Chapter 218 (Patreon)

The book is on the desk in my study, and from my chair, with my forearms resting on the edge of the desk, I stay looking at it for a good while.

It is the sheets of the translation, stitched between two cloth-covered cardboard covers, and the volume is considerably thicker than the original, because my handwriting takes up more room than that of whoever wrote the original and in the margins I have had to leave more notes than I would have liked.

But it is finished.

After months of trances, of dictionaries coming and going from the reading table in my head along with words that didn’t appear in any of them, it is finished.

I pick it up with both hands, and as I do, a hand of the Myriad brings over the wooden box I have ready at the corner of the desk and another lifts its lid.

But before putting it inside, I hold it in my hands a moment longer, because I am still not sure whether what I feel is relief or a slight disappointment.

Because when I saw that crude drawing of Annapurna in the auction catalog, I knew the book could only be one of two things. Either a sacred scripture, or a cookbook.

And it turned out to be a cookbook.

Which is no misfortune, far from it. But a sacred scripture, or whatever its equivalent is in the Celestial Realm, could have told me something about that place the Fragments come from, and about which all I know is that it is full of things from my old world that shouldn’t be there.

And a book that explained something more about that would also have been very good, so I don’t know whether it is a pity or not.

I set it inside the box, on the cloth I have laid at the bottom so that it won’t get scuffed, and sigh as I lower the lid.

“Well”, I tell myself quietly, by way of consolation. “At least it’s going to make a good birthday present for Xia.”

With that, I look up from the box and look around me.

The shelves, which were empty when we arrived at this house and now don’t have a single gap. The talisman box on the side table, waiting for the next batch. The brushes in their rest, the inkwells lined up and, against the wall, the wooden post Lianhua drove in when I still had to pull myself across this room, and which I no longer use.

Today is Xia’s birthday, which means we have been in this city for almost a year.

Because she spent the last one on Shen Fei’s ship, shortly after we boarded, surrounded by busy sailors and with none of the things the birthday of a girl turning twelve should have. The only thing I could manage was to get the second cook to let her make that day’s meal by herself, and the fact that she said it was the best present possible still stings me a little.

Today she turns thirteen, and this time, at least, she has a real present.

And this year there has been a bit of everything. People following Lianhua around the city, a disciple of the Jade Dew who all but swore eternal enmity against us, and a night when the courtyard of this house ended up full of bodies, after which Lianhua had to leave the island to finish the job.

But, if I look at it with a little perspective, everything has gone more or less well, since we have a house paid for ten years, we have income and none of the three of us has suffered a wound that a pill couldn’t fix.

Which, for a paraplegic princess who escaped her Empire through the Palace drains, is the best that could be expected, so I pick up the box, set it in my lap and leave the study.

Outside, the sun is still low and the magnolia’s shadow covers half the stone table, where Xia and Lianhua are already setting out breakfast.

Xia comes and goes from the kitchen with the bowls while Lianhua sets out the teapot and the cups with her usual precision, so I cross the courtyard, reach the head of the table, the gap between the two benches, and stop.

Once there, I set the box on the stone, to my right and far enough from the edge that no one will knock it off by accident.

Xia looks at it as she passes but doesn’t ask anything, although I can see her curiosity.

Between the two of them they finish setting out breakfast, and when there is nothing left to bring, Lianhua sits on the bench to my left, Xia on the one to my right, and we start eating.

But a few bites in, I have already noticed that something is still going on with Xia.

She is eating, but she is eating fast, without looking at what she puts in her mouth, and in her that is almost a symptom of illness. And every so often she looks up at me, opens her mouth, and closes it again on a bite to justify having opened it.

And it isn’t the first time.

She has been like this for several days, with the face of someone who has news stuck in her throat and is making an enormous effort to keep it from slipping out, and until now I have left her alone because I assumed that sooner or later she would let it out on her own.

But this morning she has already looked at the box twice, at me five times and at the teapot once, so I set down my bowl, raise my chopsticks and point them at her.

“Xia”, I tell her. “Tell me once and for all what you’re keeping to yourself, because you’re making me nervous.”

Xia gives a little start on the bench, like a little girl caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

For a moment she stays still, chopsticks in the air, and I see perfectly how she debates between holding out a little longer or giving in, but then she sets her chopsticks on her bowl, straightens up, lifts her chin and looks at me with a satisfaction she doesn’t bother to hide.

“Three days ago I opened the Earth Gate”, she tells me.

She pauses, as if to let the news sink in.

“And I didn’t say so before because I wanted to say it today”, she continues. “On my birthday.”

