Chapter 78

Cui Lu enjoyed the honor of being escorted up to the capital by a senior officer the Ministry of Justice sent in person. That day Quanzhang City was packed with people. The folk here were used to peace and quiet, and with such a great matter breaking out for the first time, they all came out with their whole families to watch. Zhuo Siheng used the chance to give the people a little lesson in the law, and had several law-office clerks take turns proclaiming along the route that officials too could be found guilty, and that if any house had a wrong or a complaint against an official, they need not fear that officials would shield one another, but should come and beat the great drum at the commandery yamen.

But the truth was that Quanzhang City was too small and too poor. The officials, rather than err, simply did nothing, and under He Mengchun they'd taken on a false "refinement," and hadn't the nerve to bully honest folk. The two or three households who came to the yamen to complain were mostly over neighbor-quarrels with some clerk, trifles blown up large. On such cases there was no counting on He Mengchun. After one fright on another he'd taken to his bed, and did nothing day after day but write lines more mournful than a wronged wife's, things like "long I lie tangled in sickness." Zhuo Siheng had to stand in for him himself.

With this dragging-out of real business, Zhuo Siheng's own plans were all thrown off. Luckily he was able enough to manage. He decided every matter great and small on his own, went every few days to call on He Mengchun and make a show of his fear and unease at holding all the power alone, and of his eager hope that the man would soon be well, and then went back to his post and went on holding the reins alone.

By the time he got Pan Guangling's dispatch, he had cleared off everything that had waited. The letter said all Zhuo Siheng had set him to do was done, that the crag kiln's finished pieces could only be checked and brought back when Zhuo Siheng came, and gave a rough date for the return. In short it was written with not the least regard for the form of a dispatch, the hand flying and sprawling, with no order to it at all.

Zhuo Siheng brought out his fullest patience and wrote him back a reply in the proper form of an official letter, and after a little thought, arranged for the two of them to meet first at the mountain station ten li east of Quanzhang.

He meant to see to one real piece of business on the way.

Lu Hui truly did not look like a station-master of the ninth rank, lowest grade.

His skin was paler even than Zhuo Siheng's, clean and clear almost like a girl of the inner chambers, gentle and quiet. His eyes too were clear and bright, but the stillness in them seemed hard to see through, not a simple innocence. Lu Hui was very young. Station couriers and masters were mostly older clerks, the post being light work, the pay thin but well suited to an easy, settled old age in government service. In all his years knocking about north and south Zhuo Siheng had never seen so young a station-master.

"That day, when Cui Lu's man broke the rules carrying his message, you kept your head in the danger and met the sudden turn without panic. That is rare." Zhuo Siheng sat in the seat of honor, and bade Lu Hui sit too and stand on no ceremony. "And with the wrongdoer setting the fire besides, the war-office guards told me afterward that it was all your quick handling that kept the station's goods and letters from any loss. So when Cui Lu is sentenced and Prefect He rewards merit, I'll send up your name for a commendation."

"My lord had it all arranged beforehand. I only did as I was told, and dare claim no credit." Lu Hui's voice was softer and gentler still, rather like Huiheng's.

Zhuo Siheng wondered how his sister's exam had gone, and how her health was at the turn of the season. He looked at Lu Hui's thin frame, and his voice softened a few degrees. "Have you some long-standing weakness, Station-master Lu? Do you suffer at the change of seasons?"

Lu Hui rose to thank him. "Thank you for your care, Vice-Prefect. I've been frail and sickly from a child. My duties are no trouble now. These last days the wrongdoer's fire left me choked on some smoke, and that is why I look poorly. I beg you not to worry."

Zhuo Siheng had looked at Lu Hui's household record. He had a mother living in a mountain village some ten li outside Quanzhang. In such a state he could surely have no other living at home, and the station-master's pay would barely keep the two of them. Their days must be very hard.

So he would surely not refuse the offer, though he might have his own reason for not agreeing at once.

After a moment's thought Zhuo Siheng said gently, "Prefect He and I have talked it over. He says a good many clerks who rose by trading on Cui Lu's power must all be cleared out, so as to leave no later trouble, which frees up a number of posts. Two the Ministry of Personnel will take back to allot by hereditary privilege, and one more, a ninth-rank document-keeper under the vice-prefect, we raise from within the commandery ourselves. I have you in mind for it. Would you be willing to come and work at the commandery yamen?"

