Chapter_32_Turning_Pages

Before first light, Chen Jin moved the tables from the sluice down to the mouth of the stove shed and set them side by side.

The copy of the booklet—he would not have the clerk make it.

He had been up past midnight turning that booklet. Forty-seven lines, not one blank, first line to last, every stroke his own. On registration day, afraid of costing people work time, he had asked each name out loud and written it in for them. His handwriting, granary offcuts for paper, binding thread run by Xiaosui. A booklet like that, falling into Bi Chengzhang's eyes, came down to one phrase: Chen Jin's own unit.

"Registration day, the pen was in my hand." he told Wen Heng in the morning. "Forty-seven lines, one hand of writing. Anyone out to audit me would see it at a glance. It reads like my own unit."

"Then today they write it back." Wen Heng said.

The day hands came in batches. The carpenter arrived first; the pencil sat in his fist the way a chisel would, and the horizontals he drew came out straighter than anything he had planed. The fisherwoman's hands were all cracks; she rested after every three characters. The hunter boy traced his own name three times before he dared go on. The old mason's hands shook, and one line came out as two; Wen Heng didn't hurry him—till it stops trembling, she had said once. She let it shake. Somebody asked quietly what to do about a wrong stroke. Wen Heng didn't lift her head. "Strike it and write it again. You don't trace on a ledger."

Those who couldn't write pressed a thumbprint. When it was done, Wen Heng ran a fingertip over the back of the page. The weight of that one press had pushed a thin ridge up through the paper.

"You can forge a print." she said. "You can't forge the weight behind it."

She sat at the table's foot and read the two against each other, character by character—original line, copy line. Keep two ledgers and they tangle, she had said once. Today she revised herself. "Two ledgers have to agree word for word. The word that doesn't agree is the handle."

The copying was done by midday. Forty-seven lines, forty-seven hands, forty-seven thumbprints.

Xiaosui squatted at the table corner and watched for most of it. When the work broke up, she offered to run the binding thread the same as the original. Chen Jin shook his head. The copy would take no stitching—loose leaves threaded on a hemp cord.

"Why not?"

"Those two skipped stitches are yours." Chen Jin said. "Loose pages can't be made to pass for one another."

The booklet looked messy now. Turning it over, Chen Jin found the mess looked solid to him for the first time.

Noon. The old customs house.

Bi Chengzhang came for the copy, the silk-vested man behind him carrying an empty archive case, the two enforcement men as always. He spread the copy on the desk and went through it page by page, slowly, and closed it, and pressed his palm flat on the cover.

"Forty-seven lines, forty-seven different hands." he said. "Messy."

"Craft differs." Chen Jin said. "Writing follows the craft."

"Mm." You couldn't tell whether he believed it. He drew the blue-bound act from his folder and laid it at his hand without opening it. "Picking up the booklet was on the way. There's other business."

"Special Envoy of the Council." He gave his own door-plate one character at a time. "Chairman of the Provisional Control Committee. With those two plates stacked, today we attend to one matter—a collaboration inquiry."

The silk-vested man opened the archive case and read the schedule of inquiry, reading it smoothly, the way you read something you have read more than once.

First, grain. Forty-seven day hands fed from the Ember Guard's mess while the Guard draws committee rations—government grain flowing to a roster outside the establishment. That account gets reconciled.

Second, medicine. The medical station's records, copied to the committee within three days. The commanding general had his ribs opened two nights ago and stands here signing today. The medicine owes the wall an accounting.

Third, ordnance. The brass of the reloaded rounds, what the battery guns are cast from, and the pistol at the commanding general's hip—the day the fleet makes port, the armory's master ledger comes with it. Lay the number on the gun against the ledger, and the provenance will speak for itself.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

When the reading was done, the room sat still one breath.

"One more item. Not on the schedule." Bi Chengzhang said. "The night Broken-Tooth let the road open, grain came into the city. The carts were Ember Guard carts. The escort was Ember Guard. The gate pass carries the commanding general's signature. The road the bug opened—you walked it briskly."

Zhou Zhengting spoke up. "An inquiry needs grounds, a list of names, and a confrontation. Recite which article of procedure you are standing on, and I will recite it back."

"The grounds are that there are no grounds." Bi Chengzhang said it flat. "There is an extra-establishment unit in this city, eating grain nobody can account for, using medicine and guns nobody can account for, and checking its watch against a road the bug opened. Any one of the three, taken alone, kills no one. Laid together, they are called grounds."

He opened the blue-bound act and put his finger on Article Seven, tapped it twice.

