Chapter 191

I draw the last rune of the talisman and lift the brush, because that is the most dangerous moment of the whole process, the end, when my hand already knows it has finished and relaxes for an instant, but a single tremor in that instant turns the paper to ash.

But this time it doesn’t tremble, and the paper stays where it is, which is the only confirmation I need.

A finished Cutting Wind Talisman.

I set the brush in the water bowl, shake it twice against the rim and rest it on its stand.

Afterward I stay looking at the talisman while it dries, because it is the last of the batch I intend to take to the Tower of the Five Dragons, and also the last I am going to be able to make for quite some time.

I sigh, and look toward the left end of the table, where I usually keep the stacks of talisman paper, and beside them the jars of ink, arranged from fullest to emptiest so that I can tell at a glance how much I had left.

Only now there is nothing, just a dark ring where the last jar used to sit, so the conclusion is so obvious that I can barely be bothered to think it.

As soon as I manage to sell this batch, the first thing I am going to do is finally buy the alchemy cauldron.

And with the cauldron, the ingredients. The ones for the ink first, which are the urgent ones, because without ink there are no talismans and without talismans there is no funding, but also some of the materials and instruments needed to make the paper.

Although that last one is a much longer-term plan, and I know it perfectly well.

Because for the ink, Master Mu gave me lessons. She explained the theory to me, made me sort herbs until I stopped getting them wrong and grind them in the mortar until my wrists ached, and she took me right up to the exact point beyond which it was impossible to continue without using Qi, which was, at the time, the exact point beyond which I could not continue.

So I know ink-making half through practice and the other half through theory.

But she never gave me a single lesson on paper. Neither theory nor practice, nothing. She intended to teach it to me in person, and the fire Qi surge made her leave ahead of time, so the only thing I have is the book she left me when she went.

I know it by heart, of course. I could recite it from beginning to end, with every margin note and without skipping a comma.

But I have never done a single one of its steps, and knowing by heart how to do something you have never done is exactly like knowing by heart the manual of a car you have never driven. It gives you a tremendous amount of confidence right up until the moment you start the engine.

So first the ink, and the paper when its turn comes.

With that decided, I make a box I keep on a small side table in my study float over to me.

It is a plain wooden box, and it is where I have been storing all the talismans I have made since we settled in.

I open it and begin to check the talismans one by one.

Fire Arrows, which is what I have made the most of because it is what comes out easiest for me, Spiritual Shields, a few Air Barrier for those who need something more affordable, and of course, several Cutting Winds.

And I check all of them, because the Tower is going to check them too, and I would rather find a doubtful stroke myself than have it found by someone who is going to pay me less for it. I look at them against the light and go over the joins of the runes.

I don’t find a single defective one, but that doesn’t make me skip any.

In the end I set aside two Spiritual Shields and one Cutting Wind that is still drying, and I put them with the small pile I keep separate on the table, which are the ones I have made for us and that I have no intention of selling at any price.

Afterward I close the box with the rest inside, fasten the clasp and leave it in the center of the table, where there is no way of forgetting it.

“Lianhua”, I start to say as I turn my head toward the door.

And I fall silent in the middle of the sentence, because Lianhua is not here.

I sent her into the city this morning, with a payment authorization and two errands. The first, her Earth techniques. The second, books on spirit food for Xia, as many as she can find.

And also, although I didn’t put it to her exactly that way, for me, for the days when I get bored and have nothing better to read, which, being me, and with everything I have pending, is a kind of day that almost no longer exists.

But when it does exist, it is terrible.

So I sigh again, and lower my gaze to the rope.

It is a thick rope, tied to both sides of the seat, which out loud I call a rope and which inside my head is called a seat belt.

I pass it around my waist, adjust it and give it a tug to check that it holds, because the first time I tried what I am about to do now, I wasn’t wearing it.

And the Myriad of Hands has a peculiarity I knew perfectly well in theory and which in practice, that day, I forgot completely, and it is that when what you grab doesn’t move, the one who moves is you.

