Chapter 222 (Patreon)

The boat bumps against the dock with a dull thud, and Xia, who has spent the whole trip holding on to my armrest just in case, squeezes it a little harder until the rocking settles.

Lianhua is already on her feet, so she quickly climbs onto the dock, loops the line twice around the post, ties it off, then sets the ramp between the gunwale and the planks of the dock and steps on it with one foot to check that it doesn’t move.

Only then does she come back into the boat, crouch beside me and undo the fastenings of the anchoring on the bottom of the boat, one after another, to free the chair.

“Xiaojie”, she tells me.

“Whenever you’re ready”, I reply.

I grip the armrests while Lianhua tilts the chair back, just enough so the front wheels don’t catch on the edge of the ramp, and takes me up it slowly, with the water of the Miao moving beneath the planks on either side.

Up top, Xia is already waiting for us.

I didn’t notice the moment she jumped out of the boat, but there she is, with her leather satchel hanging from her shoulder and the strap held in both hands, looking toward the end of the dock like someone looking at the door of her own home.

Lianhua goes back down, retrieves the ramp, stows it securely inside the boat and comes up again to take her place behind me. A moment later I feel her hands on the handles of the backrest, so I let go of the armrests and rest my hands in my lap.

At this hour the dock is already full. There are boatmen unloading baskets, a man haggling with another over the price of something without raising his voice, and a couple of stevedores who look up when the wheels hit the planks, although they soon look down again and go on with their work.

From here to the Tower’s square there are only a few streets and the market square, and Lianhua knows them so well that she doesn’t even have to look where she is going.

And as the wheels start to rattle over the stones, I realize something.

Today I turn fifteen, and on the day I turned fourteen I went out for the first time to really see this city, my head turning from side to side like a country girl who has just arrived in the big city.

But by then we had already been here for a while, which means it has been more than a year since we arrived in Sanjiang.

And a year is a long time, but in all that time I haven’t sent a single letter to the Empire, so, without turning my head, I use the Golden Chains of Ogma while I signal Lianhua to do the same.

A golden line comes out of me and stretches back to Lianhua. I wait a moment, just in case, but no other appears, because although Xia is walking on my right, less than a meter from the chair, she doesn’t have the technique active, and as long as she doesn’t activate it, this conversation doesn’t exist for her.

“Lianhua”, I tell her without opening my mouth. “It’s been more than a year since we arrived in the city.”

“Yes, Xiaojie”, she replies.

She says it without any surprise, as if she had been keeping exact count of the days since we stepped off Shen Fei’s ship, something that, knowing her, is more than likely.

“I thought I’d make use of the trip to the Tower for something else”, I continue. “I want to see whether I can hire a messenger.”

I pause.

“To send a message to my mother”, I finish. “I think it’s time she knew we’re all right.”

The chair keeps moving at the same pace and Lianhua says nothing, so I go on, because it is something I have been turning over for a while and hadn’t told anyone until today.

My mother set up the House of the Long Journey without telling me anything, long before I decided to leave, and on the last night she gave me the seal and the pendant as she let me go.

And since that night she hasn’t known whether her daughter made it somewhere or was lost along the way, which isn’t fair to her.

“But I don’t know what happened after we left”, I continue. “And sending it to her directly would be very risky.”

Because at court there must have been quite an uproar. The Zhāohuán doesn’t vanish from the Imperial Palace overnight without half the court wanting to know how it happened and the other half looking for someone to blame.

What I don’t know is how far that uproar may have reached, or whether my father has been able to protect my mother from it.

And if he hasn’t, a letter in my handwriting, arriving at the Pavilion of the Scent of Clouds in the hands of a messenger from the Tower of the Five Dragons, could end up in front of the wrong person.

In the best of cases, that person would know where I am. And in the worst, they would have in their hands exactly what they had been waiting for to hurt my mother, so the message has to arrive, but as discreetly as possible.

And if there is anyone in this world who knows how to get something somewhere discreetly, it is Lianhua.

“Do you know anyone who could get that message to my mother?” I ask her, but then I add the other requirement. “Discreetly.”

This time the chair moves a couple of seconds more slowly.

Not much, just enough for me to notice, and since she is behind me I can’t see her face, but I don’t need to. Lianhua almost never takes time to think before answering me, and when she does, it is because the answer isn’t simple.

