Chapter 97

Yanjing kept a night curfew, but the streets weren't still. Ten thousand houses glowed with lamplight, and children laughed and scuffled and shouted, the sound thin and scattered, near and far. Two streets from the Ningshu Qin-Lodge, Old Zhang's soup shop had opened after curfew. Earlier that day Chen Dasheng had sent men to spend two strings of cash on two sets of mutton offal and mutton frames, and left them with Old Zhang to stew all day. They were waiting for the curfew watch to come on so they could eat together.

They'd planned it well, but the sky wouldn't oblige. After curfew the rain came down. Black clouds hid the moon, and the rain poured with endless thunder and lightning, until all Yanjing seemed to shake between heaven and earth.

Still, it didn't spoil the eating.

Old Zhang hung out two clear windproof lanterns and raised an oilcloth awning over his door. The Long Saber brothers sat beneath it, pulling the fragrant offal-meat out of the white broth and tearing off flatbread toasted at the charcoal's edge. They ate as much as they wanted, as freely as they wanted.

At this hour, a hot bowl of mutton soup in Yanjing was a feeling past telling. The soup was the same soup, but the taste was something else now.

The rain came down harder, and the Jiusi Hall turned out in full. Shadows in straw capes and bamboo hats darted out of every lane, slipping past the awning in quick bands, while Chen Dasheng and the rest held their big bowls, slurped their hot soup, and watched the show.

Now and then one of the shadows would shoot them a fierce look, and the teasing men under the awning would call out, "Here, have a bowl, hot and free, come on?"

Shameless, the lot of them.

Later a whole party passed by, and at last one of them stopped and came in under the awning. He took off his hat, and Chen Dasheng saw it was Xie Wuhao.

Chen Dasheng greeted him with a smile. "Oh, Warden Xie's out on business?"

Xie Wuhao hung his cape and hat aside, sniffed, breathed out a mouthful of damp air, and sighed. "Business, all right. We're the sort that eats bitterness and gives up our lives for it. Where's a good easy life like yours? Tss, look at you taking your ease."

He was jianghu-born and had a hearty temper, so without waiting to be asked he picked up a big bowl himself and handed it to Old Zhang. He glanced at the lantern over the door with the shop's surname on it and smiled. "Trouble you, Old Zhang. I've a taste for lamb-liver tonight, so find me plenty."

Chen Dasheng smiled and shifted over to give up half the bench. Xie Wuhao sat down with a great bowl of mutton soup, bent over it, slurped a mouthful of hot broth, and cried out, "Fine!"

The men laughed, and Yu Qingguan found a flatbread toasted golden on both sides and broke it up with his own hands into Xie Wuhao's soup. "More than fine. It's been stewed a whole day. I'm not boasting, but for soup, Old Zhang's is the truest in all Yanjing. The proper northern taste."

Xie Wuhao thanked him, bent his head, and shoveled down a few mouthfuls, pouring half a bowl of hot soup after them. When the heat had drawn a good sweat out of him, he lifted his head. "Grand! I used to like this kind of thing too, only it's a pity. That old soup cost ten wen a bowl, and the bowl was so shallow you couldn't fish out more than a few bits of liver. And I hate the mutton throat-meat they love to put in, so every time I'd leave half a bowl behind. I know better now. Pick a good day, snow or rain, come here and order up a whole pot, and let my brothers under me take their ease too. Mm, trouble you again, elder, another bowl, all liver this time."

Old Zhang came smiling out from behind the pot, took the bowl in both hands, and picked out half a bowl of lamb-liver for him, rinsing it in the broth as he said, "If the lords like it, you needn't come all the way to this old man's place. It's the same anywhere now. It's not like the old dynasty. Back then every trade had its own guild-quarter, and the soup-cooks were packed in together, and none dared cross the line. The shop-rent and the petty costs made the trade hard going, so who'd dare use good stock? You'd lose your capital. But now, with what breadth our Emperor allows, we can buy and sell freely in the market-streets. This house of mine has been in the family for generations, so there's no rent to pay, and since my losses are small, of course I put more into the taste. This old man does it this way, and so does everyone else."

He offered the soup up with both hands, then asked, a little carefully, "My lords, they've been saying in the lanes lately that our old Earl's put the rebels down clear to the west. When the realm's at peace, will there be no more curfew in our streets?"

