Gao's Table

The bronze gong rolled over the Outer Sect at dawn, and its echo wandered among the roofs for a long time. The air was raw and smelled of smoke from the morning stoves, wet clay and boiled rice from the dining hall. Servants came out of the barracks yawning and huddling into their jackets, and a steward with a scroll was already standing on the platform.

"The annual examination will be held in ten days!" he bellowed across the whole yard. "Servants and candidates who have reached the first layer of Body Tempering will take the entrance examination! Those accepted become full outer disciples! Disciples who already wear the gray robe will take the ranking examination! One arena, one set of trials! Whoever fails returns to their duties or to their rank!"

The yard buzzed like a dug-up anthill. The servants whispered, hoping and afraid at once. A boy with two buckets forgot about the water, and it sloshed onto his feet.

Shen Yao stood at the back with his arms crossed. The jar of salve lay in his pocket, a small weight. He still hadn't opened it: his hand wouldn't rise to make use of someone else's generosity.

Ten days.

"That's a door," said Yang. "Walk in."

They won't let me register. The sect thinks I'm a cripple.

"Then make them check."

Across the yard Zhou Kuan was already telling his friends what place he'd take in the rankings, and he had grounds for his confidence. Seeing Yao, he drew a finger across his throat and grinned.

Yao didn't look away, but there was no challenge in his gaze either. He simply counted. Zhou Kuan had a gray robe, a cord with a jasper pendant, and the sixth layer. Yao had a brown robe and the second. The distance from one to the other was more than ten days. And there was only one place where that distance could be shortened: the arena.

The gong struck once more, and the servants scattered to their work.

* * *

Registration dragged on for three days, and the line to Steward Gao's table didn't get any shorter. Yao stood through it on the third, when the rain that had been gathering since morning finally fell and turned the yard to mush.

Steward Gao was fat, with a thin mustache and a face like a shut door. By his table it smelled of ink, sour sweat and dried-out sealing wax, and overhead a fly buzzed quietly, apparently bored here too. The line shuffled its feet and sighed gloomily.

"Name?"

"Shen Yao. Forge servant."

Gao glanced at the scroll of records and snorted.

"Broken meridians. Next."

"The examination rules say that any servant who has reached the first layer of Body Tempering may apply."

"And you, look at you, have the first layer." Gao's smile stretched across half his face. "Of course. Go home, kid. I won't waste ink on you."

Someone behind snorted, and the sound rolled down the line like a coin along the rows. Yao felt the looks on the back of his neck, small as needles. He needed to prove it, and he had nothing to prove it with: only a trained examiner could test a layer of Body Tempering, and not one of them would do it for him. The only record of him in this sect was the phrase "destroyed, hopeless," written by someone whose word weighed more than his life.

A wall again. Always a wall.

"Thank you, sir," he said, the way he'd said it for six years: briefly, politely, so that no one would have anything to get angry about. And he stepped back.

"What are you doing?" Yang asked, in the tone you use with a man who has stepped onto the edge of a roof.

He said: next.

"He said it the way you say 'yes, sir' every morning to anyone older than you! That's not a verdict, kid, that's a habit!"

Mine.

Yang fell silent. The silence was long and bitter, and Yao felt something in it he hadn't expected: not anger, but sorrow, like a man who has seen his own reflection in dirty water.

"Shen Yao."

He turned, though he already knew whose voice it was. At the edge of the table stood Liu Qinghe. Raindrops ran down her hair, her chin was slightly raised, and in the fingers of her right hand she held a small jade token. The seal of the Alchemy Pavilion cast a green gleam on the lacquer of the table.

"He does have the first layer," she said evenly.

"Miss Liu." Gao straightened, his mustache twitching. "This is a matter for registration…"

"I treated his injuries personally." Her voice trembled slightly, but the words landed clearly, one after another. "The body is healthy and tempered. The Pavilion vouches for him."

Gao's smile slid off his face. Yao watched Gao weigh whether it was worth angering the people whose pills the elders, the stewards and everyone who wanted to live to old age depended on. But a steward wouldn't be a steward if he gave it away for free.

"The guarantor is entered in the record," he said slowly. "If the candidate disgraces the Pavilion or wrecks the examination, the guarantor answers for it. Name, layer, date."

"Enter it."

Gao dipped his brush in the ink. Yao watched her name settle on the paper, a wet stripe, in a scribe's clear, even hand. Beneath it went his. The Pavilion's seal clicked against the lacquer.

"Registered," Gao grumbled. "Next."

Qinghe took back the token and left without looking at him. But her ears were burning pink, and her right hand, as she put the token away, didn't find her pocket on the first try.

Yang, who had been silent all this time, quietly cleared his throat.

"You see, kid," he said. "You owe her. Again."