“If certain things have happened as I expected them to, Xiaojie, there is a way”, she finally tells me.

She doesn’t tell me what things, or what she expected to happen, or how long she has been expecting it, and I don’t ask her.

The last time Lianhua asked me for something for herself, it was a night off, on the eve of our leaving the Palace, and I didn’t ask her what she wanted it for then either. If someday she wants to tell me, she will, and until then, knowing there is a way is enough for me.

The chair picks up its pace again, and for a while the two of us stay silent.

On my right, Xia has gotten half a step ahead, her eyes fixed on the end of the street and the satchel strap still held tight, and from the way her lips are moving without making a sound, I am almost sure she is rehearsing what she is going to say to Master An as soon as she gets to the kitchen.

And then Lianhua speaks again.

“Xiaojie”, she tells me. “If you do send the letter in the end, I would like to buy a few things and send a package.”

I blink, because that I really didn’t expect, but I don’t need to think about it.

“That’s no problem at all”, I reply. “As long as you don’t want to buy half the city, we have no money problems for now, so you can buy whatever you like.”

“Thank you, Xiaojie”, she tells me.

She says it in her usual voice, flat and polite, but she takes a little longer than normal to say it.

Before I have time to think about what that means, the street opens out and we reach the square.

Xia stops dead when we arrive, and I let the golden line fade.

“I’m off!” she tells us.

She turns toward us without letting go of the satchel strap.

“I’m going to tell Master An he can serve the pizza”, she continues. “See you later, Wen! See you later, Lianhua!”

“Have a good lesson”, I tell her.

But I am not sure she heard me, because before I finish the sentence she has already set off toward the inn, so fast she is almost running, and halfway there she has to dodge a man carrying a basket of onions, who stands watching her as she goes.

I follow her with my eyes until she goes through the door of the inn and disappears inside. Then Lianhua turns the chair toward the center of the square, and the two of us head for the Tower.

As soon as we go through the doors, the ground floor is the same as always, with its single enormous space, its counters, its orderly lines and its uniformed women, and with that light from the high windows falling on the gray flagstones and letting you see everything at once.

Although here almost nobody stares anymore. A couple of heads turn toward the chair from the lines, and one of the women at the counters gives me a small bow without stopping attending to her customer, which is quite a lot more than I got a year ago.

Lianhua crosses the hall in a straight line toward the staircase on the left, and the two guards at its foot step to either side of the first step before we reach them, with the same nod as the last few times.

On the second floor, Lianhua turns into the corridor that leads to Lu Zhiyu’s room, which is about twenty paces from the landing, but we don’t get even halfway, because the door opens first and Lu Zhiyu steps out into the corridor.

She wears her hair gathered in the same high bun as always, the Tower uniform with sleeves somewhat narrower than those of the women at the counters, and her hands clasped in front of her, as if she had been waiting for us behind that door for quite a while.

Which is impossible, because nobody knew we were coming.

So either someone told her the moment we came through the door, or she has the best-placed window in the whole building. And considering that the only window in her room is so high you can see nothing through it but sky, I lean toward the former.

“Sun Wen”, she tells me, and inclines her head. “Lianhua. Please, come in.”

She steps aside to let us in.

The room is exactly as it always is. The high window, the low cabinet against the wall, the round table of dark wood with its four chairs and, to one side, the pale stone cube that looks like an expensive paperweight.

Lianhua pulls one of the chairs away from the table, sets it against the wall and pushes mine into the gap, so that I am seated at the table, and then she takes another chair, places it to my left and a little behind, and sits down with the backpack on her knees.

Lu Zhiyu sits down across from me.

“I did not expect to see you here today”, she tells me. “Normally it is Lianhua who brings us the shipments. Why did you decide to come yourself this time?”

As she says it, Lianhua opens the backpack, takes out the wooden box with the talismans and sets it on the table, between the two of us, without making the slightest sound.

“Since we had to come and bring you the shipment of talismans, I took advantage of the trip”, I reply. “I wanted to ask you two questions.”

Lu Zhiyu looks at the box.

She only looks at it, without touching it or opening it, just long enough to confirm that it is the usual box, and then she looks back at me. And from the way she does it, I get the impression that, for her, what is inside the box is already routine.

“And what are those questions?” she asks me.

“The first is whether the Tower offers courier services to the Tianjing Empire”, I tell her. “I’d like to send a package.”

