Chapter 46

The great snow had fallen all night, and toward dawn thinned to a fine snow, so the view cleared. Standing on the roof looking over Qingfeng, Qi Qian'er found it not so large as she'd imagined, but a great deal more troublesome.

It turned out the human world was split into under-the-eaves and up-on-the-roof. Under the eaves, the common run of people sought a way to live. Up on the roof, blade-flash and sword-glint cut a life short.

Her whole wish had been only this, a longing to do one thing to square with her conscience. Who'd have thought it would bring a steel blade down on her?

To be cut at with a sword, this she'd never once dared imagine, could never have dreamed. Battling Madam Qiao her whole life had been a matter of wits. Never mind a sword, not even a kitchen cleaver was ever drawn.

After the cold sweat, Qi Qian'er was uncommonly angry.

Was there any call for this?

The two, one tall, one short, now stood three rooftops off, staring hard at her.

As she turned, the short one came again, a saber chopping straight down at her head, a stale old martial-world move called Hacking Through the Brambles.

The move was stale, but attacks usually start so: whatever comes readiest to hand.

In that instant the saber swept the cold wind up, snow flew, and the short fellow sprang at her like a nimble grasshopper.

Qi Qian'er had never seen the like. She jumped in fright, didn't even think to dodge, and, seeing the blade come, instinctively threw herself into an iron-board bridge, a backbend.

Only, others do the iron-board bridge braced on both legs. She braced on one, the other cocked in the air. And that other leg seemed to have a mind of its own: the moment she'd ducked the overhead cut, it kicked out at the man with the saber.

Qi Qian'er had never fought in her life, so of course she didn't use her full strength. Kick done, she still stood dazed, thinking: I hit someone's child? I've come to blows with a man? In the Thirty-Six Forms, what's this kick called? Oh, Spot-the-Hare, Mind-the-Hound. The motion comes a touch late, but does the job. No, no, no! I struck a person? I kicked someone? But why, why would I kick him?

A back-court wife of two lives, and she'd truly come to blows, on a rooftop, no less.

The short fellow felt his chest struck as by a thousand-jin oil-hammer. He gave a muffled grunt, the saber flew from his hand, and he flew off too, with no notion of how he'd been kicked.

And she heard the tall one cry out, heartbroken: "Spare him, elder! Liuhao! Dodge, quick!!"

Too late. The man flew clean into the wall of a nearby empty mansion, punching a body-shaped hole in it.

Here, Qi Qian'er, her kick delivered, stood dumbstruck too. She just stood there, heard a rush of wind, put out a hand, and caught a falling saber?

A saber? A saber!!!

The tall one thought of the short one's five elder brothers, and felt his whole future gone to smoke.

He rushed over, and after great effort clawed the man back out of the wall. Seeing him clutch his chest and gasp, the tall one went weak in the legs and near fell.

Alive? Alive!

Guanyin Bodhisattva, all the gods of heaven be praised, the rice-bowl was saved!

The short fellow clutched his chest, ached a good while, then stood, soul all ashake, and was asked a string of questions by his chief: Are you all right? Nothing broken?

He'd frightened himself too. He felt himself over top to bottom, and at last drew from his breast a dented metal disc: "I, I'm, all right. My Fifth Brother's heart-guard mirror? No, no, there is trouble. I'm done for, chief, my brother will skin me alive."

But before he'd finished, the she-fiend across the way had sprung over again, that same saber in her hand.

The two shut their eyes at once, thinking: my life is forfeit!

Qi Qian'er's heart was in a flutter. Without a second thought she sprang before the two, carefully set the saber back in the short one's hand, and, seeing him shake too hard to grip it, kindly bound his hand to the hilt with his own sleeve.

Then she caught his arm and gave it a shake, and, seeing he had firm hold, let out a breath, sprang backward a good way, came down, stood in silence, and faced the two again.

She went on thinking: these two are wicked! Look, the saber's still in their hands, and looking closer, the blade's double-edged at the point, a killing thing! Was there any call for it? Fifty jin of elm-bark flour, no more! The long saber shone brighter for the snow, and its point was turned at her.