You, not the chair, so the chair stayed where it was and I did not.

I ended up on the floor, lying face down, with all the dignity of a sack of rice that has fallen off a cart and looking at the leg of the table from a completely new perspective.

And that I have no intention of repeating.

So now, with the rope well adjusted, I look at the post.

It is a wooden post fixed to the wall of the study, like several others, and they have no function other than this one; Lianhua put them there when we understood everything I would need if I wanted to be able to move around on my own.

I extend the technique toward it.

One hand, two, three. I close them around the post at different heights, like someone gripping a handrail, and when I have seven, I pull.

The post, obviously, doesn’t move, because it is fixed there precisely so as not to move, so the one who moves is me, and since I am tied in now, the chair moves with me.

But it doesn’t move the way I want, because pulling on a fixed point takes you in a straight line toward that point, and I don’t want to go toward the post, I want to turn. So I pull sideways, let go, reposition my hands, pull again, and the chair turns on its wheels little by little while I switch from post to post, with a creak of wood at every tug and a jolt every time it lines up badly.

It is like parallel parking on a narrow street in a car without power steering. A lot of tugging, a lot of repositioning and the constant feeling that there has to be a simpler way of doing it that hasn’t occurred to me yet.

And at every tug I feel the rope digging into my waist, which is not exactly a pleasant sensation.

It takes me a good while, but in the end the chair is facing the door.

I release the technique and stay still a moment, breathing somewhat faster than I would like, giving thanks, and not for the first time, that the reaction of this technique takes into account that my chair has wheels.

Because I don’t need the Myriad to lift the chair, only to make it roll, and that is much less weight than it seems. If I had to drag it, or if the technique decided that my weight and the chair’s had to move as a single whole regardless of whether there were wheels or not, not even all ten hands together would be enough.

Afterward I look at the door.

It is open, as I always leave it when I work, and the frame is a little over two meters from me, within my reach, so I use the technique on the frame and pull.

The chair rolls forward, straight and considerably faster than I would like, and a little before arriving I do the reverse operation, pushing instead of pulling, until I come to a stop right in the doorway.

And from there I look at the courtyard.

The stone table is on the other side, beneath the white magnolia, and between it and me there is a row of small wooden posts, low, driven into the ground of the courtyard and each separated from the next by a little over two and a half meters, eight Chi to be exact.

It isn’t a coincidence, since that is my reach.

Because my sphere of influence is, for now, that range, and the Myriad doesn’t reach any farther, so Lianhua placed them, measuring them one by one together with me.

I grab the first and pull, so the chair rolls up to it; I brake a little, grab the next and pull again.

And so, from post to post, like a clumsy monkey going from branch to branch, I cross the courtyard to the stone table.

When I arrive, I brake, let myself fall back against the backrest and sigh for the third time in a very short while, because this works, but it is cumbersome.

I can only go in a straight line, from one anchor point to the next, and every time I want to turn, even slightly, I have to stop, look for something fixed at the right angle and make the same thousand adjustments I have just made in the study.

And not for the first time, I think about push rims. Two rims, one per wheel, fixed to its side, which is the only thing a person in a chair needs to be able to move on their own and turn whenever they want, without depending on posts, or techniques, or anyone.

In my other life it was the most normal thing in the world, but here it is impossible.

And not because it hasn’t occurred to me, but because I have thought about it too many times. The wheels made in this world are of bamboo or wood, and none of them can withstand someone pulling on them from one side every few paces, starting, braking and turning. A chair like mine is too heavy, and every push puts into it an inertia those wheels are not made to bear. They crack, they warp and they end up breaking.

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For that, what would be needed is a chair made of a material other than iron, because one made of iron would weigh so much that it would destroy the floor of any building it entered, and in the Empire there was no material that would do.

But there, halfway through the thought, I stop, because I am no longer in the Empire.

I am in a city clearly far ahead of what I used to call home, and in a city like this, even if I still don’t know how to enchant my chair so that it runs on Qi, which is the big project, the one that is going to take me years, perhaps there is something smaller and more immediate within my reach.