And she waits, with her cheeks flushed and both hands resting on the edge of the table.

I look at her, and at her announcement, which is still floating above the buns, and I let a slight smile rise to my lips.

Just a little, but that little is enough, because Xia sees it.

She jumps up from the bench, points her chopsticks at me across the table, and her face changes completely.

“You did it again!” she tells me. “That smile! You did it again!”

And she keeps pointing at me.

“When?” she asks me. “When did you open yours?”

I don’t answer her right away; I simply pick up my cup, blow on it a little and take a sip with all the calm in the world, while Xia is still standing with her chopsticks pointed at my chest and Lianhua, on my left, keeps eating as if absolutely nothing were happening at the table.

Then I set the cup on the table and look at Xia, this time smiling without any pretense.

“Fifteen days ago”, I tell her.

Xia opens her mouth as if to say something, but I cut her off before she can.

“But I didn’t tell you so you wouldn’t get discouraged”, I finish.

And it is the truth, although keeping the secret has cost me considerably more than I expected, because since that day my body can handle much more spirit food than Xia puts on my plate, and for fifteen days I have had to make do with the usual portion, without asking for more.

Xia slowly lowers her chopsticks, then sits down, or rather drops onto the bench, as if someone had let the air out of her, and stabs one of the buns on her plate with her chopsticks.

“For once, I really thought I’d won”, she says.

She says it looking at the bun, without raising her voice, and stabs it again.

And it is then that I feel guilty.

Not too much, because it is also true that, if I had told her fifteen days ago, she would have spent two weeks cultivating with a long face. But enough, because today is her birthday, she had spent days saving the news to give it to me precisely today, and I have just trampled on it with a smile.

“I’m sorry, Xia”, I tell her. “Really.”

Xia stops stabbing the bun, but she doesn’t look at me.

“And to make it up to you, I’m going to give you your birthday present right now”, I continue.

I rest my hands on the box and push it across the stone until it is in front of her, next to her bowl.

Xia looks at the box, and frowns.

“What is it?” she asks me.

“It’s the translation of the book I bought at the auction”, I reply. “And I’m giving it to you because I’m sure you’re going to find it very interesting.”

Xia doesn’t touch it; she simply stays looking at it with her chopsticks still stuck in the bun, and I see perfectly what is going through her head, because it is the same thing that would go through anyone’s head after losing a race and then being offered a consolation prize.

Part of her wants to stay offended a little longer, if only on principle, but the other part is Xia, and her curiosity has never once lost a fight against her pride.

So she lets go of her chopsticks, lifts the lid, takes out the book and opens it to the first page, with the face of someone willing to grant it, at most, a courtesy glance.

She reads the first page, and moves on to the second.

But on the second, her face changes.

First, the courteous expression turns into one of curiosity, and she leans a little over the book. Then, halfway through the third page, the curiosity turns into surprise, and she looks up at me for an instant, as if to check that I am not playing a joke on her, and lowers her eyes again right away. And on the fourth, the surprise turns into something I have only ever seen on her face in front of an ingredient she doesn’t know.

Enthusiasm.

And then she does something I didn’t expect, since she closes the book with enormous care, holding it with both hands as if it were porcelain. And with that same care she puts it back inside the box, where she sets it straight on the cloth before withdrawing her hands slowly and carefully.

I stay looking at her in surprise, because I expected shouts, or at the very least three questions in a row, and what I have just seen is someone putting away a treasure.

But that lasts exactly as long as it takes Xia to get up, since after doing so she takes two steps, throws herself at me and flings her arms around my neck with such momentum that I feel the chair move back a little.

“It’s a cookbook from a Celestial Fragment!” she says in my ear, far too loudly for being so close. “Thank you, Wen! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

I pat her on the back, with my cheek squashed against her shoulder and a lock of her hair getting into my mouth.

“All right, all right”, I tell her. “But first we have to finish breakfast.”

Xia lets go of me, straightens up and goes back to her place, where she sits down and picks up her chopsticks with all the obedience in the world.

But one doesn’t have to be very observant to realize that her mind isn’t on breakfast, because every couple of bites her eyes slip toward the box and stay there for a moment, like someone checking that something is still in its place.

I see that, so I smile before giving her the warning I think it is better to give her, so that her enthusiasm doesn’t turn into disappointment when she reads the book.

“I have to warn you about something”, I tell her.

Xia takes her eyes off the box when she hears me, although it costs her.

“There are recipes that can be prepared just as they are written”, I continue. “But there are many that call for ingredients I don’t know, so it isn’t certain that all of them can be made.”