Thinking it over now, this was a fight out of nowhere. Could it be she'd blundered into some other trouble without knowing?

Remembering the smashed tiles on Doctor Cheng's roof, she shifted her feet without thinking, looked down, and saw only a pair of shallow footprints in the snow.

But at the sight of those prints, a subtle feeling rose at once in this back-court woman's heart. In her last life and this, that Scabby had never once looked closely at these feet of hers.

Not that they were ugly, fair and soft now, small, the nails still pink, quite pretty. But seen by a man across the way, that, that, better kill him and stop his mouth?

She tried hard to recall: had those two seen her feet just now? Her skirt today was fairly long. Surely, surely they hadn't?

Qi Qian'er sniffed, and under the cover of her skirt swept her feet side to side, over and over. That done, she looked back the way she'd come, and, seeing all silver-white, let out a breath.

After all, feet, so private a thing, seen by others, she'd still feel the shame of it.

Her whole mind was on her feet. The shame of showing them had shoved aside the threat of the blade.

She'd even, without thinking, flung to the ends of the earth the fact that she'd already traded a blow and driven off a foe in one move, as if it hadn't happened at all, and went on playing innocent in her heart.

A back-court woman's mind works in just such queer ways.

But the two runners across the way did not think so.

They too were only younger men of the martial world, and though they'd placed upper-middle in the hall's contests, no upper-upper man was so unfathomable as this woman across the way. She'd struck them with a single move, and that with her leg held back.

A strapping fellow of a hundred-odd jin, kicked seven or eight zhang through the air, driven right into a brick wall, and yet the force so uncannily judged that, pried out of the wall, he had not a scratch on him.

Had the two of them lost their minds just now? One waylaying and threatening, the other drawing straight in to cut.

At the last, wrung out, the short one sneezed into the wind, and Qi Qian'er's whole body sprang back at once, a full zhang up.

The two across the way at once brought their sabers up warily to guard, and retreated a dozen steps.

This won't do, either. There's so much to do at home. Scabby's insoles aren't even cut. The beasts aren't fed today. Qi Qian'er thought: it's my own carelessness, after all, what business had I walking the rooftops?

Eh? That's not right. What of it, that I walk the rooftops?

She spoke at last: "You two? Just now I think I heard you say, at the crack of dawn, I've been clambering brazenly over the roofs at your yamen gate? But, where is your yamen?"

The tall one swallowed, one hand on his saber, and waved the other behind him: "That, that way!"

So tall a man, and he talks in such a muddle?

Qi Qian'er was an earnest sort, and asked again: "Which way? Point it out clearly!"

The short one pointed behind him, every hope gone: "Just there. The lane behind the prefectural office."

At that Qi Qian'er was furious, did they take her for an out-of-towner?

She said loudly: "The lane behind the prefectural office is a whole ward from here! Two streets off! You take me for a stranger and bully the newcomer? I'm a local, I am! You're frightening me! What 'clambering over the roofs at your yamen gate', isn't that pure nonsense? This whole quarter is the old dynasty's prefectural school. There are no students in class now, and no one living here, what yamen of yours?"

The tall one worked to keep his dignity: "Even if it's not our yamen gate, then, then, then you're a martial-world person, and that puts you under our Jiusi Hall's charge, our charge."

That made even less sense. Qi Qian'er was sure she'd read her classics well and knew the law better, so she took him earnestly to task.

"You two? What are you talking about? What muddle-headed stuff! From ancient times to now, in every statute and rite, moral teaching comes first, and punishment is used with care after! The ancient Canon of Shun says, be sparing and merciful in punishment. The sages always said the state uses law only when it must, from necessity. Teaching first, punishment last, always! I don't know if Great Liang's new code has just laid down a law against treading on roofs.

"If it has, it's a petty matter of public order at most, so why this? And! Look through the histories of every dynasty: there's no law anywhere that a person crossing a roof at dawn is to be punished! And more, it's past the fifth watch, so the curfew doesn't apply. With no judicial officer to try and sentence me by law, on what grounds do you set a steel blade at my back without asking a single reason."

The woman across the way poured it all out in a torrent, and the two petty wardens of the Jiusi Hall listened, faces blank.

