Chapter 201 Interlude 29

The fourth wolf falls at mid-morning, and it falls because Tang Shun is always efficient at his work.

Gao Yuncheng, grandson of Elder Gao of the Sect of the Nine Currents, watches it from the spot where he has spent the whole morning, which is a few paces behind the others, with his sword in its sheath and one hand resting on the hilt. He sees Tang Shun raise two fingers without turning around, sees Qiao Lan cut off the animal’s path from the left and sees Xu Ping drive his sword in under its shoulder blade just as the wolf twists around, not a heartbeat before nor one after.

The wolf turns a full circle, kicks up a few dead leaves and goes still.

“Well done”, says Gao. “Exactly as I told you.”

No one answers him, except Hu Lei, who laughs as if it were a joke, although Gao didn’t mean it as one.

Tang Shun kneels beside the animal, takes out his knife and begins to skin it without a word, with the same face he would wear to peel a piece of fruit.

Gao takes the opportunity to pull the mission tablet from his sleeve and go over it once more, even though he knows it by heart, and so he checks yet again that what they are asking for are the pelts, fangs and bones of six level eight spirit wolves.

He puts the tablet away and looks around.

The forest crackles with every step. The fire Qi surge left only very recently, after several years, and it has left the trees with their leaves toasted on the branches and the ground covered in a layer of dead leaves that sounds like crumpled paper the moment anyone steps on it.

But Gao has his own complaints. His silk tunic has snagged on the brambles four times, his boots are new and pinch across the instep, and the sword his grandfather gave him when he joined the sect, forged from spiritual materials and more expensive than everything the other four are carrying put together, has yet to touch a single wolf.

It isn’t that he doesn’t want to. It’s that the one in command can’t be everywhere, and someone has to supervise the operation, so he looks at the group.

He sees Hu Lei, who never strays more than three paces from him and who agrees with everything Gao says before Gao has finished saying it. He sees Qiao Lan cleaning her blade with a handful of dry leaves, without looking at anyone, because Qiao Lan doesn’t look at anyone and hardly ever speaks. He sees Xu Ping, the youngest and fastest of the five, smiling with the wolf’s blood still on his knuckles.

And he sees Tang Shun, who has been in the sect for more years than Gao has been alive and is still an Outer Disciple, which, to Gao, says everything there is to know about him.

Tang Shun rises with the wolf’s fangs between his fingers, wraps them in a rag and puts them away.

“Two left”, says Gao, while the rest of the group stows the pelt and the bones.

“Two left”, Tang Shun confirms.

And without adding anything else, he sets off eastward, following something on the ground that Gao can’t make out.

Gao follows him, and as he walks his hand goes to the little silk pouch hanging from his belt. It is a gesture he has already made several times this morning without realizing it, because the talismans are inside.

He bought them three days ago on the ground floor of the Tower of the Five Dragons, where one of the saleswomen left what she was doing half finished the moment she saw the emblem of the Nine Currents embroidered on his chest and the quality of the silk it was embroidered on. She recommended a new batch to him, just arrived, and told him the Tower was recommending it to all its trusted clients, because they were of a quality never before seen at that branch.

Gao bought twenty Cutting Winds, ten Spiritual Shields, ten Air Barriers and ten Fire Arrows, because it seemed in poor taste to buy fewer in front of such a pretty saleswoman who was smiling at him that way.

He didn’t ask the price, because a Gao doesn’t ask the price. And when the saleswoman told him anyway, he didn’t really listen.

He didn’t believe the part about the quality. It is what every saleswoman in this city says about everything she sells, and if anyone believed even half of it, there would be nothing mediocre in Sanjiang.

But the papers came tied in bundles with string, each bundle with a strip on top bearing the talisman’s name so they couldn’t be mixed up, which is one of the reasons he likes to buy them at the Tower of the Five Dragons and not in some other shabby little shop better suited to those who can’t afford quality.

