Chapter 61

Inside the Second Prince's carriage all was quiet, and no one spoke. The whole party, as if by agreement, kept their eyes fixed on Chen Dasheng.

And Chen Dasheng had passed into a state of some mystery: muttering away as he reckoned up his little accounts, his two hands held a touch aloft, his head bowed and his eyes bright, pointing and figuring and pinching off the count like a fortune-teller.

The Second Prince bore it a good while, and couldn't, in the end, hold in. So he made a probing offer. "Feilian, are you short of silver? If it's not much, I could advance you ten or twenty thousand strings. More than that, and I'd have none left to give."

So he said. But it couldn't be so, surely!

Whoever might be short of silver, this one would not be.

Chen Dasheng was She Qingling's adopted son of his old age. And among the first great acts the Emperor did on ascending the throne last year was to return the She family the whole of its fortune.

The She were an old and great house of the fallen dynasty, else could the Zheng have married into them? Before their clan execution, how many branches must there have been to that house, how many collateral lines... And after the founding, the fallen dynasty's confiscation records still survived, so the Emperor had the Board of Revenue return it double, by the record's own inventory, and even the things that couldn't be got back were returned at double their worth, the best of them picked out of the fallen imperial house's own assets.

But was even that a great deal? In truth, no. It was known to all how ruthless Attendant She was. Even in the old dynasty, bearing his shame and biding his time, he'd made himself one of the two or three foremost eunuchs of the inner palace. And at the very height of it, he'd hollowed out the Chief of the Clan Registry outright, and thrust his hand into the workings of the Court of the Imperial Clan, and helped the Benighted Emperor offend his own kin down to the last man, so that, in the end, the Benighted Emperor stood utterly friendless and alone. He'd even meddled with the granted fields and yearly stipends of the maternal-kin houses, and in those days the yearly stipend the consorts' own families drew, and the quality of it, depended on his face too. His plundering at the last grew so harsh that the clansmen could not but murmur, and several houses even rose in revolt. And who presided over the confiscations then but She Qingling again? So, how much money do you suppose he had?

Though it was put about that most of the silver had gone to help the Emperor along, people are a suspicious, grudging lot, and they thought: even a tenth of it left would be a fearsome sum, and it could not be that he'd give none of it to the adopted son of his old age.

The Second Prince, for his part, felt for this uncle of his on the mother's side, and had meant to call at his door and warm the tie a little, the man being childless, after all, and rather to be pitied.

But who could have known it? She Qingling's temper was a queer one, and ever since the old dynasty ended and his own kin were gone, he'd lost all further ambition and grown only the more cross-grained and awkward. The man could rebuff even the old Dowager to her face, and what was a prince beside that?

Everyone knew that She Qingling might well, on his merits, have been made a prince, and no one would have thought it wrong. But the Zheng family were fools, and had angered him into settling down inside the palace and making it his whole business, day in and day out, to work against the Zheng.

A lone man with none of his own, he'd no use for silver either, and doted most on this son. How should he ever stint him?

Chen Dasheng, wool-gathering in the void, seemed not to have heard. So the Second Prince raised his voice and asked again, "Recorder Chen, are you short of silver to spend?"

Chen Dasheng started, and looked at Yang Zhen. "Ah? No, not short. Why does Your Highness ask?"

Not short, and muttering half an age over one string five hundred? The Second Prince looked at Meng Dingchen, puzzled, and Meng Dingchen only raised his brows and pointed at Chen Dasheng's fortune-teller hands.

"Oh! That!" Chen Dasheng raised a hand as realization broke over him. "It's like this. I take ten strings of salary silver a month now, and my wife gives me five hundred cash of pin money. But this while past, I took on two jobs as an imperial-guard drill instructor. So I reckoned it up, and I'd have twenty-five strings a month, and the money I sent home too. But~ but my wife seems to have given me the wrong pin money? If I've not miscounted, I ought to have one thousand two hundred and fifty cash a month... so how is it still just five hundred?"