The short one said, voice trembling: "Chief?"

The tall one blanked a moment, then said: "Liuhao, this is bad! My elders used to say that before a bug-hag of the southern borderlands casts her gu-poison, she chants a spell first."

"Is, is that so? Then what, what's she chanting?"

"Listen close, it sounds like, yes! A punishment-bug, no mistake!"

"Then, then what do we do? Call, call for help?"

"Call whom? The branch warden? Oh! Your brother went into the capital yesterday, you, you forgot."

"I didn't forget, but we've, we've got to do something?"

"Rest easy, I've done it already!"

The tall one slowly backed two steps, and the short one glanced down, and saw his chief had drawn a bug on the ground with his foot.

Leaving a clue behind. The short one's heart went cold, and he said, wretched: "Brother, you run first. My wife, my wife's babe hasn't even seen its father."

"Good brother, I never knew you had such honor. If the ancestors show mercy today and we get out alive, we'll go home and burn the yellow paper, cut a cock's head, and offer sacrifice. She, she's coming."

The woman across the way had drifted before them of a sudden.

The short one gave a cry and turned to run, but his chief seized his collar and hissed, hateful and hurt: "Didn't you say I should run first!"

"Ch-chief, in my heart that's what I meant. It's, it's my legs, they ran on their own."

Qi Qian'er's way, always, was to win by brazening it out and taking the voice first. She'd rattled off a whole heap, and the two kept backing away, so, they were in the wrong.

She let out a breath, thinking: before my An'er is born, I must never become a woman who's broken the law. My An'er must be the treasured young master of an official's house. My An'er must attend the finest state-run school in all Qingfeng. There must not be the smallest stain on the family. Anyone who'd harm my An'er's future gets only one thing, a snap!

Hmph! These two runners are plainly the sort to bully by borrowed power, just like the wicked runners who used to come to the villages squeezing harsh taxes. Small woman I may be, but I'm a proper sixth-grade Lady.

So all the more must I reason with them, and set the world of a golden age to rights! She sprang over, and at once saw the bug the tall one had drawn on the ground.

Without thinking she asked: "What's this, then?"

The tall one, legs weak, braced on the short one's shoulder and stammered: "Don't, don't know! What's it a drawing of!"

Qi Qian'er sighed, helpless, and said, heavy: "Fine yamen runners! Neglecting your proper work! At the crack of dawn you draw a blade on someone over the roofs without asking a reason, and after, no self-reproach, but scratching pictures on the ground for play, is that how your superiors taught you? Speak! Your names, where you live, what grade of yamen, and who your chief is? Speak!"

The two, without a second thought, at once confessed it all.

The tall one, it turned out, was called Zhou Wujiu, the short one Xie Liuhao, both of the southern martial schools, and both petty wardens, eighth grade, at the Qingfeng city branch of the Jiusi Hall.

The Jiusi Hall was Great Liang's newly added enforcement office. Over matters of law it only assisted. What it truly governed was the affairs of the martial world, and the people of the martial world.

And the Jiusi Hall's ranks were unlike the court's: one Chief Warden, four Executive Wardens, eight Assistant Wardens, and, by the provincial-prefectural-county divisions, branch wardens in each place, each governing the petty wardens under him, and below the petty wardens, the sundry wardens.

Hearing them out, Qi Qian'er let out a breath. Was that all! They governed martial-world folk, and she wasn't under their charge.

So she gave a hmph: "What's this! I'm no martial-world person, why draw a blade on me?"

Tell that to the ghosts! Jumping so high, kicking so hard, denting a plate of dark iron that thick, and you're not martial-world?

Xie Liuhao, the root of the trouble, looked to his chief, but his chief's heart was broken, his hope gone, and he only stared dumbly at the falling snow, saying nothing, so Xie had to manage it himself.

"An, answering the elder, I, I just didn't think it through."

Qi Qian'er sighed deep: "Didn't think it through? You, you thieves in official caps, drawing seven or eight strings of the court's money a month, every copper of it the people's blood and sweat! Over there, the good man Qiu's house is clean out of grain. So many orphaned old and young are freezing and starving to death in this city, and you do nothing, and at dawn you take a broken blade to someone carrying grain to relieve the poor? You, you're truly no human beings!"