Tang Shun stops shortly after midday, but he doesn’t stop because he has spotted prey. He stops in front of a tree, and crouches.

It takes Gao a moment to see the gouges. Three of them, parallel, at the height of a tall man’s head, and around each one the bark is black, as if someone had quenched a red-hot iron against it.

“What is that?” he asks.

“A feline”, says Tang Shun. “Level seven.”

He runs his thumb along the edge of one of the gouges and looks at the pad, which comes away stained with soot.

“And a fire one”, he adds.

Xu Ping lets out a low whistle. Hu Lei looks at the surrounding trees, as if the feline could be draped over any of them, and moves a step closer to Gao.

But Gao isn’t looking at the trees, because he is doing sums.

A beast core is pure Qi, everyone knows that, and a level seven core is worth more than the six wolves on the tablet put together. And it isn’t the money that interests him, because money he has in abundance. What interests him is the face his grandfather would make if his grandson came back from a wolf mission with a level seven core in his hand.

And the faces his cousins would make, because Elder Gao has many grandchildren, and all of them have spent years trying to get their grandfather to remember their names without having to stop and think.

“We’re going after it”, he says.

Tang Shun doesn’t get up, although he heard Gao Yuncheng perfectly well.

“It isn’t part of the commission, young master”, he says.

“I know that perfectly well”, Gao answers him.

“Then you will also know that this isn’t a hunting trail”, Tang Shun continues without changing his tone. “It’s a warning. It’s marking where its territory begins, and we are at the edge.”

He rises slowly and brushes the dead leaves off his knees.

“We’ve been chasing wolves since dawn”, he adds. “And with the ground covered in leaves, it will hear us coming from half a Li away.”

“There are five of us”, Gao tells him. “And it is one.”

“It is at home”, Tang Shun answers him. “We are not.”

Hu Lei laughs, although this time he laughs a little late.

“With the young master in front, what could go wrong?” he says.

Xu Ping says nothing, but he has stopped smiling and has his eyes fixed on the gouges in the bark, with a look Gao knows well, because it is the look he himself gets when someone shows him something he doesn’t have yet.

Qiao Lan says nothing either, which is what she always does, so Gao decides that’s a yes.

“I am the one leading this mission”, he says firmly, leaving no room for any reply.

Tang Shun stares at him for a moment. Not long, but long enough to make Gao feel uncomfortable, which is something Tang Shun hasn’t made him feel all morning.

“As you say, young master”, he tells him.

And he draws his sword before setting off again.

The trail leads them to a hollow of gray rock where the dead leaves end abruptly, as if someone had swept them away. There are bones everywhere, picked clean, some so large that Gao prefers not to wonder what they came from, and at the far end, between two boulders, a dark crevice from which comes a warm smell of ash and old meat.

There is nothing else. Not a sound, not a movement.

Gao stops at the edge and studies the terrain, which is what the one in command is supposed to do.

“Spread out”, he says. “Each of you on a different side. Don’t let it get away.”

“If we spread out, it will pick us off one by one”, says Tang Shun.

“And if we don’t spread out, it will escape wherever we aren’t”, Gao answers him. “And I didn’t come all this way to watch it escape.”

He points with his chin.

“Qiao Lan and Hu Lei, on the right”, he continues. “You, in the center, in front of the crevice. And Xu Ping on the left, since he’s the fastest, and if it comes out on that side he’s the only one who can catch it.”

It seems like sound reasoning to him, and it goes on seeming so while he says it.

“And you, young master?” Tang Shun asks him.

“Behind you”, Gao answers. “Where I can see everything and coordinate us.”

Tang Shun says nothing more after those words.

They split up. Xu Ping moves off to the left, hugging the rocks, until he is thirty paces from the others, and from there he raises a hand to signal that he is in position. Qiao Lan takes up her place on the right, with Hu Lei at her back. Tang Shun advances toward the crevice with his sword low, and Gao follows him at five paces, which is the distance that seems right to him.