Chen Dasheng and the rest came to eat here often, and Old Zhang had grown used to them, so his talk had turned a little bolder than it used to be.

Xie Wuhao kept bent over his soup, but Chen Dasheng thought a while and answered in earnest. "If the realm's at peace, there'll be no curfew. It's the same reasoning in any dynasty."

Great Liang was two years founded, and the court's ministers and the Emperor had followed the old road every founding dynasty takes: lightening taxes and levies, rewarding land-reclamation, developing farming, extending credit, and restricting the trade in people. Only this dynasty had added one more measure. It had begun collecting a commercial tax and encouraging trade and craft, which eased the farmers' load a great deal.

Great Liang's strength, with trade flowing free in every quarter, was recovering fast, and people who had money to spare naturally hoped great Yanjing would become a capital with no curfew at all.

Chen Dasheng's answer was half one way and half the other, but Old Zhang chose to believe only the good half. He stood by his pot and bowed toward the palace, then reached out and gave the quiet Xie Wuhao another half-ladle of liver.

Xie Wuhao and Chen Dasheng both had good appetites, and as if by some silent contest they ate five great bowls running, and four or five flatbreads besides.

Just as they were secretly matching each other bite for bite, Old Zhang asked again, carefully, out of nowhere. "My two lords, they say, they say a treacherous minister's turned up at court?"

Xie Wuhao had eaten right up to his throat, and at that he spat out a mouthful of soup. He coughed for a good while, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and asked, "Elder, where did you hear that?"

Old Zhang looked left and right, gritted his teeth, and said carefully, "I can see you lords are men of some standing too, so I'll just ask straight out. You've got kind faces and good hearts, and I'm no man of the world, so if I say something out of line, bear with me, my lords. Take it that this old man broke wind, and don't hold it against a country fool."

Chen Dasheng smiled and shook his head. "Not at all. Ask away, elder."

So Old Zhang said, carefully, "I won't hide it from you, my lords. These past few days all Yanjing's been saying that our She the Clear-Sky, Lord She, has been brought down by a treacherous minister at court, and all for speaking up on behalf of us common folk. They say his office is stripped, he's thrown in the great jail, and he's only waiting for the autumn assize to be beheaded! Heh, what a world. No sooner do we see a little daylight than the traitor-ministers start making trouble again. And Lord She's house has been honest three generations running. Isn't this wronging a good man?"

Xie Wuhao couldn't bear to listen anymore. He snorted a laugh, clapped Chen Dasheng's shoulder, and stood up. He went to the roadside, gathered up his hem, and rolled all the flatbread left at the stove-edge into it. Still not willing to stop, chewing on a piece of bread as if he could eat more yet, he said thickly, "Today, today, my thanks. Another day I'll stand you a return meal."

Chen Dasheng rose to see him off, smiling. "Warden Xie, take care out there. We've crossed hands with that Qing Buyi more than once. She's a fierce one."

Xie Wuhao swallowed his bread and looked out at the curtain of rain for a good while before he spoke. "Our Chief Warden says that if this age lets jianghu folk run free much longer, even the liveliest flame will have its day of being snuffed out. So let the slandering mouths bay all they like, praising us to our faces and tearing us down behind our backs. What of it? We of our kind have no regrets, and your foster-father has no regrets either. Isn't that how it's said, Lord Chen?"

Chen Dasheng nodded. "Just so. It's dangerous ahead, Warden Xie. Take care."

With that, Xie Wuhao rubbed his belly and went off slowly into the rain.

Chen Dasheng had no idea Xie Wuhao meant to compete with him. In truth, among Yanjing's young men of around the same age, there was Xie Wuhao himself, and Chang Lianfang, and Zheng Aman, and Li Jinggui, and Tang Jiuyuan, and Chen Dasheng besides. All of them were the young talents this age spoke well of.

Chen Dasheng never thought to measure himself against the others, but the others had that very thing in mind.

They ate a while longer, until a whole pot of old soup was scraped clean to the bottom. Chen Dasheng set down his bowl, looked at the empty pot with some regret, and said to Old Zhang, "Elder, don't fret over Master She. Master She has rendered merit to the court, and the Emperor and the ministers know it better than anyone.

