A Jar of Salve

His hands healed in a day, and that became the first problem.

The shed stood empty: everyone was on shift. Shen Yao examined his hands in the strip of light falling through a gap. Where yesterday there had been dark meat, there now lay new skin, pink and thin, like the film on fresh milk. No crust, no scab. Servants don't heal like that. And those who do heal like that draw attention they don't need.

"Wrap them," Yang advised. "With rags, like everyone else. Let them think you're miserable."

"I am miserable."

"Then it won't take any effort."

Yao wrapped them. The rags smelled of the forge, and what was under them interested no one. For three days Yang didn't allow him anything that might add weight: no tree trunks, no fists against wood. The forge doesn't like fresh fuel while the last load is still burning, he said. Yao carried charcoal and raked out ash. His body hummed, dull and even, like a distant mill. The bruises on his forearms the forge didn't touch: Yang said those were trifles, dust, and it didn't spend itself on dust. What he was used to was pain that never let go, and the knack of not listening to it. Now there was no pain, and Yao didn't know what to do with the lightness.

On the fourth day a girl with a basket of herbs walked into the yard.

He hadn't seen her before, and he would have remembered. The pale green robe of the Alchemy Pavilion sat on her simply, her hair was tied back with a plain cord, and from the basket came a breath of bitter root and of something else, fresh and cold, like water from a well. Mint. For a moment the forge smoke drew back, as if giving way. Calm eyes, a tiny mole under the left eye.

Just then two apprentices were crossing the yard with an anvil slung on a pole, the forge hissed at their backs, and the midday heat stood like a wall. The girl stood in the middle of it all as if nothing were happening around her.

"Excuse me," she said to the master. "The Pavilion needs charcoal from the third forge. Who can carry it?"

The master didn't even turn his head. He nodded toward Yao:

"Him."

Yao lifted the heaviest basket. The girl set off, and he followed, counting out of habit. It was two hundred and forty-one steps to the Pavilion gate. The path ran past the storehouse, across the same yard where he hauled his basket every day, and at the twenty-first step from the storehouse, without looking down, she stepped around the puddle under the gutter that never dried. She barely changed her stride. That's how you step around a pothole you know.

Yao noted it the way a counting man notes everything: without conclusions. Someone else's feet knew his puddle.

And then she slowed down. Without looking back, without showing she was doing it on purpose, she simply shortened her stride exactly enough for him to keep up with his load. In this sect, no one did that. Not for him, not for anyone.

"I'm Liu Qinghe," she said. "A student. Second year."

"Shen Yao."

"I know."

He didn't ask how. Her gaze slid to his forearm, where the sleeve had ridden up from the basket. Bruises ran from wrist to elbow: fresh over old, yellow over purple.

"Who did this?"

"No one."

"No One has a heavy hand," she remarked dryly. But she didn't press.

At the gate Yao set the basket on the threshold. Qinghe lingered a moment, as if weighing something.

"Come by tomorrow. I have something for that." She glanced at his hands and walked off between the garden beds, and the mint hung in the air for a long time where she had passed.

He stood watching her go until the master barked at his back.

At noon old Lu stopped by his forge as if for a drink from the barrel, and drank for a long time, looking into the water.

"The Pavilion has its own servants," he said at last, without raising his head. "Two of them. They carry everything: water, charcoal, pots. The Pavilion girls don't come for charcoal themselves."

"She did."

"She did." Lu chewed the stem of his pipe. "No one's seen her here in a year. And a few days ago you got beaten, your rib cracked so loud I heard it all the way from the storeroom, and here she is already. I'm not asking anything. Seeing costs." At last he glanced at Yao, quickly, from under his brows. "But today you're carrying that basket like nothing's broken. Don't show it, kid. People don't see what is, they see what's convenient for them. Don't give them anything inconvenient."

He went off, limping, with an empty bucket. Yang said in his head:

"A smart old man. Pity smart old men are usually poor."

* * *

At night, in the darkness of the shed, Yao decided not to go.

"The girl was kind," said Yang. "Be kind in return. It costs nothing."

Everything costs something, he thought, without opening his lips: three people were snoring in the shed.

"You say that like a man who's been cheated six years running."

