Chapter 80

Since taking up the post, Pan Guangling had worn himself to the bone for fear of a slip that would make trouble for Zhuo Siheng. Zhuo Siheng comforted him. When an official left his post unlooked-for mid-term, he said, it was mostly the other local officials who filled the gap from below, and cases of a man standing in above his rank were not unheard of either. The administrator was only seventh rank, after all, and though it was Zhuo Siheng who put him forward, Pan Guangling's acting a rank up had the Ministry of Personnel's arrangement by the usual precedent, with the papers all in order. There was no need to be uneasy. Better to loose his gifts and work boldly.

So comforted, in the days before Zhuo Siheng set out for the crag kiln, Pan Guangling studied day and night the daily run of dispatches Zhuo Siheng had left him, and found at last the nerve to shoulder the charge for the first time, since He Mengchun was still laid up.

Zhuo Siheng rather thought Lord He might stay ill a while longer. Frightened half out of his wits as the man was, every time he made an effort to take on some part of his own prefect's duty, Zhuo Siheng would carry over the most tangled, finicky stack of papers, most of them things he'd already done but kept in their unfinished state on purpose, just to scare He Mengchun. The moment Lord He saw Zhuo Siheng come with a woeful face and such a heap of work, he beat a retreat and pleaded his health and the need to husband it. Madam He scolded him twice, but finding she rather liked having her husband home with her, told Zhuo Siheng to bear with it, and that if anyone dared not obey him, he was to say that for now he acted as prefect in full, and see who then dared step out of line.

No one would dare, Zhuo Siheng thought.

The more so now that he had Pan Guangling to help him, he had to loosen his grip a little and let the young man try, and not do everything himself.

So he set out for the crag kiln alone.

Going to the kiln this time, Zhuo Siheng's mood was wholly different. The success of the honey-ware gave him one more piece in his bargaining with Song Yunhe.

On the road, though, Zhuo Siheng changed his mind. With the turn things had taken, a bolder bargain had come to him, one that, if it worked, might suit his own place and Anhua Commandery's better than the first plan.

When he arrived, Wu Xing came out himself with a few of the old foremen to meet him, everyone in high spirits. Zhuo Siheng told them with a smile to stand on no ceremony. Seeing how eager each man was to share his gladness with him, he went first with Wu Xing to look at the dozen-odd batches of new ware fired in the last several firings.

"We've about got the heat in hand now, and the measure of the vinegar and the color it gives. Only, you can't use too little, or the color and the body go uneven again, the way they were." Wu Xing led Zhuo Siheng to the works storehouse to look at the honey-ware of the different batches. Zhuo Siheng found Wu Xing a man of great method. He had set the ware of each firing out on its own shelf, marked by date, with a note beside each of how the conditions and the measures differed. So the differences between the batches showed at a glance, and the best plan for firing in quantity could be worked out with half the effort.

Zhuo Siheng praised Wu Xing well pleased, and the man stroked his shining bald crown and grinned, bucked up no end. Zhuo Siheng told him not to be held back by his present means. He and Pan Guangling meant to add a few kilns to the works. First settle the fixed method and measures, and the rest would come right of itself. Wu Xing, delighted, made to bow again, and Zhuo Siheng stopped him, and told him to take more pains and see if he could fix the process soon.

That done, Zhuo Siheng asked, "Has anyone outside been let know of the honey-ware's success?"

"My lord said not to noise it about, so of course we haven't. Besides Officer Pan, Administrator Pan now, and me and three of the old foremen, no one knows. I set this storehouse apart and put a lock on it, and no one ordinarily gets in. They all think we're a batch of yamen porcelain short." Wu Xing clapped his chest in assurance.

"Good, that's good. One, the secret method must be held fast. Two, the time to make the new ware public hasn't come. We must strike all at once." Zhuo Siheng played at no mystery, and having said all that should be said, turned to other matters. "Song Yunhe has come?"

"Yesterday. We've the guest rooms ready, and a room set by for you two to talk in, nice and quiet, only not so large." Wu Xing seemed to have something more to say, but swallowed it, and only added, "Have you any other orders, my lord?"