The poor Gate Marquis, having said it, opened the curtain and looked out again, his whole face a study in perplexity.

He was melancholy past telling, and a good while later said, hard put to it, "How am I~ to tell my wife she's given me the wrong money? Not the one thousand two hundred and fifty, even one string would do... Ai!"

No one at his side made any answer. And Chen Dasheng, having looked his fill, let the curtain fall and turned back, to find the two across from him both with their cheeks puffed out, their eyes stretched wide, and staring at him in the greatest solemnity.

Seeing Chen Dasheng look at him, Meng Dingchen was embarrassed, and sniffed, and turned his face to one side.

Chen Dasheng looked himself over, mystified. He even patted the loose dust off his shirt, and then lifted his sleeve and gave it a sniff.

Nothing amiss. So he asked Meng Dingchen, all bewilderment, "Minister Meng? Is there something wrong with your servant?"

The Second Prince could bear no more. He flung up a sleeve to hide his face and burst out into a wild, snorting laugh, and Meng Dingchen, past all words, tipped his head back to look at the carriage roof, his chest heaving.

And the Sixth Prince at his side buried his face straight into Chen Dasheng's chest, laughing till he shook, and drooling without the least awareness of it.

What was there to laugh at? A few hundred cash it might be, but this summer, with the great floods, the early pears were only two cash apiece, and one string would buy two great baskets, enough for the brothers to gnaw at for seven or eight days.

"You~ how can you be such a grubby thing? This is a new shirt my wife's just made me, I put it on only this morning!"

Chen Dasheng, all disgust, took the Sixth Prince by the chin, tilted his head up, and drew the handkerchief from his sleeve to wipe him several times over, complaining as he wiped. "Your Highness is a prince too. How can you be so careless of yourself?"

At last he understood why, every time this fellow went to the Emperor, the Emperor would fall, all of a fit, into a bout of laughter.

It was no put on. Anyone could see that Chen Dasheng was genuinely troubled over his wife's giving him less pin money.

Finding not the least thing funny in it, Chen Dasheng only stared, grave and silent, at the ones across from him, until they grew abashed and put away their laughter.

The Second Prince, holding down his breath, said to Chen Dasheng, "I've heard them say before that Feilian fears his wife as a man fears a tiger..."

That, at least, he could follow now. And Chen Dasheng hurried to speak up for his wife. "Your Highness is wrong there. I don't fear my wife. I truly don't!"

Pah! Not believed!

Seeing the whole carriage disbelieve him, Chen Dasheng earnestly told off the count on his fingers for them: it wasn't that his wife was close-fisted. His income was truly small, and his wife worked bitter hard to keep the house... As the man who held up the household, his charge was a great one, and a heavy.

Take now, his house was being set to rights. And, having been round the shops with She Jixiang a few times, he'd come to understand prices through and through. The odds and ends of keeping a family fed were money at every turn. It looked like little, but a plateful came to a great account, and that was only the account in hand. And what of hereafter? When Granny turned eighty they must surely put on an opera, and there was the teacher's old age, and the coffin wood and the shroud, and which of them was not money?

The looks on their faces went from holding-back-laughter to astonishment, and then, slowly, to deep thought... Never had a man understood the small accounts of a household to a degree like this.

That he should reckon out the present accounts was not excessive. The excessive part was that, reckoning on to the end, he even worked in the imperial examination fees for eight sons...

The more Chen Dasheng reckoned, the heavier his heart grew, and at the last he said, his whole face weighed down. "...Your Highness! I have eight sons. And if they go up for the provincial examination, then the day before, the provincial academy must be paid a guarantor's bond, five strings each at the least, so that's forty strings! Pass, and well and good. But if they don't pass, then home they come, and there's the fee to attach them to a school. And my wife's said my sons must go to the very best in the capital! And the best in the capital is the Imperial Academy. I asked there, and just for the board, it's one string eight to two strings a month a head, and I have eight sons, so that's sixteen strings a month, and a hundred ninety-two strings a year, and the children won't be filled on it, so mustn't a man slip them a few strings more on the side... and besides..."