A craftsman.

One who works with spiritual materials I don’t even know exist, and who can make me a chair lighter than this one, sturdier than this one and able to withstand the inertia of push rims without its wheels breaking in the third week.

I stay with that idea going around in my head, looking at the slightly wilted leaves of the magnolia without seeing them, calculating whom I would have to ask, how much something like that might cost and whether the Tower will have lists of craftsmen just as it has lists of everything else.

“Wen, are you listening to me?” I suddenly hear.

I give such an abrupt start that the chair shifts a finger’s width backward, because I am still tied to it.

I look around and see that Xia is standing beside me, a step from the armrest, with the kitchen cloth tied at her waist and her head tilted a little while she looks at me in puzzlement.

I didn’t hear her arrive. Not her footsteps, not the kitchen door, nothing.

“Sorry”, I tell her, and I bring a hand to my chest. “I was thinking about something else and didn’t hear you. What were you saying?”

Xia doesn’t seem bothered in the least. She waits for me to finish resettling myself in the chair, and when I finish, she repeats it.

“I’ve finished the Body Tempering”, she tells me.

And I stay looking at her, because only a short while ago, at the inn, she told me that if she cultivated seriously she would finish it in a few months. And since then a few months have not passed. Not even close.

“How did you manage it so soon?” I ask her.

The question comes out without my thinking, with my voice a little higher than usual, and Xia, on hearing it, smiles.

It is the smile of someone who has been keeping a piece of news to herself for a good while in order to see exactly the face I am making, and has just seen it.

“Because of the salmon”, she tells me. “With all the spirit salmon I ate on the ship, the Tempering of the Entrails and Veins went up a lot more than I thought.”

“And since we arrived I’ve been cultivating almost half the day every day”, she continues. “And there’s so much Qi here that it never runs out. I’d grab my nine particles, absorb them, grab another nine, and around me there were always more, and more, and my surroundings never emptied.”

She opens both hands in front of her.

“So it’s been like riding a galloping horse”, she finishes.

I listen to her and nod, because all of that is true and all of that adds up, but the numbers don’t work out for me.

And then I remember my father, that conversation in which he explained to me that talent is not a single facet but two, and that they are measured separately. That Qi does not enter the body in the same instant it is reached, but takes time, and that the time it takes is different for each person. Several heartbeats, he told me, like someone giving an example at random. And that that difference, added up over twenty years, can be worth entire years of cultivation.

And that I took no time at all.

So, before the sensible part of my head has time to raise its hand, I ask her.

“Xia, how long does it take you to absorb each particle?” I ask her.

But as soon as the sentence leaves my mouth, I regret it, because it is a very personal question. And I have just asked Xia to tell me out loud something that is supposed to be very private and that I had no right whatsoever to ask her.

“Forget it”, I tell her immediately. “You don’t have to answer me.”

But Xia doesn’t even blink.

“About one heartbeat”, she tells me, as if I had asked her the time. “Each one. That’s why I go so fast.”

I fall silent, a little ashamed, because the question was not mine to ask like that, and at the same time with something small and warm inside me that feels a great deal like relief, because it hasn’t bothered Xia in the least to answer it. She has answered me the way she answers me everything, without thinking about it, as if what is hers were a little bit mine as well.

And meanwhile, the part of my head that doesn’t know how to keep still is already doing the math.

My father said several heartbeats. If the normal were two, which is already being generous with the word several, Xia goes at least twice as fast as anyone. And if the normal is three, or four, considerably more.

And that is only the first of the two facets.

The second is utilization, the part of all that absorbed Qi that is truly used and not lost along the way, and no one can give me that one with a number. But someone who advances at this speed, salmon or no salmon, cannot be losing half of what she absorbs.

So I suspect, with fairly good grounds, that she isn’t doing badly there either.

Which means that Xia’s talent is not like mine, but it is not, by any stretch, a poor talent either.

“Why have you gone so quiet?” Xia asks me.