"I hear the master wanted to do more for the people too, but the past is known to all the world. His body took a bad fall, and he can no longer bear the strain of daily court, so the Emperor took pity and let him step down. Mind you, my own news isn't sure either. But before long a reward will surely come down, and the truth will come out for all the world to see. Elder, you just keep your shop day by day. Do your good trade, and when you hear this kind of ill talk, let it go. No need to take it to heart..."

At that, Old Zhang was wholly eased at last, and he went out past the awning and bowed devoutly toward the palace-city once more.

This country truly couldn't bear another fall.

The old man came back, sat by his pot, and fed the fire, telling Chen Dasheng the fresh news of the streets. They were still talking merrily when they all saw a familiar white shape streak across the sky. Chen Dasheng sprang up and waved lightly, and Yu Qingguan and the rest rose at once. They put out the lanterns, wet down the stove-ash, quenched the coals, and in a few quick strokes cleared Old Zhang's trade-things into his house.

Yu Qingguan handed the old man a broken bit of silver as reward and hushed his frightened face. "Go in and sleep, elder. Whatever noise you hear, don't come out."

The sky rumbled with dull thunder, and the great door shut on Old Zhang's frightened face.

Yanjing, after all, was Yanjing. The moment that white shape had passed, the ten thousand lamps of the city went dark, clump by clump, as if by some agreement.

Chen Dasheng and the brothers put on their straw capes and bamboo hats and leapt up to the roofs too. From far off they could see the qin-lodge roof was already in a battle, sparks of struck metal flashing bright enough to catch the eye.

Guan Si'er couldn't sit still. He crouched beside Chen Dasheng and sighed. "Chief, honest truth, if we weren't the court's men, I'd sooner go help that old nun. Think of our dead brothers. A thousand cuts on Tan Shiyuan wouldn't ease it."

Ma Ergu gave him a shove and said dryly, "Mind your own show."

But Guan Si'er looked longingly at Chen Dasheng anyway. "Brother, say the seven of us went up there. How long could we hold out?"

Chen Dasheng didn't answer that directly. Instead he looked around and said, "Old hidden masters hold the center, the Jiusi Hall rings them, the Five-City Garrison covers the east, the patrol-censor the south, and the chiefs of the twenty-seven yamen the north. Our Emperor thinks a great deal of us. The whole west is left to the seven of us alone. Now you tell me, if Qing Buyi loses over there, how am I supposed to explain to her that our west is riddled through like a sieve..."

It was a knotty question, and for a while none of them spoke. They only watched the sparks fly in the distance and heard the ceaseless clash of arms, their hands fairly itching for it. How long had it been since they'd had a good clean fight?

Over there a voice, old and threatening, called out, "Qing Buyi! For your ancestors' sake, this old man is giving you a way to live. Yield and be bound... ah..."

A scream followed, and then the great crash of some luckless roof caving in.

Chen Dasheng drew a breath and suddenly smiled. "I'd like to stand that woman a drink."

And someone, no one could say who, said, "The nun-master's already left the world behind."

Yu Qingguan looked around and said, "I'll go ahead with Little Six and Little Seven and take a look. If there's a chance, I'll guide her out."

Chen Dasheng pulled the cape off his own back and handed it to him. "Act the moment you see a chance. None of them down there are good sorts. Your life is precious. Lose so much as a hair of it and your brother will grieve."

Yu Qingguan smiled, wrapped the second cape around himself, and melted into the rain with Guan Si'er and Hu Yougui.

They hadn't been gone long when a bright flash split the sky, and Chen Dasheng, up high, saw half of Yanjing in that single instant.

In the lightning, a crowd of old men, each armed, ringed Qing Buyi in a great circle. Qing Buyi sprang into the air, sword in hand, and warded them all off on a single breath.

Another half-circle of sparks followed.

A huge thunderclap rolled through the night sky, and then Yanjing drew its black veil shut again, and sheet after sheet of driving rain poured down.

Ma Ergu, having seen just that one scene, sighed. "Brother, say, we worked so hard puzzling out a little life-saving trick from their arts, and before that I scorned the jianghu folk as all flash and no substance. But after meeting that nun last year, hai, a man's got to see more of the world."

