

“But I had already paid for that technique”, I continue. “And a paid technique that isn’t learned is not a technique you save yourself, it is money thrown in the trash.”

“That is true”, she tells me.

“And on top of that, it has something the other two don’t have”, I continue. “That it can go past its limit. Only a little, with effort, and probably sweating the way my father sweated. But it can.”

Lianhua waits while I rest my hand on the armrest.

“The Dragon’s Grip can lift a great deal of weight”, I finish. “But it goes up to its limit, and when it reaches it, it stops there, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it except watch.”

“And someday I am going to need to lift something that weighs more than I can lift with that technique”, I continue. “I don’t know when, I don’t know where and I don’t know what. But it is going to happen, because it always happens.”

I make a pause.

“And on that day I would rather have one bad technique I can force than two good ones I can’t”, I finish.

Lianhua looks at me a moment without saying anything, and then sighs.

It is a short sigh, through the nose, the one she lets out when she decides that arguing is going to cost her more time than it will save her, and I have heard it enough times to know what it means.

It means I have not forgotten anything.

“Very well”, I say, lowering the stick again. “Then this is where we are starting from. Let’s move on to what we want to do or can do.”

And I write the first line right below my own entry.

Opening the Earth Gate.

And afterward I move the stick up and write exactly the same thing below Xia’s entry.

Xia reads it and lifts her head abruptly.

“You’re going to do it?” she asks me.

“I’m going to do it”, I confirm to her. “I thought it over calmly, as I told you I would, and you’re still right. A single diet for all three of us, of spirit food as far as the budget stretches, is worth more than all the hours of sleep I could save with the Nature Gate.”

Xia nods, and she does it with her head and shoulders at once, which is how she nods when something matters to her.

“But yours doesn’t start today”, I continue, pointing at her line with the tip of the stick. “It starts as soon as you finish the Tempering of the Entrails and Veins. Until then that line is there for you to see, not for you to chase.”

“I know”, she tells me.

“You know”, I confirm to her. “But I’m telling you so that you don’t fall behind doing something that interests you more, such as, for example, cooking.”

Afterward I move the stick up to the middle entry and look at Lianhua.

“Have you already started on the Air Core?” I ask her.

“The first day at the inn”, she answers me.

I lower the stick and write below her name.

Creating the Air Core.

And when I finish that line I lean back a little in the chair and look at the three entries, which are starting to look like something.

“As far as cultivation goes, those are the priorities”, I say. “And now come the others.”

Next I look at Lianhua.

“You’ve had the Earth Core finished since before we arrived in this city”, I tell her. “And in all that time you haven’t obtained a single technique that uses it.”

“There has been no occasion”, she answers me.

“There has been no occasion”, I confirm to her. “Now there is.”

I make a pause.

“So I want you to obtain at least one Earth technique”, I continue. “And if possible, two.”

“Two?” she asks me.

“Two that complement each other”, I tell her. “One technique on its own is a tool. Two that fit together are not two tools, they are considerably more, because each one eliminates the weaknesses of the other.”

Lianhua tilts her head a little, which is what she does when she is considering something.

“And there is one variable that has to be taken into account”, I continue. “Which, besides, is the most important one for me.”

“Tell me”, she says.

“That if you find one you can use through the Vision of Horus, that is the most important one”, I tell her. “Above how powerful it is and above what it costs.”

“Because a technique you can use where you are serves to defend yourself”, I finish. “And a technique you can use where you are looking turns everything around you into your battlefield.”

Lianhua stays still a moment.

“I will look for the ones best suited to my way of fighting with the Vision of Horus”, she tells me finally. “And I will bring them to you before learning them.”

“That is exactly what I wanted to hear”, I tell her.

And I lower the stick and write below her Air Core.

Searching for Earth techniques.

Afterward I move the tip up to the third entry and look at Xia.

“And now you”, I tell her.

Xia straightens up.

“What I told you at the inn is still true”, I continue. “As long as you don’t have a Gate open you won’t be able to apprentice with anyone who teaches spirit cooking, and we can’t change that.”

“I know”, she tells me.

And she says it with the face of someone who has already told herself so a few times.

“But there is one thing we can do”, I continue.

Xia lifts her gaze.