"Go and rest, all of you. I've a bit of business to settle with him." Zhuo Siheng said it lightly, and turned and left the storehouse.

Only Wu Xing and one old foreman were left inside. The foreman's face was uneasy, and seeing Wu Xing look worried too, he came up and said, "This time my lord's brought neither young Lord Pan nor his usual men, and comes to see Song the Third alone. Could it be... could it be he means to sell our works to the Song house for some gain, that he's so secret about it?"

"Don't talk wild. His lordship is our savior. How would he do such a thing?" Wu Xing scolded.

"But there's never a bird up early that isn't after worms. An official who wears himself out firing new ware for us can't be without some aim of his own... I'm glad enough the works has a new way to live, but, boss, I'm afraid Lord Zhuo's a sharp one, and he'll have sold us and have us counting the silver for him. What then?"

"Not another word of that, from you or anyone. Keep your mouth shut. For his lordship to borrow our place to see a guest is our honor. Don't go blabbing every thought you have." Wu Xing's tone was hard. He scolded the man, then looked to the door, where Zhuo Siheng's back had long since passed from sight.

---

In the clean but cramped little hall, the tea was still steaming, and Song Yunhe too had only just come.

"Vice-Prefect Zhuo."

Song Yunhe was his old self, no word without a smile. He bowed to Zhuo Siheng and asked him to the seat of honor, and Zhuo Siheng, in his official robe today, took it, and when he'd settled in the upper seat said, "I've put you to the trouble of the journey. I hope it hasn't cost you your business?"

"All seen to, nothing lost. The more so as my lord has called me here for a greater piece of business, which I'd never miss."

It seemed Song Yunhe meant today to drop the courtesies and come straight to it. He could have said that of course he'd set aside every other thing and come in all respect to see Zhuo Siheng, but he said the plain truth so openly that Zhuo Siheng was almost unused to it.

This was not Song the Third's usual push-and-yield way of talking.

Plainly he too had come prepared.

"Whether the business is great or not is for you to say, Manager Song. I hold an office, but a thing both sides want willingly isn't a thing to force on a man." Zhuo Siheng spoke more plainly still. "Going to the tea gardens with your caravan opened my eyes. Such fine tea and such a garden, and it can't win an imperial grant. A real pity. You've had this at heart all along, Manager Song, and let it slip now and again in your talk. I didn't miss it."

"If my lord could fulfill this wish of three generations of my house, I'd repay you to my dying day!" Song Yunhe rose and bowed.

"No need for that, Manager Song. Before we talk of it, there's one thing I don't understand, so I'll ask, and hope you'll tell me true." Zhuo Siheng bent his head and smiled, and only went on when the man nodded. "You say three generations of the Song house have wished their gardens' rock tea made tribute tea. The Song have traded in Jiangnan three generations, and won both wealth and name. Northerner though I am, come lately here, I've long heard of you. So why, before this, with all your house's power, could you never find the right official to work the matter through?"

Song Yunhe's heart jumped. For no reason his nephew's warning came back to him, and he pressed it down again, and answered by his prepared line. "It shames me to say... We tried Lord He's door before, but the lord... he has no great liking for dealings with merchants."

"No, that's only your own generation. What of the two before? Since this has been your house's long heartache, how could you have made no other try?"

Zhuo Siheng finished and sat smiling quietly. His voice was not loud, nor did he weigh a man down with any air of threat or gravity, yet the slow, easy words drove at the vital spot harder and sharper than a loosed arrow. Seeing Song Yunhe silent, he did not force him to speak, but chose the right moment and said easily, "Manager Song, suppose I say it for you."

