Chapter 10

The Broken Teacup

On the tenth day of attending at the clearing at dawn, Xiao Han came to know that the single strand going awry in his master's Seventh Form was growing a little thicker each day. On the first day he saw it, it had been like a thread of silk; by the fifth day it was the size of a cord; and by the tenth day it had grown so distinct that each time the warmth of his dantian reached that place it flinched as if pricked by a needle. His master's face was as calm as ever, and his stride as he went down the mountain after training was as straight as ever. The habit of qi flowing backward was settling into the body ahead of any pain, and so by the time the pain arrived it would already be too late.

Every night, in the corner below the rock, Xiao Han retraced that going awry. The Seventh Form was a move in which the sword thrusting forward halted for an instant, then wrapped around and returned in the opposite direction. In that single instant when the sword halted, the energy of the dantian ought to halt with it and then change direction, but his master's energy did not halt; it simply bent. He turned the channel without stopping the flowing water, and so a single strand of the current that could not turn back seeped off somewhere it should not.

Yet he could not report it to his master. The moment a servant spoke of his master's sword, of how the energy went and how the current ran, the question would come back of how he knew such things, and to that question there was no answer. If he said he had seen it in a dream, he would become a mad servant; if he said he had secretly learned it every night, he would become a servant driven out.

In that case there was only one thing he could do: at least until that habit hardened in the body, keep his master from unfolding the Seventh Form.

On the dawn of the eleventh day, Xiao Han climbed to the clearing earlier than usual. He carried a tray bearing the teapot, two teacups, and a towel. One teacup was the one always used, and the other was one he had taken out the evening before from the bottom of the kitchen cupboard. It was a cup with a crack in its rim that Auntie Zhang had set aside separately to throw away.

As he swept the pine needles off the rock and took his place in the corner below, he set the tray down nearer the rock than usual by half a foot, close to its edge.

When his master came up, recited the formula, and unfolded the First Form, Xiao Han held fast to the warmth of his dantian and followed his master's breath through the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Forms. The breath flowed evenly and the sword flowed like water, and as the Sixth Form drew to its end his master's left foot drew back half a step and the tip of the sword sank low; that was the opening stance of the Seventh Form.

It had to be right now, before the sword thrust, before the energy bent. To break it off in the middle of a move would, if anything, be dangerous. If flowing energy lost its way and scattered, that was the very threshold of qi deviation. To break it off, it had to be while the energy was still quiet, in the interval of steadying the breath for the next move, and that was the half-breath gap lying between the Sixth Form and the Seventh.

Xiao Han reached to pick up the tray and deliberately let his hand slip. When the tray struck the edge of the rock, the cracked teacup bounced up and fell onto the rock, and with a sharp crash split into three pieces. The teapot toppled and tea ran down the rock. In the stillness of the dawn mountain, the sound was louder than he had expected.

His master's sword halted in midair. While it stayed frozen in the opening stance of the Seventh Form, neither thrusting nor bending, his master's breath went in deeply once, then slowly came out. Faintly, the settling of the energy into the dantian was conveyed to Xiao Han's belly. There was no going awry; the channel had been closed before the water could turn.

Xiao Han knelt where he was and, with his forehead to the earth, pushed out the words he had prepared in advance.

"This lowly one has committed a crime deserving death. My hand slipped..."

There was no answer, and Xiao Han did not raise his head. His master was a man who, when angered, grew quieter instead, and the stillness that now covered the clearing was that very quiet.

After a long while came the sound of his master returning his sword to its scabbard. It was a presence one would hesitate even to call a sound, like silk brushing against silk.

"Han'er."

"Yes, Master."

"Did Steward Wang not tell you to make no sound during training?"

"He did."

"And yet."

"...Forgive me."

The master said no more but came down from the rock, passed before Xiao Han, and turned his steps to the mountain path; that day's training had ended at the Sixth Form. Until his master's footsteps vanished beyond the pine grove, Xiao Han did not move, his forehead to the ground.

Only after the footsteps had vanished entirely beyond the pine grove did he raise his head, and on the rock the three pieces of the teacup lay scattered, wet with tea. Xiao Han picked up the pieces one by one and wrapped them in the towel, cutting his fingertip on a sharp edge as he did; he rubbed the bead of blood off on his trousers and wiped the tea from the rock with his sleeve. On the way down the mountain he picked a spot deep in the pine grove and buried the pieces wrapped in the towel in the earth.

That afternoon Old Wang called Xiao Han; the old man was sitting on the veranda of the servants' quarters with his cane laid across his knees, and Xiao Han knelt before him.

"The master did not have much to say."

"..."

"What it means when the master does not have much to say, you know as well as I."

"I know."

The old man looked down at Xiao Han for a long while, then tapped the veranda once with the tip of his cane and brought up something he said he had heard from Auntie Zhang.

"About that broken teacup. Zhang says that a cracked cup she set aside at the bottom of the cupboard yesterday has gone missing."

Xiao Han's breath stopped, but the old man said nothing more; he rose leaning on his cane and walked toward the end of the veranda, and with his back turned, tossed off a single remark.

"A sound cup is costly. If you are going to break one, break a cracked one. That much you did well."

The sound of the old man's cane turned the corner of the servants' quarters and faded away. Xiao Han stayed kneeling before the veranda for a long while. He could not tell whether he had been scolded or praised, but what the old man had covered over for him was as plain as the filled-in earth in the corner of the clearing.

That night Xiao Han did not climb to the clearing but sat on the veranda of the servants' quarters and thought for a long time. Break a teacup once and it might pass as a mistake, but twice would draw suspicion, and three times would see him packing his bundle. The days on which a servant's mistakes could stop his master's sword were numbered. If within those days he could not bring his master to realize for himself the going awry in the Seventh Form, then his master coughing up blood on the rock in the summer two years hence would happen just as before. A servant could not teach his master the sword. But to set something his master would read for himself in a place his master's gaze would fall upon, that perhaps even a servant's hands could do. Xiao Han called to mind one by one the old books that stood on the shelves of his master's study, and only when the dawn cock crowed did he lie down.

The next day at dawn, Xiao Han climbed to the clearing again carrying a tray with only a single teacup on it, and set it down at a spot well away from the rock, the spot his master had designated with a gesture.

As though nothing had happened, his master stood upon the rock, recited the formula, and began again from the First Form, and when the Second through the Sixth Forms had flowed by no differently from the day before, his left foot drew back half a step and the tip of his sword sank low.

Xiao Han looked down at the tray, but there was only one teacup to break, and the rock was too far away. His master meant to finish today the training ruined yesterday.

The Seventh Form unfolded; the sword thrust forward, halted, and wrapped around to return in the opposite direction. At that place of turning, the single strand of the current going astray and seeping off pierced Xiao Han's dantian, thicker than it had been eleven days before.

Gripping the handle of the teapot so tightly that his palm hurt, Xiao Han thought about what he would have to break tomorrow.

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