Hold on, you don't so much as have one son yet? What in the world are you reckoning?

No one spoke another word, and the whole carriage listened to Chen Dasheng, alone, reckoning on. And without meaning to, they'd every one of them turned their hands, one or two, into a fortune-teller's, and were murmuring the figures along under their breath, for Meng Dingchen now had a houseful of wives and concubines, and seven or eight sons and daughters between them.

He'd once been a monk, and once returned to the lay life, he'd rather failed to hold himself in.

"...Of brushes, the top grade runs to two strings two apiece. The low grade's cheap enough, a hundred cash will do, but the children are growing their bones, so mustn't good ware be used for them?"

They all nodded together, deeply of the same mind. They were, after all, the true-born sons of a court lord of the sixth grade, how should they use inferior brushes?

"At the old shops of the capital, top ink is five strings the jin... and the middling large paper's twenty cash a sheet, and the small paper ten cash a sheet... I have eight sons..."

"...A top paulownia zither may be worth a thousand in gold, but your servant's house is poor, so I must wrong the children and buy the ordinary, and even that's fifteen strings, and I have eight sons, so that's eight of them..."

Chen Dasheng was an honest man, and learned exactly as his wife had taught him. But where the others all had the knack of it, this fellow, the moment it came to figures, got his head in a knot and couldn't make the conversion. Later Qi Qian'er had found a thing out: put it to him as, you have two sons, and each buys a stick of candied haws, at three cash a stick, how much in all?, or take four sons selling candied haws for the example, and he'd have it in one lesson, and make the conversion right, all sweet-faced about it, and never miss by a hair.

And so this fellow's counting had come out twisted. And reckoning accounts with his teacher, or with the Emperor, he used the same I have eight sons method... And the teacher didn't laugh, and the Emperor didn't laugh... they were rather gratified by it, indeed.

Chen Dasheng reckoned the whole way, right up to the gate of the Nation-Protecting Temple. When the Second Prince and the Sixth Prince, all gravity, had been welcomed in by the assembled monks, and had walked a good stretch, the Sixth Prince of a sudden reached out and caught his imperial brother's hand, and said, on the verge of tears, "Brother, I'd best become a monk after all!"

In all his years, this was the first time a brother had laid a hand in his palm. Yang Zhen started, and stopped short on the instant, and felt that his brother's palm was all sweat, and clammy with it.

The master seeing the guests in glanced at the Sixth Prince out of the corner of his eye, and traded looks with the masters about him, and they all recited an Amitabha together.

The Second Prince was fairly moved to laughter, and asked him, "What nonsense have you got into your head now?"

But the Sixth Prince sighed, "One day in Heaven is a year in the world of men! I don't know when I may return to my immortal seat. And if the Lord of Heaven should forget me, if I should carelessly marry and set up a house, I'd have eight sons. And I'm a petty princeling at the most. Mother Xiao says I'll draw eight thousand dan a year at the outside. And I have eight sons, so it's but a thousand a year to each, no more than a Rongluo Grand Master's due! I've wronged the children..."

The monks' faces fell, and they recited the Buddha's name again.

The Second Prince looked at his brother in earnest a while, and then, of a sudden, laughed. And, fond, he crouched down, took out his handkerchief, and carefully wiped both his brother's damp, chubby hands. "And when did you come by eight sons?"

The Sixth Prince's head went blank. And it was a good while before joy spread over his face. "Why, that's right! Brother, I haven't got eight sons!" He pouted, and let his brother lead him on in. And when they'd walked a good stretch, he scratched at his brother's palm with a finger. "Brother..."

The Second Prince, smiling, looked down at him, patient as anything. "What is it?"

The Sixth Prince said to him, in dead earnest, "Chen Feilian~ is so frightening!"