Lu Hui did not raise his head, but kept the bow of thanks, and said softly, "I am unworthy of it, and dare not enter the yamen."

"The merit is truly yours. Where is the unworthiness?"

"My home is too far from Quanzhang City, and I have a mother there, and may not leave her at my own will."

"That is a real thing, and right of you. But to my mind, honoring one's parents has one more side to it, which is to respect a parent's wishes. You may go home and ask your mother what she thinks, and then come and give me your answer." Zhuo Siheng did not press him, and rose and walked toward the door, but stopped before he went out and turned back. "The document-keeper is only ninth rank, but being a post within the yamen, its pay is at least five times and more what you have now, enough to rent a place of your own in Quanzhang City to live apart. Before I came I read your household record, and learned you had sat the qualifying exam when young but never gone further, and your regular dispatches are written neat and correct, with not a single slip. What I most lack at my side is a man who knows documents and papers. Think it over well."

At the end of it he changed the "this official" that an officer uses of himself on business to "I."

Zhuo Siheng counted Lu Hui's yes as good as given. A man who could keep even a small matter in such good order, lowly clerk though he was, might well carry an aim not yet fallen.

He came out of the back hall of the station, and found the grass shelter where the horses had once been tethered and fed burnt to a patch of black-grey ground. The materials he'd sent over were all here, laid out in the yard, the wood and brick all good stock. These clerks worked fast now, Zhuo Siheng couldn't help marveling.

Just as he stood there lost in thought, hoofbeats came near from far off, quick enough to stamp holes in the ground. The last time Zhuo Siheng had heard so spirited a beat of hooves was at the autumn hunt on the Taicang Plain. He looked up, and far off saw Pan Guangling on a dead-leaf-yellow station horse, four hooves flying, racing for the station.

The man did everything in a storm. Zhuo Siheng waved to him from afar, and seeing him Pan Guangling got so eager he laid on two more strokes of the whip, and the horse all but flew to Zhuo Siheng's feet. Pan Guangling swung a leg down before it had fully stopped, and without so much as a bow said joyfully, "My lord! It's done!"

He was sweating all over, reeking of sweat long soured, his robe plainly not changed on the road or at the stations. Zhuo Siheng felt for him a little, and did not ask what was done, but took out a handkerchief and handed it to him. "I can see it's done from the grin on you. Since it's done I've nothing to fret over. Go and bathe first, and we'll talk after you've rested."

The larger mountain stations and the carriage-posts had places for the couriers or soldiers carrying dispatches to rest and lie down, and a kitchen with a stove for heating bath-water. Jinzhou was in Lingnan, and these stations were plain enough, but what should be there was there.

Zhuo Siheng turned to tell a courier to heat water, but Pan Guangling, wiping his sweat with one hand, caught him with the other, and could not wait to rest, and said crossbow-fast, "I rode two days just to tell my lord this good news! How can you, my lord? How can you not hear it first? Come inside with me! I must say it first! I'll not settle to anything otherwise!" And with no by-your-leave he pushed Zhuo Siheng toward the room, herding him like a cow or a sheep, with not a scrap of an official's bearing, so that Lu Hui, just come out of the room, stood stock-still at the sight.

Long used to Pan Guangling's ways, Zhuo Siheng was not angry at all. On the contrary, it had been long since he'd felt so clearly the gladness of being an elder brother. He even found a moment to turn back and say with a laugh to the staring Lu Hui, "Station-master Lu, do us the kindness of brewing a pot of rock tea, good and hot, to sweat him through. Thank you for your trouble." His voice shrank and faded as he went in.

It was nothing like a meeting of higher and lower, more like a family come together again. After a moment Lu Hui went to do as he was asked.

Pan Guangling, all in a rush, unslung the bundle from his back, but opened it with great care. It had cost him something, in a place like Jinzhou, to find such thick cloth and cotton wadding, wrapped layer on layer, and when the porcelain inside was bared at last, Zhuo Siheng's eyes fixed on it and would not move.

"This is... the finished piece?" He couldn't hide his excitement, and reached to lift the small porcelain bowl. The body of the ware was moist and fine, and the glaze outside was no longer the grey-yellow of mud, but a honey color like amber in both substance and hue.