But, unfortunately, the feline doesn’t come out of the crevice. It drops from above.

Gao doesn’t see it fall. He only sees an enormous shadow on the boulder behind Hu Lei and hears a scream, and when he manages to focus his eyes, Hu Lei is on the ground, his right leg torn open from hip to knee and the animal on top of him.

It is twice the size of any feline Gao has ever seen. Its fur is the color of ash, and on its back, where a leopard would have spots, it has reddish markings that glow like freshly kindled embers.

Qiao Lan is the first to move. Her sword goes into the animal’s flank, not very deep, but deep enough for it to let go of Hu Lei and turn toward her with a roar that Gao feels more than hears.

Tang Shun is already running, though, and when he arrives he attacks head-on, but the feline twists away, and for a moment Gao thinks everything is going to be fine, that this is the same as with the wolves, only bigger.

But then the feline opens its mouth, and what comes out isn’t a roar. It is a jet of fire, straight and white at the center, and Tang Shun only has time to raise his left arm and turn his body. The fire hits him on the arm and half his side, his sleeve disintegrates in the air, and Tang Shun falls to his knees without letting go of his sword, his arm hanging at his side and his face white.

The smell of burning reaches all the way to where Gao is standing, because he hasn’t moved.

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He realizes it suddenly, the way one realizes one hasn’t breathed for a while. He is exactly where he was, with his hand on the hilt of a sword he hasn’t drawn, and the feline is fifteen Chi from him, turning around to look at him.

So he does the only thing that occurs to him, which is to plunge his hand into the silk pouch.

Gao’s fingers find the first bundle and pull out a paper without looking, which he activates and throws.

Unfortunately, it’s a Fire Arrow.

The arrow flies straight, crosses the hollow and hits the feline in the flank, and its fur drinks it in the way a sponge soaks up water, so the animal decides that the person in front of it is no threat and ignores him to look at the rest of the group.

Fire against a fire beast, Gao thinks, and he curses himself for not having first checked the talisman he had pulled out.

But meanwhile, the feline is no longer looking at Gao, nor at Qiao Lan, who is dragging Hu Lei toward the rocks. It is looking to the left, to where Xu Ping is running to help, alone, from where Gao placed him.

Xu Ping is fast, that much is true, but the feline is faster.

Xu Ping raises his sword, and he has time to land a good cut on its foreleg as the feline leaps over him and reaches for him with its claws.

When the animal lands, Xu Ping is on the ground, face up, with three charred claw marks across his chest, and the dead leaves around him are beginning to smoke.

The only thing Gao can think at that moment, and he thinks it before he can stop himself, is that his grandfather is going to ask him how this whole disaster happened.

But, terrified, he realizes that the feline has turned around, slowly, its fur smoking and the markings on its back growing redder and redder, and now it is looking at him.

Tang Shun is on his knees with his arm still smoking, Qiao Lan is behind the rocks with Hu Lei, and Xu Ping isn’t going to get up. So Gao Yuncheng is alone in the middle of the hollow.

He pulls all the bundles out of the pouch at once, although his hands are shaking so hard that two of the stacks fall, and he has to read the strips twice because he can’t focus on the letters, but at last he reads Spiritual Shield on one of the stacks, tears one from the string and activates it just as the feline leaps.

A dome of very pale light opens around him, a little more than a handspan from his body, so thin that he can still see the whole hollow through it.

And the feline’s paw slams into it.

The fire spreads across the dome the way water spreads across glass, the light flickers, and Gao waits, eyes wide, for it to break, because that is what always happens with Spiritual Shields, and that thing out there is a level seven beast.

But the dome doesn’t break as the feline strikes again, and then again, and then lunges with its head and closes its jaws against the light, its fangs a handspan from Gao’s face, and the light holds.

He doesn’t know how long it goes on like that, but the talisman in Gao’s hands begins to sputter, which he knows means his only protection is about to give out.