The Second Prince was taken aback. And a good while later he nodded, in earnest too. "Yes."

Frightening he truly was... frightening in the oddest of ways.

The two princes had no sooner come than the rite began at once. And as the temple bell struck, the incense fires streamed out over all the mountain, until there was nothing left in all the mortal world but the scent of sandalwood. And as the sundry Buddha chants gathered by degrees into one chorused Amitabha, the sound of the name swelled louder and louder... and slowly it drew a man's wits and spirit in together...

Chen Dasheng watched but the half of the rite with the two princes. Over an hour went by, and within they seemed not yet to have made all ready to bear out Master Xuanshan. No one required him to watch it whole, so he quietly withdrew and went slowly out along the way he'd come. And fearing others might mark that one man was missing and take it for a slight, he had the brothers bear it and stand the whole rite out, dressed identically as they all were, one of them leaving mattered nothing...

But he'd stirred just once, and it roused the guest master over there. The guest monk lifted his head and threw him a glance, and quickly bowed it again and set to his devout chanting.

Not long before, this monk had very patiently expounded a great deal of doctrine to him. And Chen Dasheng had learned that an eminent monk's passing into nirvana is no grief to the monks, for they hold it firm that what Master Xuanshan had put off in dying was only his manifestation body, and not his dharma body. The manifestation body comes with the karma that calls it, to deliver all beings, and its karma spent, it goes...

But was it truly so? Chen Dasheng had his doubts of it.

Though the teacher too had said that "delivering all beings" meant that to the Buddha the people of the world are neither high nor low, that the Buddha looks on the worm and on the man alike, and will go to deliver them the same... And yet, in the bitter days he'd once known, he too had begged, and no one, and no god, had ever come to deliver him... But then again, he thought, the suffering folk of the world are many. Perhaps he was too small a thing, and the delivering had simply not reached to him.

A man cannot, after all, be without a conscience. And only a while back, his own house had held a rite at the Qingque Nunnery, and ferried the souls of their kin and their elders. And when the ferrying was done, Granny was as one born again, easy and free, and that was the good the Buddha's house did.

...As the chant grew ever more urgent, wave upon wave of it came beating in against Chen Dasheng's heart... and Chen Dasheng stirred once more. He threw a sidelong glance to a certain spot, and, seeing that a few there had vanished, drew back a little on his feet, and lightly shifted himself off and away.

Yu Qingguan and the rest filled in the gap, natural as could be, and kept the place packed full as before.

The guest monk recited the Buddha's name again, and gave a slight shake of his head.

The way back was choked with worshippers. Go down, and there was no path, people knelt everywhere... even some court ministers he half knew, in plain dress, had gathered in the corners at their devout chanting. There being no help for it, Chen Dasheng took to the rooftops. He'd only just climbed up when he saw several monks sitting in a corner of the roof, watching him quietly.

Seeing that he was only borrowing the way, they even pointed him a direction.

Rather fine monks, weren't they?

A thousand years the Nation-Protecting Temple had sheltered the realm, and safe-kept how many grain seeds, and arts of farming, and of weaving, and of medicine... This was a good thing, was it not? Then why did the Emperor not love the place? And why should Minister Meng, born of the South Nation-Protecting Temple, and the Second Prince too, why should they, of all people, want to strive with it for the higher ground?

The teacher had told him to look for himself, and so Chen Dasheng truly went and looked for himself. Along the rooftops he looked the whole way, and saw the half of the ministers of the Liang court.

At the foot of the mountain at last, he sprang down off the roof. And no sooner was he standing steady than a little eunuch of the two princes' train came up, set out a folding chair for him, and propped a great tung-oil umbrella. Chen Dasheng waved them off, and sat there searching about him, and thought as he searched: could it be the Emperor didn't like his own ministers coming to worship the Buddha? No, that surely wasn't the heart of it.