And she asks it in the same voice as before, but smaller, and when I look at her she is no longer smiling. Her hands are gripping the edge of the cloth and she has the face of someone who has suddenly remembered that good news sometimes ends badly.

“Is it bad?” she asks me.

“No”, I tell her immediately, and I lean forward in the chair so that she can see my face clearly. “No, Xia, quite the opposite.”

Xia looks at me without quite believing it.

“It means you have a tremendous amount of talent”, I continue. “And that you are going to be a great cultivator.”

And I see my words reach her, because she begins to swell up like the day she climbed onto my bed exclaiming that she was the number one cultivator in the world.

And I can’t help teasing her a little.

“Although I’m only telling you so that you keep it in mind”, I add. “But you still have a long way to go before you can compare yourself to me.”

After my words, her face takes on that expression of absolute frustration she only makes when something she has been watching over for a long time burns, and she yanks the cloth from her waist and throws it at me.

“Don’t you dare compare me with someone like you”, she tells me. “That would be totally unfair.”

The cloth hits me in the chest and falls into my lap.

“And not just for me”, Xia continues as she points her finger at me. “For the rest of the world too.”

I burst out laughing after her words, and when I finally recover, I pick up the cloth from my lap, fold it in two and hold it out to her.

“Okay, okay”, I tell her. “I promise I won’t compare myself with anyone ever again.”

Xia snatches the cloth from my hand and ties it back around her waist with a knot made without looking, still frowning, although the corners of her mouth are betraying her.

“In the Palace, for something like this, I would have thrown you a party”, I tell her. “Finishing the Body Tempering is something to celebrate. Do you want something to celebrate it? Anything.”

Xia shakes her head without thinking about it.

“Your promise is enough for me”, she tells me. “The one that you’re going to try to make it possible for me to be a spirit chef.”

I open my mouth to tell her that doesn’t count, that a promise I have already made her isn’t a present, but before I have time, Xia smiles.

That smile again.

“Besides, since I imagined you’d want to celebrate, I’ve been making preparations”, she tells me. “I’ve made pizza and hamburgers for when Lianhua gets back.”

After hearing her, I am left with my mouth open, with nothing to say, because she has beaten me again.

So I look around me, I look at the stone table, the two benches and the magnolia above it all, with its tired leaves, and suddenly the image comes to me of what tonight could be like.

The river sounding on the other side of the walls, with the three of us around this table and the food already set out while, above us, hanging from the branches of the magnolia, there are a few lit lanterns, swaying a little and filling the courtyard with that orange light that makes everything seem closer.

And I remember, suddenly, Xia’s birthday on the ship. That there was no party, nor a decent present, and that the only thing I managed was to get them to let her cook alone that day.

That still stings, so this time, no.

“Xia”, I tell her, and my voice comes out with considerably more enthusiasm than I intended. “Do we have lanterns? The kind that can be hung in the courtyard.”

Xia frowns.

She stays a moment looking at the branches of the magnolia with her lips pressed together, going over in her head an inventory she knows better than anyone, because she was the one who helped Lianhua put everything we brought from the palace into the bag.

“I think so”, she tells me at last. “But if we have them, they’re still inside the Storage Bag.”

And the Storage Bag left this morning with Lianhua, hidden in her backpack, in case it was needed to bring back all the books.

“Then we’ll have to wait for Lianhua to get back”, I tell her. “And then we can start on an idea I have for the party.”

Xia tilts her head after hearing me, and I see her take a breath, with the question already formed on her face, when someone knocks at the door.

Three sharp knocks against the wood of the courtyard door, the one that opens outward onto the stone path that circles the island.

And right afterward, a man’s voice on the other side.

“Is this the residence of the House of the Long Journey?” the voice asks.

I frown after hearing it, because we aren’t expecting anyone. And because the House of the Long Journey is a name very few people in this city know, and none of those few people know where we live.

Or so I believed.

Xia has gone still, looking at the door, and then she looks at me.

“Xia”, I tell her without raising my voice. “Take me over to the door; it’s quicker than if I pull myself.”