And Gao, who hasn’t thought of anything in all this time, finally grabs the bundle of Cutting Winds.

In his haste he activates the first one without aiming, so what comes out of the paper is a blade of air that can only be seen by the dead leaves it tears from the ground as it passes. It hits the feline in the shoulder and splits open its fur.

It isn’t a very deep cut, but it is a cut, so he activates another, and another, and another.

He doesn’t count them. He tears them from the string one after another and throws them as soon as they are in his hand, and each one comes out with the same whistle and the same force as the last, and not a single one comes out weaker, the way they usually do.

The feline hurls itself at him again while trying to dodge the blades of air, and Gao activates another Shield with his free hand, a Shield that, like the previous one, holds.

And he goes back to throwing more Cutting Wind talismans.

At some point he realizes that the markings on the beast’s back no longer glow the same, that the next jet of fire from its mouth is shorter than the first and breaks apart against the dome before it can even warm it. That the feline leaves a trail of blood on the rock every time it moves, and that each time it moves more slowly.

Finally, at some point after that, the feline takes two steps toward him, staggers and falls on its side.

But Gao activates another Cutting Wind, and then another one, on the feline’s body.

“Young master”, someone says.

It’s Qiao Lan. At some point she has come out from behind the rocks, approached the animal and driven her sword in under its jaw up to the hilt, and now she is standing beside him, looking at him.

“It’s over”, she tells him.

Gao looks down and sees that he has another paper in his hand, about to activate it.

It takes him a good deal of effort to let go of it.

After that, the group gathers around Xu Ping before doing anything else.

Qiao Lan closes his eyes, wraps him in her own cloak and hoists him onto her back without asking anyone for help. Hu Lei has his leg bound with two strips from his tunic and a stick, and he won’t be able to walk without leaning on someone. Tang Shun has bandaged his arm by himself, with his teeth and his remaining hand, and is sitting against a rock, gray-faced, his eyes half closed.

So the only one with both hands free is Gao.

Tang Shun opens his eyes and points at the feline with his chin.

“The core, young master”, he tells him. “We’ve paid for it many times over.”

Gao stares at him, but Tang Shun has already closed his eyes again, so he kneels beside the animal, draws for the first time all day the sword his grandfather gave him and does what he has seen his followers do so many times. He does it considerably worse, it takes him considerably longer, and when he finishes the silk of his sleeves is stained up to the elbows, but he has the core.

It is bigger than he expected, the size of a quail egg, and it is still warm, with a reddish light moving inside it very slowly, like something breathing.

This morning he would have given anything to hold it in his hand, and now he does, and he doesn’t really know what to do with it, so he wraps it in a rag and puts it away.

Then, without really knowing why, he opens the silk pouch and looks inside.

He has two Cutting Winds left, seven Spiritual Shields, nine Fire Arrows and the ten Air Barriers, untouched, because at no point did he remember he was carrying them.

Eighteen Cutting Winds and three Shields.

That is what it has cost to get out of this hollow. That, and what Qiao Lan carries on her back.

He remembers the saleswoman on the ground floor, her smile and what she told him: that this batch was of a quality never before seen at that branch.

And he remembers what he thought while she was saying it, that it was the same thing they all say. But that woman had understated it.

Gao doesn’t know who made them, but he tries to picture it. Some white-bearded master the Tower must have brought from very far away, from the center of the continent or beyond, someone who has spent a hundred years with a brush in hand and no longer needs to think about the strokes to create that kind of talisman.

Then he looks at Xu Ping and realizes he doesn’t know where he was from. Or whether he had family in the city, or how many years he had been in the sect, or what he planned to do with his share of this mission. He knows he was fast, and that that is why he put him on the left flank.

That is all he knows about him.

Tang Shun gets up, leaning on the rock. It takes him two tries, and when he manages it he stays still for a moment, breathing, before looking at Gao.

Gao opens his mouth to tell him he was right, but closes it again, because he doesn’t know how to say that without losing what little reputation he will have left after such a disaster.