Too maddening. Qi Qian'er turned two circles on the roof, frightening the two petty wardens to their souls, each thinking of the reckoning that awaited him, their hearts sank deeper into despair.

But what they never expected was, cursing done, the woman stamped her foot and left.

Just left?

Xie Liuhao wiped a cold sweat, and, like a man reprieved, nudged Zhou Wujiu.

Zhou Wujiu wiped the beads off his brow, and after a long while cursed at Xie Liuhao: "What did you draw a blade on her for, out of nowhere! Are you a fool?"

Xie Liuhao, sheepish: "Chief, but just now, just now she didn't jump so high, did she?"

"And so you cut at her? You couldn't ask first?"

"Ask what?" Xie Liuhao muttered: "You've the nerve, you ask. Didn't you ask her nicely, oh, what gate, what school? What's your name? Whose martial line? And she said nothing at all, while we two spelled out our whole bottom. Back at the hall we'll never hold our heads up."

No one spoke a while, then Xie Liuhao took a punch in the back and heard: "You know nothing! Who saw it? Who knows? If that, that lady elder doesn't tell, and I don't tell, and you don't tell, who's to know?"

Xie Liuhao's eyes lit up. He turned to Zhou Wujiu for guidance: "Chief, not report it when we're back? It's all right?"

Zhou Wujiu gave a hmph, and, legs still weak, braced on his one little underling: "You know nothing! Let me ask you, is our Warden a mighty man?"

"That he is! In the martial world, the old martial world, I mean, few don't defer to our Warden. Meng of the south, Gu of the north, the two great talents, and that's no lie."

"Then let me ask you again: the northern school is weak now, and the Huguo Temple's taken in a heap of the fallen dynasty's remnants, why doesn't our Warden go arrest them?"

Xie Liuhao thought a moment, and said at last: "Because, because he'd go and not be able to beat them."

Zhou Wujiu clapped his foolish brother's shoulder, shouldered his saber, and sprang down off the roof.

Xie Liuhao followed close, asking: "Chief, where to?"

Zhou Wujiu said as he walked: "I've just remembered, I'm no martial-world man! The lady elder said it: we eat the people's fat and blood, so, let's go do a decent thing! The good man Qiu is relieving the orphaned old and young right now. I'll go and have a look."

Qi Qian'er never knew she'd done another good deed by accident. From that day, the Jiusi Hall's petty wardens kept watch in turns near Mr. Qiu's house, and the idle loafers who, in the last life, had so often come extorting there, never found their chance to come troubling again.

That too, in its way, helped save lives beyond counting.

As for the sixth-grade titled lady, having scolded the officers, she ran a good way off before she let out her breath, and stood at the foot of Baiquan Mountain wiping a secret sweat.

The truth was, she'd been afraid too. If it blew up big, an official could always find a pretext to make trouble for a person.

A lone woman running about at dawn, her voice wasn't so bold, at bottom.

Seeing no one following behind, Qi Qian'er set her heart at ease, turned, drew a breath, and went up Baiquan Mountain.

Another road of leaps and bounds, and she found that dell two or three li across. A look down showed it, sure enough, grown thick with sturdy old elms.

A pity, though, this year's spoiling of them would keep Mr. Qiu's houseful of old and young through the winter, but by spring these trees would likely not live.

So Qi Qian'er stood at the wood's edge, kowtowed and prayed to the mountain-god, and vowed: for the one elm she killed today, she would repay two next year.

Vow made, she came slowly to the elms, found a stout one, and reached out and clawed a great fistful of bark from its trunk.

At some point her hand had already become a claw.

In the frozen cold the bark didn't come cleanly. Qi Qian'er worked a good while, and felt her nails ache, and had stripped little enough.

Frozen fast?

This wouldn't do. Think how cleanly Eunuch Liao struck, how exactly Brother Meng's woodcut fell. Everything in the world has a weak point where it gives with a snap, but where was the weak point of this elm bark?