Tong Jintai smiled. "What's the use of talking like that? A man should know contentment. Look there." He pointed up. "It's thundering. Be ungrateful and mind Heaven doesn't strike you down. Just being alive is luck enough. You think everyone down there is some fierce master? I've chatted a bit with the Jiusi Hall folk. Jianghu names among that lot are past counting, but of the fiercest women worth naming in all Great Liang, it's South Qing and North Huai. South Qing is this nun. But our own Elm-Tree Lady of Baiquan Mountain, in Qingfeng, could jab someone like Qing Buyi dead with just two fingers. Believe it or not?"

"Don't believe it. Call your Elm-Tree Lady over and let her try!"

The two of them loved to cross each other. Say east, and the other had to say west.

Chen Dasheng sneezed and shivered.

Ma Ergu tsked and feigned scorn. "Hearing's false, seeing's true. Until you've watched them fight, your words are just so much wind."

The two had only just started their quarrel when the sky flashed again. Qing Buyi hung in the air, her white robe soaked through with bloodstains, and of those ringing her only four or five were left standing. But the fearful thing was that beyond that ring, the Jiusi Hall men stood packed as thick as thatch across the outer roofs.

The lightning passed, another crashing thunderclap followed, and the night went blacker still, the rain coming down in torrents.

Tong Jintai sniffed. "Gave me a fright!"

Chen Dasheng reached back, pulled off two bundles, and tossed them to his brothers. "Over you go. Act the moment you see a chance."

Ma Ergu and the rest took the bundles, nodded, and leapt off into the night. Chen Dasheng watched them go, then dropped down from the roof himself. From a spot he'd long kept hidden he fetched some tree-stumps of different heights, set them up on the roof, and dressed them one by one in the spare capes and hats, so that from far off it looked as though seven men still stood guard there.

In the thick of the fierce knot of fighting, a steel piercing-spike stood driven into Qing Buyi's right shoulder, and one old master had already died, his face savage, before Tan Shiyuan. Qing Buyi had no mind to live through this. She fought like someone throwing her life away, and the old masters, who were only fighting for pay, had been holding their strength in reserve. Not until Qing Buyi truly began killing without any regard for cost did every one of them put out his full force, and then it became mutual ruin.

Tan Shiyuan turned to run, but Qing Buyi, with her back to him, had already hemmed him into a corner. She lifted her hand and slapped the whole piercing-spike out of her own body and into his.

Tan Shiyuan screamed aloud. "Spare me! Spare me, sister-in-law! Sister-in-law! Think of my second brother, think how good you two once were. You came to my camp for your own ends, and every time I made as if I saw nothing. Sister-in-law, sister-in-law! My son, my son will have to call you mother now..."

Blood-mad, Qing Buyi smiled coldly. "My whole life has been lived as a joke. Where would I ever come by a son!"

She struck again, resolute, and the piercing-spike, with its finger-ring set at the middle, drove clean out of her own body and wholly into Tan Shiyuan's.

Tan Shiyuan cried out in endless pain, the spike buried in him. Not daring to roll, he fell to the ground and screamed up at the sky.

The sound tore through the night and the rain like a beast's grieving howl, and Qing Buyi, her vow kept this night, called out into the dark, "Wounded today, this nun will come again in a month..."

And someone shouted, no one could say who, "You've killed a man, and you think you can just leave?!"

The ceaseless clash of arms and flying sparks started up again. Qing Buyi, sword in one hand, traded a few strokes with the old masters still facing her, and then was struck clean off the roof by a mace.

A few more flashes of lightning lit the scene, and Xie Wuhao looked at the other wardens, sighed at last, and waved a hand. "Go. Clean up the field. Take them alive."

In an instant the Jiusi Hall men leapt toward the Qin She side, like black dumplings dropped one after another into a pot of dark soup.

Qing Buyi had never in her life taken such a beating. Two swords were buried in her back, a steel piercing-spike had been driven clean through her shoulder, a hair's width from the bone. She was soaked in blood and felt no pain at all, only the cold of the rainy night. The blood wouldn't stay in her. The storm washed it down to the ground, where it slowly gathered into a stream.

More and more men kept coming, and Qing Buyi, holding her shoulder, wandered into a small lane, her wits going dim. She thought: is this where her life ends, then?

After that she lost track of where she went, but all at once she felt a warmth at her hand. Someone threw a straw cape over her and said at her ear, "Nun, don't be afraid. I'm here to save you. Come with me..."