Xia positions herself behind the chair without saying anything and starts to push, and while we cross the courtyard, I put my hand into my sleeve, take out two talismans, one Spiritual Shield and one Cutting Wind, and leave them between my thigh and the armrest, where I can grab them without looking and where no one standing will see them.

I don’t think I’m going to need them, but what you carry just in case is what works if everything else fails.

Xia stops me a couple of paces from the door, and I raise my hand so that she doesn’t take a single step more.

The door has two leaves of solid wood, and each one easily weighs seventy kilos, and that weight is more than the Dragon’s Grip or the sum of the Myriad’s ten hands can move.

But it is not more than the Qi Grip can move if it is forced.

And since I have no intention of letting Xia be the one to go and open a door without knowing who is behind it, I grab the right-hand leaf and pull.

The Qi Grip takes hold of it without any delicacy, because it has none, and as soon as I feel the weight of the wood I also feel the limit, like someone pushing a door that has jammed.

And I go past it.

The pressure rises behind my eyes, the back of my neck grows hot and I feel myself starting to sweat while the leaf opens slowly, creaking on its hinges, until it leaves a gap wide enough to see who is on the other side.

As soon as I release the Grip, my shoulders loosen; I hadn’t known they were so tense.

But after opening the door, I notice that on the other side there is a man.

He is middle-aged, in clothing of good fabric and without any emblem, and he is standing a step from the door, with his hands joined in front of him. When the leaf opens, he makes not the slightest move to come in; what he does is look.

His eyes pass over Xia for an instant and then lower to me, to the chair, and stay there with the calm of someone who has just confirmed something he already knew.

“Are you Sun Wen?” he asks me. “The person in charge of the House of the Long Journey?”

He makes a small bow.

“Lin Quingyu gave me a description of you”, he adds.

It costs me nothing to imagine that description. It was probably brief, and it surely began with the chair.

“I am Sun Wen”, I confirm to him.

“Lin Quingyu sends me to tell you that she needs to speak with you”, he tells me. “And that you should come by her office at the Tower of the Five Dragons as soon as you are able.”

He doesn’t say what for, and I don’t ask him, because it is clear that either he doesn’t know, or he hasn’t been given permission to tell me.

“Tell Lin Quingyu that, if I can’t come tomorrow, I will come without fail the day after”, I tell him.

“I will let her know”, he answers me.

And with that he makes another bow, turns around and leaves along the stone path toward the island’s small dock, without turning his head, until the corner of the house swallows him.

I stay looking at the empty gap one second longer than necessary.

“Xia”, I tell her afterward. “You close it, please.”

Because forcing the Qi Grip is too tiring to do twice in a row.

Xia shoots off, sets both hands on the leaf and pushes it until it fits against the other, faster than I expected, although, now that I think about it, she has just finished tempering her body.

Xia comes back to my side, crouches beside the armrest and looks up at me, with her head tilted and all the curiosity in the world on her face.

“How does Lin Quingyu know where we live?” she asks me. “We didn’t tell her.”

I gather up the two talismans from between my thigh and the armrest and put them back in my sleeve.

“Never underestimate a merchant’s network of contacts”, I tell her. “Especially if they know the person who rented us the house.”

Xia opens her mouth, closes it, and I see the pieces fall into place for her one after another.

What I don’t know either is why Lin Quingyu wants to see me in such a hurry.

But whatever it is, it is for another day, so I set it aside and leave it in the same corner of my head where I keep everything I can’t resolve this afternoon, which by now is starting to get rather full, and I turn toward Xia.

And as soon as I look at her, the same smile I had before the knock comes back to my face.

“Well”, I tell her. “Let’s get on with tonight.”

Xia straightens up abruptly.

“The reason you want the lanterns”, she tells me.

“The reason I want the lanterns”, I confirm to her.

I start to tell her, and halfway through the first sentence Xia has already forgotten the door, the man and Lin Quingyu, and so have I.

Because it is going to be the first party in this house, and I intend to do it right.