And I say it thinking not only of ingredients I do know but doubt exist in this world, but also of all those words that didn’t appear in any dictionary in my head and that, by the place they occupied in the sentence, could only be ingredients. Some of them I have left as they were, with a note in the margin, because making up a name for them would have been worse than admitting I don’t know what they are.

Xia doesn’t even stop chewing when she hears me.

“That doesn’t matter”, she tells me after swallowing her bite. “If the recipe describes what the dish is supposed to do, I can always look for alternatives to replace whatever is missing.”

She picks up another piece of vegetable with her chopsticks.

“And even if I can’t, I’m sure to learn new ways of preparing and cooking spirit food”, she continues. “And that’s already a gain, even if I don’t manage to make a single recipe.”

I look at her, and I have no choice but to admit she is right, because it is exactly the same thing she answered me at the first meeting in this house, in front of the rectangle of sand in the courtyard, when I asked her whether she wanted to study books on spirit food she couldn’t use yet.

“You’re right”, I tell her.

Xia nods, satisfied, with the face of someone chalking up the second victory of the morning and willing to settle for that one to make up for the other.

We keep eating in silence for a while, until Xia sets her chopsticks on her bowl and stays looking at the table in a different way.

“Now that we both have the Earth Gate open, I can make complete spirit food menus”, she tells me. “A single one for the three of us, like I said at the inn.”

She lays a hand flat on the table.

“But that’s going to raise what we spend on food a lot”, she continues. “Spiritual ingredients aren’t cheap. Are we going to be able to keep it up?”

And she asks it seriously, with the same face with which she told me at the inn that money was tight, so I answer her seriously too.

“Do you remember what Lin Quingyu said the day I took her the brassiere designs?” I ask her.

Xia’s ears turn a little red, just as they did that day, but she nods.

“Well, she was right”, I tell her. “The underwear was slow to take off, but when it did, it exploded.”

And I would rather not go into detail about how it exploded, because I know perfectly well how Lin Quingyu intended to promote it, and it isn’t a conversation I feel like having in front of Xia on her birthday.

Or on any other day, for that matter.

“To the point that, if the garments bring in every month what they brought in last month, I could stop making talismans and live in this city on that alone”, I continue. “Even eating spirit food every day.”

I pause.

“If it weren’t for the fact that, the day after I stopped making them, I’m sure I’d have Lu Zhiyu at the door asking me to make her some”, I finish.

Xia opens her eyes wide.

“Is it really that much?” she asks me.

But I am not the one who answers her.

“Yes”, Lianhua tells her from my left.

Xia turns her head toward her, and so do I, because Lianhua hasn’t said a single word all breakfast.

“Even I was surprised when Lin Quingyu told me how the accounts of the House of the Long Journey stood on my last visit to the Tower”, she continues.

She says it in the same tone of voice in which she would announce that it has started to rain, but in all the years I have been with her, the times I have seen Lianhua surprised can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Xia understands it just as I do, because I see her face light up.

“Then I’m going to work hard to make the best food I can”, she says.

And she says it with the same determination with which, at the inn, she said she was going to work hard to open the Earth Gate as soon as possible.

And she has already shown that she knows how to keep that promise.

When we finish, there is nothing left on the table but the empty bowls, the crumbs from the buns and the half-empty teapot, and I see that Xia already has a hand on the box.

She hasn’t opened it, but she has her fingers resting on the lid and her body turned slightly toward her room, like someone who has already worked out the shortest route between this table and a quiet corner where she can spend the rest of the day reading.

“Not yet”, I tell her.

Xia goes still at my words.

“There are still several things we have to do this morning”, I continue. “And since we’ve got the momentum, it’s better to make use of it.”

Xia takes her hand off the box, although she seems reluctant to do so.

“What things?” she asks me.

I smile when I hear her.

“Have you forgotten what can be done with an open Gate?” I ask her.

Xia goes blank at my question, but then she leaps up from the bench.

“Now I can use techniques!” she exclaims, clearly excited all over again.

“Correct”, I tell her.

And I look to my left.

“Lianhua”, I tell her. “Bring the techniques that were set aside for Xia.”

Lianhua nods, but I haven’t finished yet, so I glance at Xia for a moment, who is still standing by the bench, and then look back at Lianhua.

“And while you’re at it, bring the present you’ve prepared for her”, I finish.

“Right away, Xiaojie”, she replies.

She gets up, taking the teapot along with her, together with the dirty dishes floating behind her, because Lianhua doesn’t cross this courtyard empty-handed if she can help it, and heads off toward the rooms.