Yao looked at her back, at the wet green robe dissolving into the rain between the barracks.

I know. Before, I ran from debts, because I thought they couldn't be repaid. Now I'm going to pay them.

"With what?"

I don't know. But with something she'll want to take.

Yang snorted, and Yao felt the little laugh through the rust.

* * *

They spent the remaining days on a strange kind of learning: how to seem weaker.

"The stockpile is burning down," Yang explained while Yao dragged logs for the forge out of the woods. "Right now you're stronger than you ought to be. Six years of weight are making themselves known, and brazenly, like an old debtor who's suddenly got rich. If a servant lifts what even disciples can't, people will start looking at him. And you're better off not being looked at."

"Then what should I do?"

"Seem middling. Lift and hold exactly as much as you need to get into the top fifty, and not a breath longer. Fight well, but not too well."

"I don't know how to limp when nothing hurts."

"I noticed. That's a problem." Yang's voice returned to its usual dryness. "Try looking at the ground. Everyone who's afraid looks at the ground."

Yao tried. Old Lu watched for a long time as he hobbled around the yard, then took his pipe out of his mouth.

"What, your leg fell asleep?"

"Yes."

"Which one?"

Yao opened his mouth and realized he hadn't picked one.

"Pick one," Lu advised. "Not even a loafer lets both legs go numb at once."

He had been taught one thing: to take it. No one had taught him to pretend.

The third layer came without fuss, in the middle of the night, when the forge was simply finishing off the old firewood. Yao woke from the silence in his bones and lay for a long time afraid to move, as if he might startle something fragile.

There was something else he'd been counting all these days and wouldn't have asked even Yang about: the jar of salve lay in his pocket, unopened. For three days he couldn't find anything to repay her with. On the fourth he began making a list: what he had. Charcoal that wasn't his. A brown robe. Counting. A broken sword. The list turned out short, and that was worse than any refusal.

* * *

On the eve of the examination Yao didn't sleep. He lay in the darkness of the shed molding faces out of the rafters' shadows, and they fell apart and came together again. His neighbors' snoring had grown even, like a smith's bellows.

"You're not asleep," said Yang. It wasn't a question.

Counting.

"What?"

Everything. The steps to the arena. How many benches there are. How many people will come. How many of them will see me stand.

Yang was silent for a while.

"Are you afraid of losing?"

Yao thought about it. The answer he found wasn't the one he'd expected.

No. I know how to lose, six years of practice. I'm afraid they'll see me.

"I see." There was no mockery at all in Yang's voice. "That's worse. When you lose, you can leave. Winning means staying in plain sight, with every eye on you, waiting to see what you'll do next."

And how was it for you?

"For me?" Yang snorted, as if crumbling a dry leaf between his fingers. "I don't know. My memory's in tatters, you've heard. All I recall is that nobody asked me whether I was ready. I recall that I would have said 'no.' And that it wouldn't have changed anything."

Somewhere in the corner a rat scurried by. Beyond the wall the night watchmen called to each other.

"Sleep," said Yang. "Tomorrow I'll count for both of us. All you have to do is not be off by one."

* * *

The first round was held in the great arena, under a pale morning sun. The sand was cold and damp and smelled of the sweat of hundreds of feet, and the stands buzzed like a hive before a storm. It smelled of wet iron: the posts awaiting the candidates were sweating in the morning steam.

Two hundred participants lined up before a row of black iron posts. Each towered over two men, weighed at least a thousand jin, and gave off cold even from a distance.

"Lift them!" the examiner shouted. "Hold for ten breaths! Whoever can't hold goes home!"

One by one the participants strained. Some lifted a post a palm off the ground and collapsed. Some roared and went red, the veins standing out on their necks like ropes. Zhou Kuan, crimson, lifted his overhead and held it for twelve breaths to loud cheers. It was the honest strength of the sixth layer, and Yao saw it, and so did the stands.

Then Shen Yao stepped out.

The stands tittered.

"The broken servant!"

"It'll crush him."

He laid his palms on the iron. The metal was rough and smelled of rust and blood, as if it had once already been broken against someone's bones.

"Fifteen," said Yang. "No more. I'm counting along with you."

The basket, Yao thought. Just the basket. Twenty steps.

He pulled the cold iron toward him.

The post rose slowly, evenly, without the slightest tremor. His arms straightened overhead, and his feet sank a finger's depth into the packed sand. In the stands someone stopped laughing mid-word.

"Ten breaths," the examiner wheezed. "Twelve… Fifteen…"

"Enough," said Yang. "Put it down."

Yao didn't put the post down, though his arm was already asking to.

He couldn't have explained why himself. It was just that at "fifteen" an emptiness opened in his head, and counting, the one thing that belonged to him alone, asked for the next number. Sixteen. He wanted to know where the end was.