"Article Seven has hung on the board for close to a month. Rations go out; orders don't get signed. Today the seal comes down." He raised his eyes. "Sign, and the Ember Guard is my First Direct Unit—my unit, my inquiry, whenever I like, and nobody stands in the way. Don't sign—" he let it hang "—and there is an armed band in this city with no master. The words 'no master' are grounds on their own."

The room went quiet.

One enforcement man shifted his weight from the left foot to the right, heel scraping half a sound off the floorboards, then stopped. The silk-vested man looked down into the case. Zhou Zhengting got the procedure half open, stopped, and closed it—for the first time that day, he could not find the article that could be read aloud.

The wall clock was still stopped, stopped at the day nobody wound it.

"Sign, or don't sign." Bi Chengzhang said. "Your book—I asked you at the barracks whether it would turn its page. Today the pages came due."

Chen Jin pulled the transfer receipt to him.

The pencil was in his pocket. He took it out and signed the receipt stroke by stroke—slowly. His hand still would not obey; trembling until it stopped was supposed to be a third-day matter, and today was only day two. When it was signed, he laid the pencil on the paper, point toward Bi Chengzhang—the way that steel pen had been laid at the barracks, point toward him.

Bi Chengzhang looked at the pencil stub for two breaths.

"Ink's expensive." he finished for him.

His own pen stayed in the breast pocket, not drawn.

"The book can turn its pages. The men don't." Chen Jin said. "Grain—Zhou Zhengting reconciles that. The day hands' work was priced out in grain: which drain got mended, which rounds got stacked, every entry has work standing behind it. To audit the grain, audit the work first. And the work—you never once came to look at it."

"The road—" He stood. "The road was the bug's to give. The night it gave it, nobody on the wall closed an eye. If you want a collaboration inquiry, go to the shoal first and count the bones it left, one by one. Count them all and still want your inquiry, and I'll sit for it to the end."

"The gun—" His hand pressed on his hip. "Has no number."

"No number?"

"No number." Chen Jin said. "A missing number is harder to explain than a wrong one. So when the fleet comes, I'll explain it all at once."

The panel in his pocket stayed dark. It doesn't keep these accounts. These are accounts he has to answer himself.

Bi Chengzhang didn't press. He looked like a man filing the answer away, and nodded. The copy went into the archive case and the silk-vested man closed the lid. Before the blue-bound act went back into the folder, Bi Chengzhang folded the corner of Article Seven's page.

"The medical records, three days." he said. "The day the fleet makes port—nine days from now—we settle the accounts face to face."

The wool coat went out the door and down the stairs, the footsteps fading one flight at a time.

Evening. Wen Heng came to the sluice.

"I'll do the copying." she said. "The fair copy goes to them. The original stays locked in my chest."

"They'll read the two against each other."

"Then let them read." She fished the little book from her pocket, found the page with the folded corner, let her fingertip rest on the fold one moment, and flattened it.

"If they ask about the medicine, say it's wound salve. I compounded it. The formula is in my head. They can copy the records. They can't copy the formula."

"No." Chen Jin said.

"I know it's no." Wen Heng wrote the first line onto the flattened page, small characters. "So from today, this account is kept twice. The one on your body—once in the book, once in my head. If the book is ever gone, the account survives."

The rules for the fair copy were set today too: stroke by stroke, no sparing the paper, no sparing the ink. Half a character off in the copy, and the discrepancy is a handle.

Chen Jin looked at the flattened fold and said nothing.

"How long has that corner been folded?" he asked at last.

"Since his first dose." Wen Heng put the little book away. "What isn't verified doesn't go into the fair copy."

Night. He took the original booklet out of the drawer and gave it to Song Laixi.

"With the mallet."

Song Laixi held the booklet and stood still one breath; then he understood. On the sluice there was a cabinet, once kept for kerosene. He emptied it, set the booklet inside, laid the signal mallet on top of the booklet, and shot the lock.

He threaded the key onto a hemp cord, knotted it, hung it around his neck, and tucked it inside his collar against the skin. Through the jacket he pressed it once more, pressed it flat.

"Whoever wants to turn these pages—" Song Laixi asked.

"Goes through the wall first."

"And the writing in the book?"

"Not one stroke gets touched." Chen Jin said. "They find something, they come to me."

Wind ran hard over the sluice. The mallet hung in its old place, the new-wound cloth on the grip pressed tight against the wood. The booklet sat in the cabinet. From now on, a government hand that wanted to turn these pages would answer to that lock first.

The book could turn its pages. The men did not.