"After I left the tea gardens I went on to Jinzhou's one place of tribute tea, Dongmu Mountain in Chaoping Commandery." Zhuo Siheng rose and paced, speaking slow. "The white tea there has been tribute tea for centuries, famed through the dynasty. The emperor likes the cloud-and-mist tea Jiangzhou sends up, and our prefecture's white tea goes mostly to gifts. I've had it twice myself, a clear, light brew with a flavor of its own. But the white-tea gardens are not so clear and open as the tea they grow. Apart from the tribute gardens in the charge of the tribute-tea officer stationed there, the whole of Dongmu Mountain is scattered over with tea gardens, and more than a few muddling in among them at the foot besides. I went and looked at place after place, and every house kept its owner a close secret. Where is the house as frank and free with its tongue as yours, Manager Song? Though it's no wonder. One may guess it well enough. Once a tea is made tribute, its worth leaps, and its selling everywhere goes without saying, and the profit in that you, a trading man, know better than I. Those gardens, large and small and scattered, are surely opened and worked by houses with the power to get the land-deeds here. And I'd guess a good many of them are old acquaintances your house has called on."

Song Yunhe was sweating all over, and only kept silent, not daring a word of answer, unable even to nod, his neck and all above it carrying a thousand pounds' weight.

"No need to be so ill at ease. I know what I'm saying. Those houses are either rich local gentry, whose ties to the officials go without saying, with perhaps some retired official who held real power holding silver shares among them, and some are gardens the officials opened quietly for their own convenience. So to fence in their own gain and keep the worth of their own goods alone, to keep all Jinzhou to one single place of tribute tea, how would they agree to your house's plea?"

Song Yunhe had not thought a mere sixth-rank vice-prefect would dare speak so. Was this the nerve a man grew, trained at the emperor's side? He, a plain commoner, dared not say half a word more. He thought of his nephew Song Duan's words, that Zhuo Siheng, when he laid his cards down, would surely say the hard things first, that he knew the family's soft spot and would never spare it but strike at that one place, that his nephew had told him he must "say what had to be said one step ahead" and give the man no chance to hit the mark, and keep the lead firmly in his own hand, and steer the talk toward the crag kiln, the one opening for any gain. True, Zhuo Siheng had driven straight for the throat just as his nephew foresaw, but the matter was too fearful, and he dared not venture, and could only brazen it out. "I'll not deceive my lord. It's true that... the bitter inside of it is more than I can tell."

"So I've said it for you. There's nothing so dreadful in the saying." Zhuo Siheng smiled. "And I'm willing to help you, because I'm newly in office here with no tangle of interests of my own, and that is just what your house values in me, why you asked me here on purpose, meaning to give me some good turn and so trade to both sides' profit. Have I the right of it?"

A thing against the law of the land, said out by Zhuo Siheng light and smiling, carried a dreadful edge in it.

Now Song Yunhe was sorry he hadn't heeded his nephew. Song Duan was a wastrel, idle and not to be relied on, but quick in the head, and his notion might have had its reason. Was it too late now to mend the fold after the sheep were lost? Song Yunhe had been years in the market, and was quick of mind and quick to turn, and only said, "My lord has the right of it... I did have this in mind. My house is willing to help my lord, and whatever you may wish in Jiangnan Prefecture, we can talk of it. Only I beg your lordship, lend a hand with the tribute tea!"

"Even if I asked for a yearly share of your gardens' profit?"

Song Yunhe met Zhuo Siheng's eyes in surprise, unable to tell whether the words were jest or earnest. The mild look on Lord Zhuo's face had not changed a hair, yet the words had walked straight into forbidden ground.

The collusion of official and merchant.

..."Third Uncle, remember one word from your nephew. Whenever you hit a dead end, give ground to gain ground first, and never force through. This Vice-Prefect Zhuo is a soft blade with a steel core. While he cuts you feel nothing, but the moment he means to draw the knife back, our flesh is all hung on the barbs."...

The talk had gone just as Song Duan foresaw. With no better plan of his own, Song Yunhe steeled himself and did as his nephew had said.

Pull Zhuo Siheng down into the water with him: do or die. If he could bring off so great a matter, his word in the Song house would carry more weight, and his eldest brother would look higher on him. And since the family's proper roads were all blocked, there was nothing for it now but some out-of-the-way means.