Xia stays watching her back until she disappears through the kitchen door, and then turns toward me so fast that she almost falls off the bench.

“Is it true?” she asks me. “Lianhua has prepared a present for me?”

“Yes”, I reply.

“And what is it?” she asks me. “Is it big? Is it for the kitchen? Did she make it herself?”

“It’s a surprise”, I tell her to calm her down. “Wait.”

Xia sits down, or at least she tries to, because she stays perched on the edge of the bench, with her hands between her knees and her eyes fixed on the doors of the rooms.

I smile when I see her, since I know perfectly well what it is.

Lianhua asked my permission some time ago to prepare a birthday present for Xia, and she told me what she had in mind and where she was going to go to look for it.

I didn’t need to ask her anything more, since I immediately remembered the day when, coming out of a shop, I told Xia that the day she could become an apprentice to a spirit chef, if she brought her own utensils, she would have an advantage over everyone who didn’t.

I said it almost without thinking, but Lianhua, apparently, hadn’t forgotten.

She doesn’t take long to return, since after a moment she crosses the courtyard with a trunk in her arms, of dark wood and the size of a small chest, which she carries with no apparent effort, and on top of which, on the lid, there are three jade tablets.

When she reaches the table, she sets the trunk on the ground, between my chair and Xia’s bench, picks up the tablets one by one and places them on the table, in a row.

I recognize all three without needing to get closer, since the first is of pale green jade, with its edges worn by time, and it is the Myriad of Hands tablet Master Mu gave me, which still has three uses left.

The other two are newer and are the ones I bought at the Sect, one of Sensing the Qi and one of the Golden Chains of Ogma, which have been kept for her ever since we left the Empire.

Then I look at Xia, who is taking it all in with her eyes wide open, her gaze going back and forth between the tablets and the trunk as if she didn’t know which of the two she should look at first.

“What do you want to do first?” I ask her.

Xia doesn’t hesitate for an instant, and points at the trunk.

“I already know what the techniques do”, she tells me. “I’ve spent years watching the two of you use them.”

And she leans a little toward the trunk.

“But I want to know what Lianhua’s present is”, she finishes.

I look at Lianhua, who is still standing beside the trunk with her hands clasped in front of her.

“Then open it”, she tells Xia.

Xia doesn’t need to be asked twice, since she gets down from the bench, kneels in front of the trunk, undoes the clasp and lifts the lid while I grip the right armrest and lean out as far as I can so I can see the inside over her shoulder.

The first thing that appears is a cloth.

It is a dark brown color, thick, and folded with a perfection that can only be Lianhua’s work, without a single wrinkle and with all the edges lined up. It takes up the whole width of the trunk and completely covers what lies beneath.

But it isn’t flat, since it bulges in the middle, and from the shape of the bulge you can tell that there is something long and rigid between the folds.

Xia takes it out with both hands, and from the way her arms tense, it is heavier than it looks. She sets it on the bench, unfolds it fold by fold, and in the center of the cloth appears a roll of dark leather, tied with two straps.

Xia looks at the roll, and then looks at me, and since I say nothing, she undoes the straps and unrolls it on the cloth.

It is a knife roll.

A long strip of tanned leather, lined inside with fabric, with a row of pockets sewn side by side, from largest to smallest. And in each pocket, a knife.

The first is a cleaver with a broad, rectangular blade, about twenty centimeters long, like the ones used in the Chinese restaurants of my other life to cut everything from a scallion to a whole duck. The second is just as wide, but thicker and considerably heavier, with a spine almost as thick as a finger, clearly made for splitting bones.

Then there is a long, narrow one with a very fine edge, for filleting fish. Another short one, with a curved tip, for boning. And at the end, a small one, barely longer than the palm of a hand, for peeling.

Xia says nothing; she simply slides the big cleaver out of its pocket, slowly, and holds it up in front of her face. The blade is a dark gray with a dull sheen, and on its surface it has very fine veins, like those in wood, which seem to move when the light catches them.

I activate Sensing the Qi for just an instant, and immediately feel that the blade has Qi. Not much, but firm and still, just as Lianhua’s weapons have had since we replaced them. And the handle, of polished spirit wood, does too.

The same goes for the second knife, and the third, and all the others.

Xia runs her thumb along the spine of the cleaver and turns it to see how the weight is distributed. Then she puts it back in its pocket with the same delicacy with which she put the book in its box, and takes out the filleting knife.

She still says nothing, and I take note of that silence, because in Xia a silence that long only means that what she has in front of her matters too much to spoil it by talking.