“When I started with runes, I had no master, no workshop, nothing to practice with”, I tell her. “I had books. And I spent years reading about something I still couldn’t do.”

I rest my arm on the armrest.

“And when I was finally able to have a master, I didn’t start from the beginning”, I finish. “I started considerably further along.”

Xia opens her mouth and closes it again without saying anything, which in her is the most reliable sign that she has just understood what I am telling her.

“So the question is this”, I continue. “Would you be interested in studying books on spirit food now, knowing that you won’t be able to do anything in them until quite a while from now?”

“Yes”, she tells me.

She says it before I have entirely finished the sentence.

“Think about it a moment before answering”, I tell her.

“I already have”, she answers me. “Yes.”

And she takes a step forward, until the tips of her toes touch the edge of my chair.

“Besides, that way, when I open the Gate, I won’t have to start learning”, she continues. “I’ll start cooking, which is different.”

When I hear her words, I fall silent for a second, because I did not give her that sentence.

“Exactly”, I tell her. “Then, since Lianhua is going to be looking for Earth techniques, she can also look for books on spirit cooking. Whatever there are, of whatever level and at whatever price, as long as it is reasonable.”

Xia nods so eagerly that her hair comes loose from the badly tied knot it was in, so she starts gathering it up again while she looks at us, embarrassed.

Meanwhile, I lower the stick and write below her line.

Studying books on spirit food.

Afterward I lean back and look at the whole, which already takes up almost the entire upper half of the rectangle.

“And now that leaves me”, I say.

I lift the stick and leave it pointing at my own entry.

“I have three tasks, and of those three, the first is the one that puts food on the table”, I continue. “We have to go back to making talismans. And we have to make them in quantity.”

Xia wrinkles her nose.

“Again?” she asks me.

“Again”, I confirm to her. “Right now, all the money we have came from a single source, from what Chen Mo sold to the Tower. That money is a lot, and it arrived when it was needed, but it is a payment that happened once and is not going to happen again.”

I give the armrest two little taps.

“And the rate of income from my inventions so far isn’t very high”, I finish. “So it’s better not to count on it for any plan we make.”

After those words, I look at Lianhua.

“When you were at the Tower”, I tell her. “Did they tell you which talismans interest them most?”

“I asked them as you ordered me to”, she answers me.

“And?” I ask her.

“That they buy all the talismans they are offered”, she tells me. “Without exception and without limit of quantity.”

“I already imagined that”, I tell her.

“And that the ones used for combat usually pay better than the rest”, she continues. “And that high-level ones bring in more money than low-level ones.”

I stay looking at her, and then I snort.

It is not an elegant snort, but it came out on its own, because I have just heard the largest commercial organization on five continents explaining to me that expensive things sell for more than cheap ones.

“Lianhua”, I tell her. “Tell me you asked them something else.”

“I asked them three times”, she answers me. “In three different ways.”

“And?” I ask her.

“And all three times they told me the same thing”, she tells me.

After that she falls silent for a moment.

“With more words each time”, she adds.

And I laugh, because I have no other choice.

“Well”, I say. “That settles what to make, which is everything that can be made, and leaves the second task pending.”

I lower the stick to the sand.

“And the second task is the ink”, I continue. “I have to learn to make it myself.”

“Don’t we buy it?” Xia asks me.

“We buy it”, I answer her. “And that’s why I have to learn to make it.”

Xia blinks.

“Look”, I tell her, pointing at the line with the tip of the stick. “Of everything that goes into a talisman, on one side there’s the paper, but on the other there’s the ink, and the better the talisman, the more the ink you have to use costs.”

I make a pause.

“So if I make the ink myself two things happen, and both are good”, I continue. “The first is that I save what I would be paying someone else. And the second, which is the one that matters, is that an ink made by me for the talisman I’m going to draw is better than a bought one that works for everything.”

And I say this with more certainty than I have, but that is what Master Mu claimed, and neither she nor the books she gave me have any reason to lie on that point.

“And a better talisman sells for more”, Xia finishes.

“And a better talisman sells for more”, I confirm to her.

“Then a cauldron is needed”, Lianhua tells me.