"Our gardens' profit runs six parts to the common purse, one to me, and the other three shared out among all the hired hands, the tea farmers, the caravans. If my lord would raise us to the clouds, I'll take a half-part from mine and a half-part from the common purse, and make them one part to give my lord. How would that be?" Song Yunhe had kept the law all his life as a merchant, with a few small grey dealings with men of office, but nothing beyond the line. This was the first time he'd tried the edge of the dynasty's law.

His sweat had soaked through his underclothes.

Zhuo Siheng was a little surprised, but did not show it, and only mused a while, as if truly weighing how fair the split was and how much his own part would come to.

While Song Yunhe kept his head down and held on to his calm by the teeth, Zhuo Siheng spoke at last. "This one part can be set aside, but there's no need to give it to me. I've little use for silver, and it carries the risk of losing my head. Why do that? Better... let the silver stand as the crag kiln works buying a yearly share in your gardens."

He said it light and easy, and Song Yunhe was struck past speech. For all his years in trade, this was a scene he'd never met.

"My lord... you won't take it?"

"I daren't." Zhuo Siheng gave a frank, wry smile. "I've no wish to die just yet."

That was the plain truth.

"But the works... my lord, I don't mean to run the crag kiln down, but this place is like a dead tree. Sooner or later it'll be thrown off like a worn-out shoe. Who else but my house would place an order here now? To put the silver into the works..." Song Yunhe dared not say the rest: was it to hide the trail from watching eyes?

Zhuo Siheng took his meaning, and laughed aloud. "Don't read too much into it. When I say I daren't, I mean I daren't by any road at all. And I'll be straight with you, Manager Song. My ambition and my aim aren't to be bought with a share of your gardens. The road ahead is long yet, and I'd never leave a handle at the very place I set out from. You're a clever man, Manager Song, and surely have your own high aims, and in my place you'd do no differently. Am I right?"

With Zhuo Siheng's ability and gifts, Song Yunhe was sure past doubt that the man could do great, earth-shaking things, and anyone who doubted it could come and feel the sweat soaking his own back. But he could not go soft now, and turned the talk back to the crag kiln. "Since my lord puts it so, I believe you. But on the crag kiln I'll not give a step. If the works were thriving now, and my house joined strength to strength with it, the word 'profit' written as one, I'd have no reason to say no. But to carry the kiln along now, old and young, like a drag on our backs... that silver we meant to spend in any case, and, to speak plainly, I'd be easier giving it to my lord, for that at least leaves my hand and goes into your purse, and whether you buy a house or land with it, it's silver spent to some use. But into the works... that's throwing silver down a dry well, for nothing but the splash. What would we get for it?"

"Well said. But I've still one thing I don't follow. Since the crag kiln is so poor a thing, why has your garden kept ordering here all along?"

Zhuo Siheng's turn was sudden, but Song Yunhe was steady now, and answered with full confidence. "Jinzhou is all hills, closed on three sides, with only the one stretch of coast. To order porcelain from another prefecture, the cost would be past bearing, the more so as the rock tea must go by sea to the Jiangnan wharf and round again, all of it borne by my own fleet, so we can't well change at will... Though because the crag kiln's ware isn't fit for the work, once the tea reaches my shops north and south, to sell it on the spot we have to pack it into porcelain jars or lacquer boxes to each buyer's taste before we sell. There's no need to hide that from my lord. We do so for reasons of our own. But if the crag kiln truly grows no better, we'll have no choice but to use some other vessel to carry the tea out, and bear the cost ourselves."

"You won't." Zhuo Siheng seemed surer of it than Song Yunhe. "What you say is one reason the Song house chooses crag-kiln jars to pack and carry its rock tea, but not the chief one. The real reason is that the crag kiln's firing happens to suit the rock tea's carrying just as nothing else does, only you've never said it, so you press the price down time and again on the pretext of quality. The crag kiln has long had no trade but yours, and, hamstrung, dares not refuse. You must know, Manager Song, that other kilns' firing mostly leaves the base of the ware bare. The overturned-firing method, used mostly in the official kilns, patches the bare rim it leaves with gold or silver, which is both handsome and seals the base, but it comes dear. The crag kiln is neither. Its craftsmen dwelt a hundred years in old Yizhou, and what they learned was the way of the old Yizhou kilns, the wrapped-foot spur-firing: the body is set up on spurs at the base, so that the whole piece takes its glaze entire, with no bare body left... It's no secret, and of course you know it, and that craft is the true reason the Song tea picks the crag kiln."

