Chapter 7

The Guest

From the morning of the full-moon day, the kitchen of Qin Manor was a battlefield. Auntie Zhang rose at the fourth watch before dawn to dress the pork for the Dongpo pork; Xiao Fu's face was covered in soot from feeding firewood by turns into the three stoves; and the coachman Lao San went back and forth to the market inside the city walls twice since early morning, carting the ginger and star anise Auntie Zhang said she had forgotten. It was the day the mistress's younger cousin, the Strategist of the Martial Alliance, was to arrive. It happened every year, yet every year the servants of this house raised the same commotion.

The tasks that fell to Xiao Han were tidying the guest room and serving tea. Old Wang had called him early in the morning and told him so. The other servants took it to mean the old man favored Xiao Han because he had been working well of late. Hearing this, Xiao Han wondered for a moment what the old man meant to see by placing him at the guest's side, then let it go. If he had a head to spend on reckoning the old man's mind, he would do better to steep one more cup of tea with care.

The guest room was a small separate wing at the east end of the inner hall. When the window was opened it looked down on the pond, and at the pond's edge the peonies the Madam had planted with her own hands were just forming buds. Xiao Han wiped the dust from the window frame, took the bedding out to beat in the sun, and laid the brushes and ink neatly upon the desk. He had tidied this room in just this way in his former life too. It must have been more than thirty times. The guest was the same man every year, and every year, having looked around the room, he left behind the remark that it was neat and clean.

A little before the sun reached its height, the sound of hooves came from the direction of the main gate, and Xiao Han took up his broom and went out to the edge of the yard. The guest who reined in his horse before the gate was composed even in the saddle. He wore an indigo long robe with a plain sash, and the sword on his back was an ordinary one without a single ornament. His face, a few years short of forty, was fair and mild as a scholar's, and his retinue consisted of no more than two young swordsmen. The Strategist of the Martial Alliance held a post before which the great sects of the martial world bowed their heads, yet the way the man dismounted before the gate was no different from that of a scholar come to pay his respects at a distant relative's house.

Qin Tianming went out as far as the gate to greet him. Watching from the edge of the yard as the two men gripped each other's arms and laughed, Xiao Han stood bowed at the waist, broom held upright. His master's laughter was a rare thing, yet before this man alone that rare laughter flowed out easily.

"Elder brother, your beard has grown blacker in a year."

"And you have grown more talkative in a year."

Liu Qingsong laughed and turned his steps toward the Madam. Below the veranda he clasped her hands and exchanged a few words about the back garden of the Suzhou family home in their childhood. The two were cousins who had grown up together in the Liu family of Suzhou, and the tale that on the day Qin Tianming married the daughter of the Liu family, the groom and the bride's younger cousin had shared wine and become sworn brothers was something every servant of this house knew.

Just then Shuran came running out of the inner hall, and this time, perhaps fearing her mother's scolding, she was properly wearing her socks.

"Uncle!"

"Oh, it is Shuran. You have grown taller again in the meantime. Soon you will reach my shoulder."

"Not the shoulder yet. Up to your chest."

Liu Qingsong drew a small silk pouch from his sleeve and pressed it into Shuran's hand. Inside was a little pendant carved from jade in the shape of a sword, and at the sight of it Shuran's eyes sparkled like stars. It seemed this uncle knew the story of how her father would not teach her the sword.

Next it was the servants' turn, and Liu Qingsong walked slowly past the servants lined up in the yard, calling each by name. Auntie Zhang, I shall look forward to your Dongpo pork again this year. Lao San, your horse has put on weight. Steward Wang, your back is as sound as ever. Each time a name was called, the servant bowed a degree deeper, and as yet there was no one whose name had not been called.

Liu Qingsong's steps stopped before Xiao Han. His mild eyes traced Xiao Han's face for a moment.

"You are..."

It was the face of a man thinking for an instant. Then he smiled at once.

"Han'er, was it not? The boy who swept the inner courtyard last year. A lovely name."

Xiao Han bowed at the waist, and beneath his bowed back he felt sweat seeping into his palms.

This man had been so in his former life too. He came every year, and every year he called the servants by name without getting a single one wrong. The forty-five-year-old Xiao Han had thought it the virtue of one who wins people over in the martial world. The greater the man, the more surely he remembers the names of lesser men; Old Wang had said as much too. Yet hearing that voice with a fifteen-year-old body, that virtue swept coldly down his spine.

The Strategist of the Martial Alliance, of all under heaven, remembered the face and name of a servant boy in a house he saw once a year, down to what work he had done the year before.