“A cauldron is needed”, I confirm to her. “A real alchemy one, not a pot. And ingredients to practice with are needed, which is where most of the money is going to go, because practicing means ruining my first attempts.”

I look at the empty workshop on the other side of the courtyard.

“And that’s why I’ve put the workshop where I’ve put it”, I finish.

Next I lower the stick and write below my entry, one under the other, the three lines that are mine.

Making talismans.

Practicing ink-making.

Creating the Qi-gathering formation.

And as I write the third I realize that it is the only one of all those in the sand that has no catch, no deadline and no one’s permission behind it. It is an empty room, a floor, a book I know by heart and all the time in the world.

I lift the stick and lean back.

“Am I forgetting anything?” I ask.

Xia shakes her head.

Lianhua doesn’t.

“There is a line missing”, she tells me.

“Tell me which”, I tell her.

“Combat training”, she answers me. “In my entry and in Xia’s.”

She makes a very short pause.

“We left it during the journey, and at the inn because it was not prudent to do it”, she continues. “Now would be the moment to take it up again.”

And she looks at the courtyard in a way that makes it clear she has spent four days measuring it.

Xia, from the stone border, makes a noise of refusal.

“I want to be a cook”, she says. “Not a warrior.”

“You can be both”, I tell her.

“I don’t want to be both”, she answers me.

And she crosses her arms, which, coming from her and in front of Lianhua, is practically an insurrection.

“Xia”, I tell her. “Come here.”

Xia goes around the stone border and crouches beside the armrest, which is where she always crouches when the conversation is going to be important.

“In the Palace, they taught me to use a knife”, I tell her.

Xia lifts her head.

“You?” she asks me.

“Me”, I confirm to her. “With these legs and being smaller than you, they taught me how to hold it, where to keep it and what to do if someone came close enough to be within my reach.”

I make a pause.

“And also to throw them, in case whoever was approaching didn’t get close enough to touch me”, I finish.

Xia falls silent.

“And they knew perfectly well that most likely I was never going to fight anyone”, I continue. “That there were guards, that there was Lianhua and that there was half the Palace between any danger and me. Even so they taught me.”

“Why?” she asks me.

“Because what you’re taught just in case is what works if everything else fails”, I tell her.

And there Xia lowers her gaze to the courtyard floor.

“No one is going to make you be a warrior”, I continue. “I don’t want that and neither does Lianhua. But what you are going to do is learn to defend yourself long enough to run away, and that is not negotiable.”

Xia stays a moment longer looking at the stones, but then she nods.

“Okay”, she tells me. “But let the record show I don’t like it.”

“Duly noted”, I tell her.

And I lower the stick and add the line to her entry and to Lianhua’s.

Combat training.

And when I finish, the rectangle of sand is full, with three names, three states and everything we are going to do over the coming months, in sand that the first gust of wind coming off the river would erase.

Which is, now that I think about it, considerably more than can be said of most plans.

“Does anyone want to add anything?” I ask.

Xia shakes her head from her side.

Lianhua says nothing either.

“Then the plans for our near future are drawn up”, I say.

And I lower the stick one last time and begin to pass it over the sand, from one side to the other, erasing everything.

It takes me less time to erase it than to write it, because it always does.

Xia gets up and brushes off her knees, and Lianhua is already turning toward one of the rooms when I remember the last thing, which I have spent three days turning over and have not said because it didn’t fit in any of the lines in the sand.

“Lianhua”, I tell her. “One more thing.”

Lianhua stops and turns around.

“In the next few days I am going to give you a plan”, I tell her. “For the boat.”

“What’s wrong with the boat?” she asks me.

“Nothing is wrong with the boat”, I answer her. “What it lacks is a place to anchor the chair so that it doesn’t roll.”

And I give the armrest two little taps.

Lianhua nods once.

“There is also a second part”, I finish. “And it’s that I want a ramp. Something that rests from the dock to the gunwale and holds my weight, so that I can go up and down with it instead of you two having to carry me.”

Lianhua goes still after my words, and it is not the stillness of thinking it over, because that one I know, but a different one that lasts exactly the length of a breath.

“Don’t worry, Xiaojie”, she tells me. “As soon as you give me the plans, I will see to it that it is modified as soon as possible.”