He turned over the tea-cup on the table, and sure enough there were three tiny dents on the foot, hard to see, the marks the wrapped-foot spur-firing left. "When I first came to the gardens you told me the rock tea is roasted nine times to lock in its scent, so that the dry note holds the rich, deep fragrance of the rock tea till the moment the hot water pours over it and it leaps forth in a thick, mellow perfume... It stayed with me. So the rock tea must take no water and no damp on the road, or its flavor is badly hurt. The white tea's half-fresh, moist leaf has no such need. Its merchants and buyers can hire men to carry it out of the hills in baskets on their backs, so they needn't spend this extra silver. But you must. An ordinary ware, with its base left bare, for all the fineness of the body, has tiny pores from the firing. Jinzhou is so damp and hot, the mountain roads so rough, and then the sea, and the ten days or less to reach the Jiangnan wharf. Let the rock tea take damp in that time, and its flavor is gone, and the trade is dead. So it isn't that you stooped to pity the crag kiln. It's that you need the crag kiln, need the one sealed vessel only the crag kiln fires, to keep the whole garden alive!"

The room was cool and airy, yet Song Yunhe felt as if he stood under the summer sun at its height, unsteady from head to foot.

Zhuo Siheng knew it all. In trade, once the other side has your whole hand, there's no more bargaining, only the block.

He had held out till now, not willing to believe it, trusting that his few more years of salt had let him read this Vice-Prefect Zhuo. For all his nephew's warnings, he'd thought Song Duan, who'd never brought off a deal, didn't know the trade's inner workings, and let it go in one ear and out. Only now did he know himself beaten to the ground.

"So this one part set aside isn't silver down a well after all. Have I the right of it?" Zhuo Siheng turned the cup back over, bent his head, and smiled, as if to himself.

"My lord has laid my base bare, and there's nothing more I can say... Since that's so, I think a man who's spent such pains must want more than silver. Say the rest of it out, and let a beaten general hear it too." Only now did Song Yunhe know what it was to give ground to gain it.

"Good, then I'll say it." Zhuo Siheng did not mean to go round about. "I have four conditions. First, keep ordering from the crag kiln, only not at the beaten-down price of now, but at the old one."

This was no hard thing. These years it was they who'd pressed the price of crag-kiln ware to the floor, and they'd had the cheap of it long enough. Caught out now, to hand the silver back cost them nothing. They'd only earn a little less.

"Second, the Song caravans that run to Anhua Commandery must hire local men too, at least one in five."

Song Yunhe was not surprised at this either. To build up the trade with Anhua meant new caravans and new hands anyway, and local men who knew the ground were the fittest. Zhuo Siheng meant to open a road to earnings for some of Anhua's own people, to give them a way out into the wider world. With such a magistrate, it was the luck of the place. That one, even without all the talk before, he'd have thrown in as a sweetener to the tribute tea.

"Third, the school you mean to build is to be set along the Futing mountain road, so the children of our Anhua north slope can go to it too."

"That will not do!" Song Yunhe's face fell. "My lord, if it didn't touch the garden's children, I could well agree. But set the school up in the hills, and are our children to walk tens of li of mountain road in the dark every day to study? You grieve that Anhua's children have no schooling, but is the future of our own Yongming children, of the Song gardens' children, worth nothing? That I will never agree to!"

That Song Yunhe would say so showed Zhuo Siheng that, smooth merchant as he was, he did not lack for right feeling, truly a trader who could do good for a place. So he turned grave too, and laid out his whole thought plainly. "I'm an official of Anhua, but my eyes aren't on my own name and record alone. You and I walked the road from Futing to the gardens together. You'd first meant to build it along the way, so that the children of the hill villages and of the gardens could both be reached. Is that not so?"