So this wife who knew nothing circled the elm a few times, and began again to take apart the things of the world by a housewife's reasoning.

She thought a good while, and thought of every spring, when the weather warms and the twigs bud, the easiest time to make a twig-whistle.

Then, with the tree in bud, you need only snap off a branch and give it a light twist by hand, and the whole bark twists free of the wood.

Twist? If so, worth a try. The join of wood and bark, there was its weak point.

As Qi Qian'er thought, so she dared do. She slowly put out her hands, laid her palms left and right on the trunk, and, the better to bear down, set herself in a martial-world man's proper deep horse-stance.

And so the standing-stance too came to her untaught, formed of itself.

She pushed the bark with her palms, bearing down slowly both sides, a twist left, a twist right. At first the elm stood unmoved, but as she used the short pushing-force she'd learned at the mill, drawing the qi up from the ground, sending it to both palms, pushing it from the heart of the palm into the join of wood and bark, pressing it evenly upward so, a little at a time, at last, the bark truly peeled whole from the main limb.

Freed it was, but the bark still stood out from the trunk, held by the twigs.

At this point Qi Qian'er wasn't daunted. She put out a hand, curled it into Eunuch Liao's claw, and clawed at one point of the bark.

There came a rrrip, and a whole sheet of elm bark came off the tree like a shed garment.

Chen Dasheng, off in Yanjing, of course didn't know that his wife was already racing, alone and far ahead, down a monster's road that no one in the world knew, could do, or could even imagine.

Just now he was minding his wife's charge: he must find a good teacher, and take up his books.

These days he'd asked the loafers near his home, and the best teacher in Yanjing, it seemed, lived in Scholar's Lane.

So early this morning Chen Dasheng and his brothers shouldered a few sacks of scarce grain, dried meat, live hens and ducks, everything good the house had, they brought it all, and, brimming with sincerity, set off for Scholar's Lane.

Scholar's Lane lay behind the old dynasty's state Imperial Academy, and at the mouth of the academy's back lane stood a row of twenty-odd towering stone arches.

As they passed beneath the arches with their grain, Guan Si'er, who'd never seen anything, asked: "Chief, what are all these? A whole row of them!"

From ahead came his most revered lead saber's flat, certain answer: "Chastity arches!!"

An old man leaning on a dragon-headed cane happened just then to pass by. Hearing it, he pitched face-first to the ground and could not, for a good while, get up.

Seeing the old gentleman fall, the seven honest boys of course rushed to help him.

The old gentleman struggled a few times, braced on Chen Dasheng's arm and rose, and just as he made to thank them, he saw the guard-dress Chen Dasheng and the rest wore: silver-crowned tall caps, arm-armor, imperially granted battling-beast robes over snow-proof high-soled ox-hide boots, and, most of all, the great sabers at their waists!

Trembling, he pointed a finger and said, bitterly: "You, you people, how is it you come only now?"

Chen Dasheng, at a loss, took it that the old man was displeased they'd been slow to help, and said, most obliging: "Forgive us, sir. Next time we'll be quicker."

The old gentleman had a great deal going on inside. He stood there wanting to hold himself straight and tall, but his legs were poor and he lurched about. Chen Dasheng quickly handed him his cane. He gave a scornful little snort, gazed into the cold wind, and felt himself a man of rare bone and mettle, an unbending pillar of the realm! He'd stored up a great deal, and felt that from the age of three, reciting the Song of Righteous Spirit, he had prepared for this very day.

When he'd recited a whole run of verse inwardly, he lightly pushed Chen Dasheng's hand away, first bent to pat the dust off himself, then straightened a cap that wasn't crooked, put his hands behind his back, and gave a hmph: "Hmph. You've come at last. This old man knew long ago the day would come. Hmph!"

Without his cane he began to sway again. Helpless, he sighed, and could only walk on leaning on it.

Chen Dasheng and his brothers looked at one another, baffled. They weren't fools. They could tell the old man had mistaken something.

They only smiled, helpless, you couldn't very well argue with a man that old, and, minding their goods, walked on into the back lane.