No one cheated me. Yao stared at the ceiling, where a spider was mending its thread. They beat me. That's honest: whoever beats you asks for nothing in return. But when someone gives you something, later they come to collect the debt. I don't want to owe anyone.

Yang was silent for a long time. Then he said, without mockery, but without pity either:

"Interesting. You take a blow with your whole body, but you can't take a jar of salve. You know what I think? That it's easier for you when things are taken from you than when you're given something. Because you're used to having things taken from you."

That's not true.

"Of course." Yang sighed so that something seemed to rustle in the rust. "Go, kid. You're nineteen, not ninety."

He went.

On the threshold he was stopped by a girl in the same green robe, with eyes that tallied up his brown clothes from collar to soles.

"Servants use the back door."

"He's here for me," came Qinghe's voice from inside. "Through this one."

The girl pressed her lips together until they went white and stepped aside. Yao walked past her with the feeling that it wouldn't be him who paid for that step.

The Alchemy Pavilion stood right under the mountain, and it smelled of everything at once: smoke, bitter roots, damp clay, wet leaves. Bunches of dried herbs hung from the ceiling. In the corner a cauldron bubbled, and afternoon light seeped lazily through the paper windows. Along the wall ran shelves of jars, each with a paper tag. Yao counted the top shelf: twelve jars, sealed with wax. The thirteenth place was empty. The wood around it was coated with dust, but where the jar had stood there was a pale circle, new, without a single speck yet.

Liu Qinghe sat at a low table grinding something in a mortar. Everything she did, she did with her right hand, lightly and surely. Her left lay on her knee, hidden in her sleeve, and Yao noted it the same way he noted everything: a habit, not a diagnosis. Seeing him, she slid a small jar across the wood.

"Bone salve. Not the best. The best is only for inner disciples, but this works."

"I can't pay."

"You carried my charcoal. We're even."

She said it so quickly that he understood: she had known he would refuse a gift, and had chosen her words in advance so he couldn't argue with them. It irritated him and made him want to laugh at the same time. He took the jar. Their fingers touched, and Qinghe quickly looked away.

"Show me your arm," she said, as if nothing had happened.

He hesitated. Then he rolled up his sleeve.

She said nothing. The bruises, which the day before yesterday had been black, had faded to an even yellow, and in two places only shadows were left.

"You heal fast," she said quietly.

Yao's stomach dropped. Fool. Should have worn a longer sleeve.

"I'm just lucky."

The pause turned out longer than he expected. The cauldron bubbled, glass clinked, a bee beat against the shutter. Qinghe was looking not at his arm but at his face, unhurriedly, the way doctors look at something that hasn't happened yet but certainly will. Then she gave a short nod, as if she'd written something down in an invisible log, and asked nothing more.

"You count," she said instead.

"What?"

"Your lips. You move them when you carry things. How many was it to the gate?"

He hadn't meant to tell her. But he did:

"Two hundred and forty-one."

"Two hundred and forty-two, with the threshold."

"The threshold doesn't count."

"It certainly does. Everyone trips on it."

She laughed, briefly, as if surprised at herself. It was a laugh without any sting at all.

"Come again," she added. "Just because."

Out in the yard he took the jar from his pocket and examined it. On the lid was the trace of a broken seal with a fine imprint of the Pavilion. Not the kind they use on things handed out to servants.

Not the best, he repeated to himself.

"She played it down," Yang spoke up. "That's not a lie. That's courtesy with room to spare. I know that resin: they don't put it in anything that goes to the forge."

And that empty space on the shelf?

"You noticed too. I thought you weren't looking."

I count.

"I know, kid. That's why I'm asking what it cost her."

Yao closed his fist around the jar. It was light, and yet carrying it was harder than carrying the basket.

* * *

Trouble came on Thursday, after the evening bell.

The sky was low and leaden and smelled of rain and wet stone. Yao was crossing the yard with a bucket when three shadows blocked his way. Zhou Kuan unhurriedly cracked his knuckles.

"I hear you've been hanging around the Alchemy Pavilion, trash."

"I carried charcoal."

"Don't talk back." Zhou Kuan said it almost gently, and Yao thought, He's taking it out on me for raising my head that morning. "Let's see if she still has a soft spot for a cripple with no teeth."