"It is."

"But why was it never done? Because you found the distance left both sides' children ill-placed to study."

Song Yunhe's face eased a little, and he nodded, troubled.

"Build it only for the gardens' children, and you feel it wrong, because the hill villages too have Song post-stations and caravan hands. But move it to the south-slope villages, and you can't face the garden hands and tea farmers. I know your bind. The best way is to make the school reach more places by building it larger, into an academy that can take boarders. Like my own younger brother's Xiongya Academy. He could come and go from the capital easily enough, yet he still boards there ten days at a stretch and comes home on the break. Every proper academy now is so, one for the ease of arranging the teaching and keeping the pupils to it, two to house the children who come from afar. What truly spares a child the weary road is not nearness to this place or that, but whether the school can hold many needs at once. An academy in the Futing hills would bring the children of Anhua and Yongming, of the hill country, nearer their studies with less walking each day, while the children of the kiln and the gardens, and of our two commanderies round about, could board there to study. By your plan of setting it midway between gardens and villages, both sides would walk their miles every day, and no one would be well served. And when the academy makes its name, children may come even from other parts of Jinzhou. We build the academy as a far-sighted thing for the children, and to be far-sighted we must look further still."

In this talk, strong throughout, Zhuo Siheng had turned of a sudden to leading a man gently along.

Song Yunhe was in truth already won. He'd never hit on a good answer himself, and now Zhuo Siheng had solved it for him, a plan that could not be bettered. But there was another knot hidden in it.

"My lord makes it sound fine. A single school, how much silver can it cost? But an academy, is that silver truly all to fall on the Song house? My lord asks a lion's price. I'll not cry poverty at you, but in reason, I agreed to the commandery's school to ease the way for my own hands' and gardens' children. To take Anhua's into account as well, the silver to build an academy is no wind-blown gift to the Song house either."

"Does Manager Song remember that one part set aside for the crag kiln?" Zhuo Siheng said, slow and easy. "The silver to build the academy needn't come extra from you. A tenth of a year's tea profit is enough. To the world we say the gardens and the works built it together for the two commanderies. The academy's earnings are yours, the staff sent from our two commanderies, which saves you the pay of men drawn from your own side, and they'll be glad of it. And choosing men from two commanderies gives a wider field for the teachers, the best of the best, and the children are the ones who gain in the end."

So the academy became an investment, and more, a name and standing that would grow without end. Song Yunhe's abacus clicked in his head. That tenth was to be thrown out in any case. Now it stood for the saving of a whole school's building cost, and a tidy answer to his bind besides. What could be better?

Now there was full admiration in his look at Zhuo Siheng. The young man before him seemed to have reckoned everything through, and left no one a care behind.

But was that all? Think how he would, it came out that the Song house gained. The caravan matter was a sweetener to start with. A tenth of the profit for the tribute title, and the worth that title would make could only be many times what went in, a sure thing with no loss, and out of that tenth came the school's cost and a return besides. His house lost nothing anywhere. Was the deal not too easy?

No.

However mild and easy Zhuo Siheng's smile, Song Yunhe was all on his guard, and only said, "Has my lord any more conditions?"

"One last." Zhuo Siheng drew a hank of hemp from his sleeve. "The Song fleet reaches every water under heaven. I want your fleet to buy up cable made from the local sisal of Anhua, as one more profit in our common venture. How would that be?"

The offer left Song Yunhe stunned where he stood, and after a long while he burst out laughing, and shook his head with a sigh. "My lord, it's as well you're no merchant, or my house would have met its match, and who'd fall to whom there'd be no telling."

Zhuo Siheng only smiled, neither putting it off nor owning to it, and said, "That is all my conditions. If you can agree to them, I have a way to win the rock tea the name of tribute tea. So long as your house will work with me, this is a venture in which we both stand only to gain."

"If after all this I still doubted my lord's powers, I'd be no judge of men or the world." Song Yunhe drew a deep breath, smiling. "Then so be it! There's a great deal still to settle piece by piece, and I'll send word to my eldest brother. As for the tribute tea, my lord needn't hurry. Let's do it solid and sure together. I trust my lord, and I beg my lord to trust me."