A few steps, and the old man ordered again: "Can't you see this old man's legs are slow? Fall in behind me, all of you!! Disgraceful. Aren't you afraid I'll run off?"

Then run off, why don't you? Aiya, the people of this street are strange!

He was so old that Chen Dasheng truly couldn't quibble, and could only follow.

But a few steps on, they saw a great gate ahead flung violently open, and a middle-aged man in a licentiate's robe shoved out to sprawl on the ground.

This one, fallen, not only dared not rise, he knelt where he was, drew a teacher's rod from his sleeve, raised it in both hands over his head, and cried aloud, weeping: "Master! Teacher!!"

From within the gate came flying gift-boxes of every kind, pastries scattering through the air, and before long a white-haired old man came out carrying a red-lacquered carrying-pole, and hurled it at the middle-aged man, cursing: "You disgrace of ten thousand years, you traitor, you dare show your face at my door? Get out this instant!!"

The middle-aged man, clutching the lump the pole had raised, cried in grief and protest: "Master, why so harsh! That Benighted Emperor was a muddled tyrant who couldn't tell loyal from false, who cut the fish-canal and harmed how many of the two-rivers' people, all the world curses him. Why is it that your student, having drunk a cup too many and idly written a few poems, is cast out from your gate."

The old teacher was furious past bearing, and before the man could finish, cursed: "Since you couldn't stomach him, you should not have taken his office! Having taken his office, you owed him the bond of minister to sovereign! And knowing his faults, did you ever warn him, as the old odes warn, that a scheming consort can bring a kingdom down? You did not! Did you urge him to govern with a will to order, to look widely and heed all sides? You did not! Did you ever memorialize to stop the cutting of the fish-canal, and caution your sovereign that driving the people past bearing breeds resentment below? You did not! But now that he's lost the realm, you turn about, because you once felt no shame at court serving a failing lord, and start writing mocking verses? A base creature like you dares call himself of Zhang Guanneng's gate? Get out of my sight."

The licentiate could bear no more, and went off with his face buried in his hands.

Chen Dasheng and the rest had watched a fine show, the man had said a great deal, strings and strings of it, and they'd not understood a single word!

Mm! Not understanding was as it should be. This was a man of great learning.

Before they could bring out their gifts and make ready to beg him for a teacher,

they heard the old man with the dragon-headed cane cough and say: "Brother Zhang, save your temper for tomorrow. Today this old man must bid you farewell!"

Zhang Guanneng started, then saw, not far from the gate, in the corner by the arches, a crowd standing, mm, a pack of hawks and hounds, and his old friend.

This, could the day truly have come at last? But, this was wrong! If they meant to arrest anyone, it should be him! He, at least, could still attend court. Lord Yuxi here was past seventy, what would the new emperor want with him?

Whatever the case, the thing was before his eyes, and however he envied it in his heart, Zhang Guanneng came down his own steps and hurried to the old man's side and clasped both his hands. A long moment, and just as Zhang made to speak, Lord Yuxi got in first: "Brother Zhang, do you recall, that year you and I were of one exam list, wearing the flower and parading the streets. This old man was the top graduate that year, and you the third."

That again? Would it never end?

Zhang Guanneng hurried to head him off: "Of course I remember, how spirited we were then, all the hall's brilliance gathered!"

Lord Yuxi's eyes shone, his face full of longing: "Ah, that year the heavens marshaled the ranks, the five stars all set and the Purple Star came forth. This old man was the first name called at the reading-out, and you, Brother Zhang, the third."

That again? Zhang Guanneng didn't care to hear it, and steadied Lord Yuxi: "Ha ha, you and I, this life of ours! Come, come, I'll go with you, Lord Yuxi, to bid the old friends farewell."

So the two old men set off on a round of door-knocking, and drew out more old men besides, and this pack of old men sang and raged by turns, and not a word they said was human speech.

Chen Dasheng followed the whole way, and when he lagged, the old man with the dragon-headed cane would be displeased, and call them to keep up.

At which Chen Dasheng grew less willing still. His whole intent had been to find a teacher of forty or fifty. This old man was far too old, with no more than a few days' teaching in him, what if he up and stretched his legs before long, what then?