Xiao Han did not hold on to that chill for long, and put it down to his fifteen-year-old body still being unfamiliar.

"Yes, Hero Liu. This one is called Xiao Han."

"Very well, Xiao Han. I shall be in your care."

The evening meal was laid in the main hall of the inner quarters. Dongpo pork, steamed fish, and stir-fried bamboo shoots were served, and Shaoxing yellow wine came out warmed. Xiao Han stood by the door of the hall and attended to the tea. When the cups set between the master and the guest were empty he filled them, and when they grew cold he replaced them.

Liu Qingsong spent most of the time with a folded fan held in his right hand. When he talked he would draw something in the air with the tip of the fan, and when he laughed he would hide his mouth with the fan. When Xiao Han held out a teacup, he left the hand holding the fan as it was and took the cup with his other hand. It was the movement of a man accustomed to receiving tea without breaking off his speech.

"Elder brother, word that Hangzhou has been unsettled of late has reached even the Alliance."

"Hardly so unsettled as that."

"I mean the Black Wind Gang. They say the gang master Niu Kui has taken on someone new. One who handles poison. I also heard that several herbalists within the city have closed their doors."

Xiao Han did not stop the hand holding the teapot. The tale he had heard at Auntie Zhang's hearth was coming out again from the mouth of the Strategist of the Martial Alliance.

Qin Tianming set down his cup. The sound of the cup meeting the table was a little heavier than usual.

"The Black Wind Gang is a matter for the city. There is the magistrate's office, and there is Constable Zhao."

"Has the magistrate's office ever brought the unorthodox sects to heel, elder brother? Constable Zhao is a good man, but he is lazy. Shall I send you a few men from the Alliance? It weighs on my mind too that the neighborhood of your house is unsettled."

"There is no need."

The master's reply was short, and Liu Qingsong, pressing no further, smiled and raised his cup.

"You are just as you always were, elder brother. That is why I am fond of you."

Listening to the conversation, Xiao Han nodded inwardly. In his former life too, his master had refused the Alliance's help, and three years later the Black Wind Gang's fire had swallowed this house. Had the Alliance's men been there then, would things have been different? Xiao Han had once wondered as much. Looking at it now, it would have been well if this affectionate sworn brother had urged him once more.

As the meal drew to a close, Liu Qingsong summoned an attendant to bring a box. It was a small box made of paulownia wood. He set it down before the Madam.

"Elder sister, this is incense made at the Suzhou family home. It is magnolia, the scent you loved as a child. When Uncle heard that your health was frail, he bade me be sure to deliver it to you. He says if you burn it at bedtime, your breathing will ease."

The Madam opened the box. Bundles of finely rolled incense sticks lay wrapped in silk. A faint floral scent spread through the hall. The Madam held the incense to the tip of her nose and closed her eyes.

"...It smells of the back garden at home. Thank you, Qingsong."

Shuran poked her head over her mother's shoulder to peer into the box, her nostrils flaring.

"Mother, just one for me."

"You sleep far too much as it is, so no."

Laughter spread through the hall. Qin Tianming laughed too. Amid that laughter, Xiao Han gathered up the empty teacups and placed them on a tray.

That night Xiao Han climbed to the clearing later than usual. It was after he had laid out the bedding in the guest room anew, filled with oil the lamps in the quarters where the attendant swordsmen lodged, and cleared away everything from the hall. The window of the separate wing stayed lit until late. The guest was a man who read late into the night.

When he stood in the corner below the rock and bent his knees, the warmth awoke deep in his belly. When he first felt it three days ago, it had been the size of a bean. Xiao Han rested his breath upon that warmth and recited the first line of the sword formula under his breath.

Let the qi sink to the dantian.

The warmth moved ever so slightly along with his breath, though three days ago it had not stirred at all.

Xiao Han laid out in his head the talk he had heard in the hall that evening. The Black Wind Gang, the new poison-using deputy, the herbalists who had closed their doors, the magistrate's office and lazy Constable Zhao, and on top of it all his master, who had refused the Alliance's help.

If the fire three years hence came from the Black Wind Gang as it had in his former life, he must learn first where and how that fire would be set. For that, a servant's ears alone were not enough. He needed a bridge leading outside the city walls, and a pretext that would let him loiter near the Black Wind Gang without arousing suspicion.

Lao San's cart came to mind. The coachman's words, that if he had business at the market he would give him a ride.

Xiao Han let out his breath. The warmth in his belly had grown a little larger than it had been three days ago.

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