She'd meant to shake everyone off, go somewhere unpeopled, and die there in secret. Better to rot away early and quick, turn to ash and mud unseen, than shame Qin She or shame her ancestors.

But now, out of nowhere, someone was telling her to go?

Go where?

Who was this? Could it be men her father had sent?

With even a thread of a way to live, even the false Qing Buyi wouldn't resist. She let herself be led, running through the rainy night, all the way to a cellar. In the cellar was a hidden passage, and Qing Buyi crawled after the man ahead of her. After crawling some tens of zhang and climbing for a while, they pushed aside some straw and came out through a hole. Qing Buyi steadied herself, looked around, and started.

The man struck a flint and lit an oil-lamp. The place was a dim prison cell.

Qing Buyi set her sword to the man's throat, but he only laughed and turned to face her. "Nun, don't be afraid. Think about it. Is there any place in this world safer than the imperial guard's own jail?"

Qing Buyi looked at his face, caked in fresh mud still dripping wet, and knit her brows. She looked around and saw fresh straw laid in a corner of the cell, bedding spread on the straw, a water jug beside it, and a bundle of dry rations. Her weapon finally fell from her hand, and she leaned against the wall, holding her shoulder, and asked, "Who are you?"

The man wouldn't say who he was. Instead he reached into his coat and tossed her a bottle of wound-medicine. "Ask me and I still won't say. Nun, just rest well. These things were readied for you long ago. This place has sat empty a long while. The guard's twenty-eight yamen don't make arrests lightly anymore, and this cell has stayed locked for ages. Nun, heal your wounds and keep one ear open. Right now, in all Yanjing, I think this is the one place where a body can actually sleep."

Qing Buyi snorted. "You say so, and I'm supposed to believe it?"

The man laughed. "Believe it or not, you'll have to. Don't tell me the nun has some other road open to her?"

With that he went to a corner of the cell, kicked aside a clump of weeds, and pointed at two big bundles underneath. "Silver, a wig, changes of clothes, all here. Nun, come and go carefully. This humble one wishes you a quick mending, and another day back in the jianghu."

The man moved to drop into the hole, and had crawled only a few steps when he heard Qing Buyi ask behind him, "Are you Tan Shiyuan's enemy?"

But the man only said, "What's it to you who I am? This place belongs to the nun now."

The sound of his crawling faded into the distance, and Qing Buyi, alone and quiet at last, felt the pain catch up with her. She leaned against the wall, gasping, and all at once a bolt of blood shot from her mouth. When that had passed, she held up the medicine bottle and looked at it a while, then bit out the stopper with her teeth and tipped her head back to swallow a few pellets...

Below, the Jiusi Hall men darted everywhere, and Chen Dasheng stood quietly on the roof watching the show. Beside him the caped tree-stumps were swapped out one by one for real men, and when Guan Si'er came back and changed, he crouched on the roof and smiled at Chen Dasheng. "Brother, I've not disgraced the charge."

Chen Dasheng reached out and clasped his hand once in the rain. "Alive?"

Guan Si'er nodded. "Mm, fit to live ten thousand years."

"That's a turtle."

Chen Dasheng found that apt indeed. He drew a breath, drew his saber, and cut once through the curtain of rain. "Brothers, come on, let's go work for the boss."

With that the few of them dropped from the roof and went darting all over the rooftops with the Jiusi Hall men.

Only, a pity, they hadn't run far when a woman came rushing out of a courtyard, staggering, and fell to her knees however she landed, reaching to clasp Guan Si'er and wail.

But Guan Si'er, careless child that he was, had just changed his trousers without tying his belt tight, and the woman's grab pulled his trousers clean off, baring two rather white thighs.

Ge Sansu had thrown everything to the winds tonight. She'd broken past the women's block, run all the way to the back gate, flung it open, and rushed out for dear life, heedless of anything else. She threw herself at the first person she met, clasped him, and wailed, "Help, help, kind sir! My second uncle means to poison our whole house and take our wealth. Hic!"

The girl, seeing for the first time a man with two such white thighs, uh, and hair on them too, hiccuped, and through her hiccups stared dazed up at him. "Help! Hic!"

Guan Si'er drew a cold breath and thought to himself, I'm not clean anymore.