A fist caught his jaw.

"Don't hit back," Yang said in his head, more clearly than ever. "Don't dodge. And don't cover up. Feel."

Feel what?

"The difference."

Yao let the blows come. A fist to the stomach, a knee to the thigh, a boot that laid him out on the stones. The two hangers-on guffawed and joined in. But Zhou Kuan hit differently from them. The strength of the sixth layer lay on his fists like a dull film, and where it landed, the pain turned deep, thick and foreign. His ribs answered at once. Something in his left side cracked like a knot in wood.

"Dust," Yang breathed dryly. "That's dust. That too. Boot, belt, dust. But this…" Yao swallowed a scream, and his mouth filled with blood. "This one's a log. Writing it down."

Yao counted the blows. Yang counted the weight. It would have been funny if it hadn't hurt so much.

With every real blow the warmth in his bones flared brighter. The forge didn't simply take the pain, it seized it, as if starving. Something in his marrow clicked and twisted, smelting, and Yao felt every spot separately: ribs, thigh, jaw, wrist. Each burned in its own way, with its own curve and sound, like different hammer strokes on a single blank. Beating him was like forging. Only the blank was him.

The bucket rolled away and went still in a puddle.

"Enough," Zhou Kuan rasped. He was spent: the dull film on his fists had gone out halfway through. "Let's go."

The footsteps receded. A drop fell on his cheek, then a second. Yao pushed himself up on trembling arms.

"The second layer," said Yang. There was something like surprise in his voice, though the old man hastily hid it behind dryness. "And you're already stepping onto the third. Don't celebrate too soon. While the forge is smelting, new wounds will heal like everyone else's. You'll hurt honestly."

Yao wiped the blood from his lip and lifted his face to the sky, where the rain had finally broken. And he smiled, broadly, almost like a wolf.

If only they don't stop. If only they come again.

The thought frightened him. But he didn't renounce it, and that was what frightened him most.

"I see you've noticed for yourself what's happening to you," Yang said after a long pause, more slowly than usual. "Remember this fear, kid. You'll need it more than the forge. People who start to love being hit usually don't last long."

"I don't love them."

"I know. That's why I'm telling you."

The servants' shed stank of damp straw and wet boots. Someone was already asleep, someone was watching him from the corner, but no one dared to ask why broken Shen Yao still had all his teeth after a beating like that. He lay down, listening to the rain drum on the roof, and felt every bone in his body humming quietly, as if freshly forged.

* * *

In the morning he recognized her footsteps before he saw her: light, but stubborn.

Yao stood by the forge, and every movement answered with a dull ache in his left side, the way it would in an ordinary man. Qinghe set a covered bowl beside him. Inside, a thick broth with ginger and dried roots was steaming.

"For strength," she said.

"I'm fine."

"I saw you yesterday. From the second-floor gallery." Her voice was quiet. "You didn't hit back. You didn't scream. You didn't cover up. You were counting."

The forge crackled; beyond the wall someone was cursing a carter. Yao said nothing, and there was more honesty in that silence than in any "no."

"I won't ask what you are. Not today." Qinghe paused, choosing her words. "But you're not fine. And you don't have to pretend otherwise in front of me."

At his belt, in the rusty fragment, Yang sighed.

"Don't tell her anything yet," he muttered. "But I admit, she's a good girl."

Good. Yes, she certainly is.

Yao took the bowl. Its warmth passed through his palms, climbed up his arms and settled somewhere in his chest.

"Thank you, Qinghe."

He had said her name aloud for the first time. The name didn't burn his tongue, and that was strange.

"See, it didn't burn," Yang grumbled. "And all that fear."

Qinghe was already walking away, and he saw her press her palm to her cheek as she went.

All day the forge seemed different. The hammers pounded the same, the smoke scraped his throat the same, but again and again he glanced at the empty bowl, as if it might vanish if he looked away. At noon the master mentioned in passing that the servants from the Alchemy Pavilion had sent over a whole basket of sweet cakes, and asked if anyone knew who they were for. Yao kept quiet. But the cake that ended up in his hands was still warm, and he ate it slowly, breaking off a crumb at a time.