"Kid."

A little more. Just to see.

Seventeen. Eighteen. At twenty something in his arms answered with a dull warmth, like a forge when charcoal is poured into it. At thirty the stands went silent. He could see the bottom bench, where Liu Qinghe stood with her palm pressed to her mouth. He could see Zhou Kuan, looking at him as if seeing his real face for the first time. He could see the examiner, who was counting in a whisper now, and then fell silent, swallowing.

At forty breaths his arms still weren't trembling, and that frightened him more than it pleased him. He lowered the post slowly, carefully, as if setting a small child down on the ground, and stepped back. His shoulders hummed, but the hum was pleasant, like after good work.

"Forty breaths," said the examiner. "You can… you may put it down, young man."

I already have.

"I said fifteen," Yang reminded him dryly. "You wanted to know. Knowledge, kid, is the most expensive thing in this sect, especially when others find out about you."

Yao didn't answer. The count in his head stood at forty, and he had nothing to argue against it with.

* * *

The second round, toward evening, was worse.

The candidates were led into a stone chamber with carved runes that glowed a dim blue. The air there was dry and cold, and the smell was like a thunderstorm that hadn't yet begun. Underfoot there was nothing but smooth stone, on the walls only runes, and not a single window. Only high up, under the vault, a round grating darkened the ceiling, and through it the examiners looked down.

"The pressure array increases the weight on your bodies with every breath," the senior one explained. "Stand as long as you can. The array will go quiet when fifty remain on their feet."

The first wave came gently, like wading into water up to your waist. Then a whole river lay across their shoulders. The candidates began sinking to their knees, and a dull knocking rolled through the chamber: that's how bundles of brushwood fall. Some screamed, some wept, some silently stared at the floor as if looking for their pride there. Zhou Kuan held out for a hundred breaths and slammed to the floor, gulping air.

Yao stood in the middle of the chamber, and the runes above him hummed like an angry swarm.

The pressure lay on him like a mountain. His bones creaked, his ears rang, a hot trickle ran from his nose. But beneath the agony his marrow caught fire, like a forge with air pumped into it.

"Two," Yang said suddenly, dryly. "Cracks in the ribs. Hairline, but real. That's a log now. Rejoice quietly, or the neighbors will get jealous."

Wonderful.

"Three." Yang's voice changed, turned businesslike, like a smith looking at metal. "Don't rejoice. I know this array: it adds pressure until someone falls. I can see the threshold. Five more cracks, and it's no longer weight, it's the roof coming down on your head. How many are standing?"

What?

"How many are still on their feet? Count. You're our counter, after all."

Yao counted, and it was easier than breathing. Seventy-one. Sixty-eight. The candidates fell one after another, there were fewer and fewer of them, and the array only pressed him harder into the floor.

Sixty-three.

"Four cracks. Stand. Breathe into your heels. Not like a pillar, a pillar breaks. You're a bellows, and a bellows bends."

He tried. The breath settled into his heels, the exhale slid slowly out through his teeth. The world narrowed to Yang's voice and his own count. Sixty. Fifty-eight. Blood ran from his nose onto his lips, his ears were ringing, his ribs burned, but the fire inside him burned steadily, hungrily, like a forge that had finally found air.

Fifty-three.

"Five," Yang whispered. "Yao, this is the limit."

Fifty-two.

Somewhere behind him someone else fell heavily. Then another. The pressure settled on his shoulders like the last weight on a scale, and Yao felt himself breathing thinly, as if through a needle.

Fifty-one.

The array went quiet.

He didn't understand at once that the pressure was gone. It was just that his body, which had held so much, no longer had anything to hold and tilted to one side. He staggered and leaned against the wall. Around him, those who were left were slowly getting up. Soaked with sweat, he stood, and steam poured off his skin.

The senior examiner's mouth fell open.

"That's enough weight for the fourth layer," Yang tallied quietly. "The forge will start smelting it tonight." There was a pride in his voice that he probably hadn't meant to show. "There. And the sixth crack didn't come, kid. Whoever says you have nothing hasn't seen how you count."

Yao took a step and nearly fell. His legs felt like cotton, but inside an even, insatiable warmth was burning. He wiped the blood from under his nose. One of those who had barely gotten up was looking at him in horror, as at a ghost. One of those who'd been eliminated was sobbing by the door.

He wanted to look around, but then he felt a gaze. Cold and intent, like a needle between his shoulder blades.

He raised his head. Above him, in the grating of the ceiling, a thin bronze glint flashed for a moment and went out. Someone stepped back from the edge.

"Someone's watching," Yang said quietly, and the rust under Yao's fingers grew colder. "I don't like it. I don't know why."