The teacher had said: Trust not the straight within the straight, and guard against the kind that is not kind. In the hills there are straight trees, in the world there are no straight men.

But the guest monk, just now, had said the Buddha's house speaks of karma... So where, then, lay the Emperor's karma with this place? If the Nation-Protecting Temple had nowhere offended the Emperor, and had done so much good, and with such a great matter as the abbot's passing into nirvana now at hand, then why would the Emperor not come?

Searching and searching, Chen Dasheng's eyes lit. And he thought: how the Emperor is angered I don't know, but my own karma, it seems, has come round to me.

Amitabha, O Buddha! I'm outside the temple gate, at least, you'll just take it you can't see.

Chen Dasheng waved a hand, and a managing eunuch came over and bowed his head to ask, "Little patriarch, what's your command? Are you thirsty, or would you find somewhere to close your eyes a while?"

Chen Dasheng shook his head. "Neither. That crowd of people over there, do you know them?"

He chinned toward the several tung-oil umbrellas near the temple gate.

All over the mountainside the devout worshippers knelt at their prayers. But there were some who stood apart from all the rest, a knot of youths gorgeously got up, who'd had fan canopies raised and low tables set and charcoal braziers lit, and were resting as though on a spring outing, eating sweetmeats and brewing their tea, and watching the others kneel by the by, and pointing and passing remarks, and every little while breaking into a roar of laughter.

And Wu Xiu sat, white in the face, in a corner with two sons of the Tan collateral branches, and hadn't so much as cadged himself a place at a table.

The eunuch threw a glance over, and answered at once, "Reporting to the little patriarch, I know them. It's the Cao family's collateral line: Consort Jing's two younger brothers, the elder called Cao De and the younger Cao Cheng, both holding fifth-grade sinecures now in the Board of War. Of the rest, some are of the Tan family, and there's the one of the old Wu house too... A bit too showy of themselves."

Chen Dasheng took the tea the eunuch offered, drank a mouthful, and said, as if idly, "If they're the consort's brothers, how is it they're never seen in the palace?"

The eunuch said with a light laugh, "The little patriarch doesn't know. Though Consort Jing is the Empress's sister, she's of a Cao collateral branch, and it was against the main branch's wish that she played a little trick and got herself into the palace. And the little patriarch knows our Empress's temper better than anyone. Why, she'll set herself against even the Emperor, let alone against a house like theirs! The Empress won't allow Consort Jing's kin into the palace, so all their house can do is put a scare into a few clueless fools out and about, and pick up scraps."

Chen Dasheng handed the cup back, and took the cloth from him to wipe his hands. "To rest outside the temple gate is no harm in itself, but it's the temple's great day, when all's said, and to carry on so is going too far. This old Wu house you spoke of, which old Wu house is that?"

Seeing that the little patriarch liked a bit of gossip, the eunuch bowed and made a fine show of his knowing.

Chen Dasheng nodded. A hereditary noble of the fallen dynasty was, of course, so much stinking dog dung in the new.

The eunuch went on, all animation, "This Wu Xiu is an eyeless one too. On the strength of his elder sister's connection he was mixing in the Tan army, but he fell foul of something or other, and the one of them who's turned monk set him to keeping the shrine of our Duke Wu Su. And then, no one knows how, the brat blundered again, and was beaten half to death by the old Grand Tutor. And the man's ruined besides, see now who'll give him the time of day!"

Chen Dasheng raised a brow and turned to ask, "Ruined?"

The eunuch put out his right hand and bent the right thumb in against his palm. "He's lost this thumb, which is as good as a cripple."

Chen Dasheng looked at his own right hand too, and took the thumb out of it, and worked the other four fingers up and down, and sure enough it was awkward. Without the thumb... more than half the hand's use was gone.