“We need to get out of the forest before nightfall”, says Tang Shun. “Blood attracts other beasts, and we’re in no condition for another fight.”

“Yes”, Gao tells him.

It is the first time all day that he has agreed with him out loud, and Tang Shun notices, because he looks at him a moment longer than necessary before turning away.

Gao takes Hu Lei under the arm, slings it over his shoulders and sets off behind the others, his silk stained with blood, his boots pinching his instep and the dead leaves crunching underfoot with every step, so loudly that anything in this forest is going to hear them leave.

And as he walks, with Hu Lei’s weight on one side and his free hand resting on the silk pouch, Gao Yuncheng makes himself a promise.

As soon as he gets back to Sanjiang, even before presenting himself to his grandfather, he will go to the Tower of the Five Dragons and buy every talisman they have left from that batch.

Every single one.

And if they have none left, he will sit at the door and wait for the next lot to arrive.

Lu Zhiyu knocks twice on the door of the manager’s office and waits.

She doesn’t wait long, because a voice from inside tells her to come in, so she smooths the front of her uniform with both hands, a gesture she never makes in front of a client, and enters.

The office is the largest in the branch, and also the quietest. It has two tall windows overlooking the square, a bookcase that covers the back wall from end to end and, in the center, a desk of wood so dark it looks black.

On the ground floor, it is said that the desk is worth more than everything sold at the counters in a month. Lu Zhiyu has never verified it, but she has never doubted it either.

“Sit down”, the manager tells her.

Lu Zhiyu sits in the chair in front of the desk, with her back straight and her hands together on her knees.

The manager doesn’t look up right away. He finishes reading the sheet in front of him, sets it on a pile and takes another from a different pile, which he turns toward her.

It is a record of sales over the last few days, and Lu Zhiyu recognizes the handwriting, because it is hers.

“The talismans you buy from the House of the Long Journey”, the manager tells her. “I want to talk about them.”

Lu Zhiyu doesn’t move, because in this building everyone is taught to control their expressions even before they are taught to count, and she learned it well. But underneath, the hands clasped on her knees tighten a little.

Because only a few days ago, in Lin Quingyu’s office, she found herself face to face with Master Mu.

Lu Zhiyu went up with some accounts, opened the door and found her there, seated in one of the chairs along the wall as if it were her own, with her high bun held by a hairpin of jade and gold, the silk split between dark blue and crimson and a closed fan between her fingers. And Lin Quingyu was standing behind her desk, something Lu Zhiyu had never seen her do.

What Master Mu did afterward inside the Tower, Lu Zhiyu doesn’t know, nor does she want to. But she does remember, word for word, what she told the two of them before leaving.

That they would continue handling the House of the Long Journey just as before, that their relationship with that company would stay among the three of them, and that they would never tell anyone about it, inside or outside the Tower.

“Not even your superiors”, she finished, and tapped her shoulder with her fan.

And now Lu Zhiyu is sitting in front of the superior of all her superiors in this city, and that man wants to talk, of all things, about that very company.

“Is something wrong with the House of the Long Journey?” she asks him.

She asks it in her usual voice, and she is rather proud of having managed it.

The manager rests his elbows on the desk and brings his fingertips together.

“Did you check the credentials of the maker of those talismans?” he asks in turn.

“Yes”, Lu Zhiyu answers. “Before putting the first batch up for sale.”

And since the manager keeps looking at her, she continues.

“A talisman maker’s certificate issued by the Pavilion of a Thousand Strokes”, she tells him. “With the Guild’s seal and the Qi signature of its holder. All in order.”

What she doesn’t tell him is what she felt when she held it in her hands.

Because she had suspected it from the very first day, from the moment she saw that box open on the table and heard the girl in the chair ask her which talismans the Tower needed, in the tone of someone already deciding what she was going to make next. But it is one thing to suspect it and quite another to see that name written beside the Guild’s red seal.