"Wu Xing says it's a rock-honey color. The kiln has never fired a color so pale and clear!" Pan Guangling pointed out the rim of the piece to Zhuo Siheng. "From here, where it turns from thin to deep, is the loveliest part! Far finer than all those famous wares with their grand names in my father's study! Like something drizzled with honey!"

Zhuo Siheng hadn't thought his method would work at the first try. It was as if the many efforts of the works and of Pan Guangling before had piled up in him and at last broken into a change of kind, quantity turned to quality. He near lost his usual gravity and could have danced on the spot, but something struck him, and the smile stayed on his face while his voice turned careful. "Only one trial? Is the result steady? Does it want more trying?"

"I went to the works first and told Wu Xing the method, and let them have a free hand to try, and then I went to the Song tea gardens to carry my lord's message. Coming back, they'd fired two kiln-loads. One had too much vinegar, and came out this pale color. The other's glaze was thicker, but a deep honey color, and it was out of the kiln late and not yet fully dried, so I couldn't well bring it for my lord to see. These two loads can't yet prove the output will hold steady, but they show at least that our way works. When I left, Wu Xing was readying two more loads, and said he'd send word to me and my lord when there was a result." Pan Guangling reported it all in one breath, and let out a sigh at last, and only now, feeling the muggy heat, hurried to wipe his sweat. Halfway through, something else came to him. "Oh, and Song Yunhe said to thank my lord for the invitation. The moment his business at the gardens is done, he'll set out to call on you."

Two good pieces of news left Zhuo Siheng truly delighted. He looked closely at the kiln's new ware, and liked it the more he looked, and nodded with his eyes fixed on it. "You've done very well. Orderly, and you brought it all into line."

"It's all my lord's teaching!" Pan Guangling gave a sheepish laugh.

"Rarer still, you've learned to talk." Zhuo Siheng and Pan Guangling looked at each other and laughed, and both turned their eyes back to the new ware. Zhuo Siheng said with a smile, "With this amber-honey ware, one thing that weighed on us is settled at last."

At that Pan Guangling clapped a hand to his forehead. "Oh, and Wu Xing said there's a thing he must trouble me with." With that he lifted the hem of his official robe and knelt straight down, and bowed his head to the floor in full ceremony. "The thirty-seven kiln-men of the crag kiln works, and their hundred and fifty-two family members, thank Vice-Prefect Zhuo for his kindness!"

Zhuo Siheng reached without thinking to raise him, telling him to get up quickly and leave off these empty forms. He was no magistrate of the county, true, but doing these things was his own proper work. This time Pan Guangling was uncommonly stubborn, and pushed his hand away and said gravely, "A trust taken is a trust kept. I promised Wu Xing and the kiln-men, and I must do it, or I'll never face them again." And he knocked his head three times before he would, under Zhuo Siheng's pulling, stand straight.

Zhuo Siheng's chest and eyes were both hot. "If you hadn't laid the foundation before, and left me all those records, I'd never have thought of the method. This is the work of all of us together, not mine alone."

Pan Guangling turned grave, and answered in earnest, "There my lord is wrong. The kiln-men and I toiled in this place a full five years with nothing to show, and if my lord hadn't come, we'd likely have given up. My lord could have left it alone, like the vice-prefects before, and pushed it off onto the county, and they'd have done as they always did, let it lie, turned a blind eye, and the crag kiln might never have had its day. But my lord worked at it in person, thought out the method, puzzled over our old drafts and our failures, and in the end won this one new piece of ware. This merit of yours is one you can't by any modesty talk your way out of."

To decline again would be too much of a show, and Zhuo Siheng, his heart astir, full of the blood of a man who had truly got a real thing done, calmed himself a while before he said with a smile, "Enough of me. Have you heard what happened at Quanzhang these last days?"

"I have. Cui's been sent up to the capital to answer for it, hasn't he?" Pan Guangling's brows shot up, and he couldn't help cursing. "Serves him right!"

Zhuo Siheng gave a small smile, bent his head, and said as if idly the words that near sent Pan Guangling leaping into the air:

"Let the rest wait, but the commandery's business can't be neglected. The administrator's post has been empty since he left. Lord He and I have written to the Ministry of Personnel to put your name forward, and settled that you're to fill the administrator's place for the time."