Seeing the little patriarch smile, the eunuch worked hard at his jeering. "He's a good-for-nothing. After his house came down there was some old family store left, and for the face of it, this fellow went about everywhere settling the bills to curry favor, and spent his days larking with the fops of Yanjing. Back then he'd prospects still, and on the Tan face they'd take him along to play... And now, look where he sits... Lucky for him his brother-in-law is Vice-Minister of the Court of the Imperial Stud these days, so he got himself a seventh-grade post as Commissioner of the Changying Storehouse under the Court of the Imperial Stud, and that's some income at least. But a pity about the thumb, he'll be no more than a seventh-grade to the end of his days. And, well, of late I hear the old Tan house is making a great to-do about changing out its clan wife! There's no telling what the old Wu house gave up to keep this scrap of face. Look how shabby he is! He's wearing the old cloth of the fallen dynasty, and the Cao house, low as it is, is new-risen for all that, would they trouble with the like of him~!"

Over there came another burst of laughter, and Wu Xiu made to laugh along, but was a half beat slow to it, and grew the more awkward for it. The two Tan collateral sons shot him a glare, took up their folding chairs and went to sit elsewhere, and left Wu Xiu hung out to dry entirely.

Chen Dasheng asked again, "The Changying Storehouse?"

The eunuch answered at once, "Yes. The Changying Storehouse, a little office, a shabby place that takes in the converted field-rent silver from the horse pastures under the Court of the Imperial Stud. There's some oil to be had off it, right enough, but not much, a few times a year, that's all."

Chen Dasheng was satisfied. He looked at the eunuch and asked, smiling, "You know a good deal. What's your name?"

The eunuch was overjoyed to hear it, and bowed at once. "Reporting to the little patriarch, I'm called Cai Youfu. I was a small manager at the Bingzi Storehouse before, and was only lately moved to wait on the Sixth Highness."

Chen Dasheng nodded. "Mm~ I've marked you. You may go down."

And at that this Cai Youfu went off in high delight. In the palace, Chen Dasheng's face was a very large one.

When there was no one about, Chen Dasheng fell to thinking, quiet. He'd once said to Chang Lianfang that if the day came when he could draw a hundred dan, he'd do to death the Tan family's hundred-dan man. And with three hundred dan, their three-hundred-dan man...

He lived well now, but the feud, that he would never dare forget, not to his dying day!

He had his letters now. And those military orders he'd long since thumbed to rags, he remembered them, every one. And of them, five pages had been handed him by Wu Xiu's own hand. And so~ Wu Xiu must die!

But... it could no longer be as he'd once thought it, to take up a knife and cut him down outright... He had a wife now, and a Granny, and a teacher, and six brothers besides to look after. A seventh-grade court officer, however worthless, however looked down upon, had a Tan family at his back, and the law of the court to shield him... How, then, was it to be done, that he might do Wu Xiu to death by law and by right?

And what had he, now? Besides a saber, and a body of killing skill, he'd read but the one book...

Chen Dasheng sat where he was, unstirring, and thought, still as he'd sit at the south gate, silent before the roaring stone lions. And in his heart he recited over the one book his teacher had taught him: Read with the mind upon it, for one word is worth a thousand in gold... and A long road proves a horse's strength, and long days show a man's heart, and what else? Do no deed that wrongs the conscience, and a knock at midnight will not fright you... and none of these sayings was of the least use just here...

Thinking and thinking, he felt a tap on his shoulder from behind. Chen Dasheng started up violently, and the other was startled too.

Zheng Aman looked at his own hand, and thought: I've landed one on him at last.

Seeing Chen Dasheng look at him, surprised, he grinned, pleased with himself. "What were you woolgathering about? If this were a killing field~ I'd have got you!"

Chen Dasheng rubbed his head, and laughed too, honest as ever. "The Buddha chant's rather fine to hear. I got taken up in it."

Zheng Aman couldn't abide him. His somewhat girlish fine brows knit, and he jeered, "Come now, Brother Feilian, didn't you slip out just as I did, sick to death of the monks droning their sutras?"