A girl who isn’t even fourteen yet, as a talisman maker.

Lu Zhiyu spent that afternoon looking at the certificate far more times than necessary, but now, after seeing Master Mu seated in Lin Quingyu’s office, it no longer seems so strange to her. Someone for whose sake a person like that turns up at a branch on this side of the world cannot be an ordinary girl.

She doesn’t say that either, of course.

The manager looks at her a moment longer, and then nods slowly, like someone crossing a line off a list.

“Good”, he says.

Lu Zhiyu lets the air out through her nose, very slowly, so that it doesn’t show.

“Then let’s get to what matters”, the manager continues. “Starting today, only a quarter of the talismans the House of the Long Journey sells us will be sold in Sanjiang.”

He raises a hand.

“And not at the counters”, he adds. “They will be offered only to clients with preferential treatment status, as a luxury item.”

He sets his hand back down on the desk.

“The rest will be stored and sent to the continental headquarters with the regular shipments”, he finishes.

Lu Zhiyu stares at him, and for an instant her surprise shows on her face.

“Why?” she asks him. “They sell very well.”

Very well is an understatement. The counters downstairs can’t keep those talismans in stock for more than a couple of days at a time, and not a morning goes by without someone asking when more are coming. Disciples from the three sects, wandering cultivators, and even a grandson of an Elder of the Nine Currents who, according to the saleswomen, took fifty in one go without asking the price.

“That is the problem”, the manager answers her.

He picks up a third sheet, and Lu Zhiyu recognizes the seal the moment she sees it, because it is the same red seal that is on Sun Wen’s certificate.

“They sell so well that the Pavilion of a Thousand Strokes has complained”, he continues. “They say those talismans are overshadowing the reputation of every talisman in the city and giving their members a bad name.”

He sets the sheet down on the desk without turning it toward her.

“And they are not wrong”, he adds.

Lu Zhiyu says nothing.

“We are merchants”, the manager continues. “And a merchant who takes the entire market of a city ends up with the entire city against him. Especially a guild we will have to keep dealing with long after no one remembers those talismans.”

He leans back in his chair.

“So we are going to calm the waters”, he tells her. “Fewer will be sold, and at a higher price, and whoever buys them will know they are getting something not just anyone has. The Pavilion will keep its sales, and we will keep our reputation.”

“And headquarters?” Lu Zhiyu asks him.

“At headquarters they see talismans from everywhere”, he answers. “And from this side of the world, almost nothing worth a second look ever arrives.”

He makes a vague gesture toward the window, toward the square, or perhaps toward the whole continent.

“It makes a nice change, for once, to have something decent to send them”, he finishes.

Lu Zhiyu falls silent for a moment, because it is the first time she has seen the Tower sell less of something it could sell more of.

But then she works out how this affects things, and she realizes that it doesn’t affect the House of the Long Journey at all. The agreement she closed with Sun Wen sets a price for each type of talisman, with no minimum quantity and no exclusivity, and that price is paid the same whether the talisman is sold at a counter on the ground floor or crosses half a continent inside a crate.

The girl is going to be paid exactly the same, not one spirit stone more or less, so Lu Zhiyu rises, folds her hands in front of her and bows.

“I will follow the new orders”, she tells him.

The manager has already returned to his papers and merely nods without looking up, so Lu Zhiyu leaves the office and closes the door behind her with tremendous care.

And in the corridor, alone, she finally allows herself to let out all her breath.

No one asked her about Master Mu, no one mentioned the company’s seal, and as she walks toward the stairs, with considerably lighter steps than the ones that brought her here, she thinks about the sheet with the red seal left on that desk.

About how the Talisman Makers’ Guild of Sanjiang has just complained to the Tower of the Five Dragons that someone is taking their business.

And about how that someone is a girl to whom the Pavilion itself granted her certificate very recently, a girl who, on top of that, isn’t even fourteen yet.