"I believe you a man whose word is worth a thousand in gold, Manager Song. To keep so vast a business in such order, not a hair astray, takes more than ability alone." Zhuo Siheng let out a breath inwardly, while on the face of it he had still to seem all untroubled ease.

"Lord Zhuo, I've one thing more to ask."

"Ask freely."

Song Yunhe put it straight. "In most of what my lord and I have settled, the good is shared, my house does no losing trade, the commandery spends nothing extra, and the ones who gain most are the people of the two commanderies... But if my lord truly wished to wring more for Anhua, why not squeeze my house harder? You hold a good many of our soft spots, and even pressing us to the wall, I could at most haggle back a little silver, with no other room to turn, no way to touch you at all. Why would my lord not take that road?"

Zhuo Siheng was all sincerity now, and said in a clear voice, "I wish Anhua well, but Anhua well alone is no far-sighted thing. I'd have the commanderies and prefectures around it grow rich too, the people and the trade flowing between them, plenty reaching everywhere. One rich corner, cut off from the rest, has no root and no hinterland for all its flourishing, and is no plan for the long run. So in my whole design both places gain. The better the Song gardens do, the more Anhua may get from it, and as Anhua grows, the Song too may draw profit from that."

If he gave the Song house no fair gain, and only forced and frightened them with the tribute tea for a lever, then once the thing was done there'd likely be no sequel. That was no making of a shared, profitable road ahead, but the making of an enemy. But make a game both sides won, and the Song, standing to gain in all that followed, would gladly throw in a hundredfold, and the work and the earnings Anhua could draw from it would be without end.

Song Yunhe heard him out, drew his robe straight, and bowed low to Zhuo Siheng. "Today Song Yunhe learns at last how the word 'official' is written. Take this bow of high respect. From now on, whatever my lord charges me with, so long as it does good for a place, the Song house will not shirk it."

Zhuo Siheng raised him, and said with a laugh, "Were you thinking, even now, that you'd have to come here and cross swords with me at the risk of your neck?"

Song Yunhe, a little abashed, could only say, "My lord must laugh at me."

"Oh, and now that you and I have come to terms, I've a gift for you besides." Zhuo Siheng gave Song Yunhe no time to answer, but pushed the door open and made a courteous gesture of "after you." "Come with me, Manager Song."

With that he set off, and the bewildered Song Yunhe could only follow, to a storehouse, where Zhuo Siheng had Wu Xing called to open the door, then told them not to come in, and took only the wondering Song Yunhe inside.

Song Yunhe did not know what more Zhuo Siheng was about, but saw the sunlight slanting in gold through the narrow high windows near the roof, and in that gold a fine soft haze seemed to melt, and looking close, he found it was rows of porcelain of every shape and color on the shelves.

But... this was not like the crag kiln's ware...

Song Yunhe looked at Zhuo Siheng in surprise, and at his nod went up and took a tea-jar the size of two cupped palms, and could not help a sharp breath. There could be porcelain so rich and yet so soft! An amber glow held within, a moist, bright light breaking on the surface. This color and this substance, did they not fit the very brew of rock tea to perfection?

"My lord, this is..." Song Yunhe was lost for words. "What is this?"

Zhuo Siheng took up a small cup too, as if to drink along with him, and said freely, "The crag kiln's new ware. Don't fear, I'll not set the price up on you. But you must see, Manager Song, that a fine thing like this can't be ours alone. To send its name across the realm we need the Song house's reach. Pack rock tea in this, and the higher its worth climbs, the more comes into your hand. One more boat for us to ride together. This one's no condition of mine, mind, but a good beginning to our shared and winning trade. Make the new honey-ware's name ring first, and what comes after will go the smoother. My other request is in truth..."

"Say it, my lord!" Song Yunhe held the new ware, loath to set it down, and asked in all earnest.

"Who taught you this 'give ground to gain ground' art of bargaining with an official? Might I be introduced to the man?"