Zheng Aman was Dowager Zheng's grand-nephew, and in Dowager Zheng's eyes Chen Dasheng was a grandson too, so she had them call each other brother, to show the closeness. Any other man, with a foul temper like Zheng Aman's, he'd sooner die than call brother! But Chen Dasheng was an old saber, and a saber chief at that, and Zheng Aman admired him from the heart, and so, with never a struggle, called him brother, and freely.

And there was one more reason, not to be told to outsiders: Zheng Aman was on poor terms with his own family. Given up a hostage at seven or eight, he'd grown up on the battlefield at the Emperor's side by his own abilities. And the post he held now he'd won by his own blade and his own spear. Then, back in Yanjing, able at long last to go home, what did his family do but say hard, unkind things to him, thinking to bring him to heel, and now it was all "book learning and rites"? When he'd been hacked open on the battlefield, and his soul near flown out of him, why hadn't they had a word to say then?

Truly~ they overreached themselves!

And more: what his grandfather had done to those uncles and aunts of his on the mother's side sickened him to the heart. And so he'd set about needling people with every fancy trick he could. The Zheng prized plainness, so he must go in silks of five colors from head to foot, with silver on his lips and copper cash in every other word. The Zheng prized book learning and the rites, so he must haunt the pleasure houses and the courtesans' towers day in and day out, and now and again wave a saber about and play the coarse fellow. His grandfather forbade him the house, so he went into the palace and begged a mansion of the Emperor to live in on his own. And with no money in hand, he put out his hand to his great-aunt, Dowager Zheng...

But Zheng Aman only waved a hand. "No, don't sit down! You be off. You're a great eyesore!"

And Cai Youfu withdrew again, sheepish.

When he'd gone, Zheng Aman, pleased as anything, wriggled to and fro before Chen Dasheng. "Have a look, now, what's different about me today."

Chen Dasheng sighed. This brat had nothing to do all day long, and whenever he got some new thing he'd come and turn circles before him and have him guess at it, where he'd picked up so tiresome a habit there was no telling.

But what Chen Dasheng didn't know was that Zheng Aman had no gift for pleasing people. And this guess-the-price game was only a way of drawing near that he'd forced himself to hit upon. And, seeing that Chen Dasheng, who knew no ware from any other, guessed wrong day after day, he'd fairly got addicted to it.

A string of silvery white flashed on his arm in the sun. And Chen Dasheng pointed at his wrist. "Got more beads on you."

Zheng Aman was delighted at once. He plucked the string off his hand and held it up to Chen Dasheng. "Heh, guess what this is?"

Chen Dasheng bent to look close, and saw, cradled in his palm, a string of beads like so many drops of water, and he was surprised too. He'd never in his life seen the like.

Curious, he put out a finger and poked at it, eh? The very tip of it was cold to the touch? So he asked, "What is this thing?"

Zheng Aman was well pleased. "Got it only yesterday, it's called a string of white crystal! This one of mine is pure and without a flaw, the finest string in all Liang, new goods brought in by a foreign merchant, one of those that deal in Kunlun slaves. Now guess again, what's it worth?"

One look, and Chen Dasheng felt the thing was costly. So he screwed up his courage and guessed a great price. "A, a hundred strings!"

Zheng Aman laughed to hear it, and pursed his lips and rolled the beads about. "A hundred strings? The silver-thread cord of this string alone is worth that. I'd throw it in for nothing! A hundred strings? Three thousand strings!"

Chen Dasheng's jaw dropped. He stared at Zheng Aman's hand a good while before he said, "You, you've gone and hung six thousand mu of land on your body."

The two of them thought in tongues that did not tally, and after they'd gazed at each other a while, Chen Dasheng's eyes lit up.

He felt at the girdle in his sleeve, and there came back to him a line the teacher had taught: Would you win wealth and honor in this life? Then put in a deadly toil.

He smiled, and pointed off to the right, and said to Zheng Aman, "Aman, do your elder brother a favor, will you?"