And I understand perfectly why Lianhua chose exactly those knives.

In my other life, real chefs carried their own knives rolled up in a case like this one, just as a surgeon carries his instruments, and no one but them touched them. And when they changed kitchens, it was the only thing they took with them.

Xia puts the last knife in its place and goes back to the trunk, because beneath the cloth there is more.

Each thing comes wrapped in straw and paper, and Xia takes them out one by one and sets them on the courtyard stones around her.

A wok of dark metal, with the same veins as the knife blades and much lighter than it should be, because Xia lifts it with one hand and stays looking at it suspiciously, as if someone were trying to trick her.

After that she takes out a Ding, which is basically a pot, and then a Yan, which is used for steaming, all of the same metal, like the ladle and the spatula that come out of the trunk afterward.

And at the very bottom, a gray stone mortar with its pestle, along with a thick, round cutting board.

When she finishes, she stays kneeling on the stones with her hands on her knees, looking as if she were sitting in the middle of a kitchen without walls.

And then she looks up at Lianhua.

Her eyes are shining, and she opens her mouth, but nothing comes out, so she does the only thing that occurs to her, which is to get up, step over the mortar and throw her arms around Lianhua’s waist so hard that Lianhua has to take half a step back to keep her balance.

“Thank you, Lianhua”, she says with her face squashed against her clothes. “Thank you.”

Lianhua looks down at her.

“If you want to impress your new master, a set of knives worthy of the task is essential”, she tells her.

Xia lets go of her and raises her head.

And I, who was smiling, stop.

Because Xia turns toward me, and on her face I see exactly the same confusion that must be on mine. She opens her mouth to ask, but I get there first.

“Lianhua”, I tell her. “What do you mean?”

Lianhua looks at me, and then she smiles.

It is a slight smile, barely a movement at the corners of her mouth, and it is so rare on her that for a moment I stay looking at her instead of thinking about what she has just said.

“On my visits to the Tower I have been asking about spirit chefs who could teach Xia”, she tells me. “And I have spoken with a few.”

Xia, half a step from her, goes completely still.

“So when, naturally, I realized that Xia had opened the Earth Gate, I went to speak with one of them, with whom I had already arranged the apprenticeship”, she continues. “And I have agreed that Xia will begin in four days.”

Lianhua stops looking at Xia and looks at me.

“Xiaojie”, she tells me. “Although I asked your permission to prepare a birthday present for Xia, I hope I have not overstepped.”

She says it in her usual voice, flat and polite, but she stays waiting for my answer without moving.

And I laugh at her question.

Not much, and not very loudly, but I laugh, because she has just solved, without saying a word to me, the question Xia asked me at the inn, when she told me she wanted to be a spirit chef but didn’t know how one became one or who taught it.

“No”, I tell her. “You’ve done perfectly.”

And it is then that Xia reacts.

Until now she had stood motionless, as if the news had turned her to stone, but suddenly she throws herself at Lianhua, this time hanging from her neck, with her feet almost off the ground.

“Thank you”, she says, almost sobbing. “Thank you, Lianhua. Really. Thank you with all my heart.”

She repeats it three more times, each time quieter and hoarser, and I have to lower my eyes to my cup, because there are things it is better not to look at too closely if one doesn’t want to end up the same way.

Lianhua lets her hug her.

And after a moment, she raises a hand and pats her on the head.

“You still have the techniques”, she tells her. “And that is important.”

Xia raises her head to look at her, without letting go.

“Because we only have four days”, Lianhua continues. “And in those four days I have to train you in their use so that you reach a minimum level of competence, and that way you can use them during your apprenticeship.”

And she is right, because a spirit chef who can’t sense the Qi of what she is cutting works blind, just as I worked with ink before I had that technique. And in a kitchen, a few extra hands can let you hold many more things at once.

Xia listens to her, still hanging from her neck, and then I see her go still.

Not completely, but enough. Her arms loosen around Lianhua’s neck, first a little and then a little more, and on her face, little by little, the emotion gives way to another expression I know perfectly well.

Because Lianhua has said train for four days, and Xia has spent almost a year training with her in this very courtyard and knows perfectly well what that means.

From the way her chin keeps dropping, I am completely sure that, at this precise moment, Xia is a little less grateful for her present than she was a moment ago.

Lianhua, of course, keeps patting her on the head as if she hadn’t noticed a thing.

And I pick up my cup, which still has a little tea left in it, and raise it to my lips, because it is the only way I can think of to keep either of them from seeing me smile at the scene.