And before she answers, I turn my head toward Lianhua, because as I say it I realize I haven’t asked her the most basic thing.

“Would it be very big?” I ask her.

“No, Xiaojie”, she replies. “It would only be a little larger than the talisman box.”

I look back at Lu Zhiyu and point at the box with my chin.

“That would be the size of it”, I tell her.

Lu Zhiyu doesn’t seem to hesitate for an instant.

“If it is only a matter of sending a single messenger, there would be no problem”, she tells me. “As long as you are the one who finances the journey and pays that messenger.”

Which makes all the sense in the world, but it is right there that I realize I have no idea how much something like that might cost.

Because the Empire is very far away. It took us a good two months to get here, between weeks of carriage travel and the journey by river, and that was with a caravan that knew perfectly well where it was going. A messenger would have to make that same journey there, find whoever they have to find, make the whole trip back again, and in the meantime eat, sleep and pay whoever needs paying along the way.

And I don’t have the faintest idea how much someone charges to spend months on the road.

“And would the funds of the House of the Long Journey be enough?” I ask her.

Lu Zhiyu laughs.

Not much, just a little and covering her mouth with the back of her hand, but she laughs, and in someone who controls her expression as well as she does, that says quite a lot.

“With your funds you could not only pay a messenger”, she tells me. “You could even finance a trade caravan, if you wished.”

And then her eyes light up.

“Would you be interested in financing one?” she asks me suddenly, with a certain note of expectation.

I stare at her, because in my other life I saw that same gleam in more than one office. It was the gleam of the bank employee you went to ask about a transfer and who, without your quite knowing how, ended up showing you a brochure for investment funds.

“No”, I tell her right away. “I only want to send a few things to a few acquaintances.”

I pause.

“I have no plans to go into trade”, I continue. “At least, not for now.”

The gleam goes out as quickly as it appeared, and for an instant Lu Zhiyu looks disappointed, with the face of someone who was already calculating routes and commissions and has just had the account book shut right under her nose.

But she recovers at once.

“I understand”, she tells me.

She clasps her hands on the table.

“Whenever you wish to send the package, you need only bring it to me along with the delivery instructions”, she continues. “And I ask that those instructions be as clear as possible, especially regarding where the person who is to receive it can be found.”

She tilts her head a little.

“Because if the messenger does not manage to find that person within a reasonable amount of time, they will simply return with the package”, she finishes. “And the money will not be refunded.”

Which is also completely logical, because the messenger will have made the journey all the same, whether they find that person or not.

But as I listen to her, I can’t help glancing at Lianhua out of the corner of my eye, because where the person who is to receive it can be found is precisely the one thing I still don’t know.

I can’t write Pavilion of the Scent of Clouds, Imperial Palace, because that would be the same as knocking on the door. And that is exactly the part that depends on Lianhua’s way, whatever it may be.

Lianhua, of course, doesn’t move a muscle.

“I understand”, I tell Lu Zhiyu. “When everything is ready, we’ll bring it to you.”

Lu Zhiyu nods and shifts a little in her chair.

“And what is your second question?” she asks me.

“I wanted to ask you where the Guild of Enchanters is”, I tell her. “Because I haven’t seen it marked in the city guide.”

This time it is clear to me that Lu Zhiyu doesn’t have the answer ready, because it shows in how long she takes to answer, and in the way she tilts her head a little more than before, as if she weren’t sure she had heard me correctly.

“By Enchanters, do you mean the people who devote themselves to engraving Enchantments onto objects?” she asks me slowly.

“Yes”, I reply. “That’s what I mean.”

Lu Zhiyu stares at me, and this time there is no gleam in her eyes, but something else I also know well, which is puzzlement. The same puzzlement with which the receptionist at the Hall of a Hundred Circles looked at me while she searched her register for a box nobody had ever imagined would be needed.

“I do not know how things work in the Tianjing Empire”, she finally tells me. “But in the rest of the world there is nothing resembling a guild of Enchanters.”

I go still after hearing her, because I had taken it for granted that it existed.

Talismans have the Pavilion of a Thousand Strokes and formations have the Hall of a Hundred Circles, so it had never crossed my mind that Enchantments wouldn’t have their own guild too.

“How is that?” I ask her.

Lu Zhiyu doesn’t answer right away. She watches me a moment longer, her eyes slightly narrowed, and I see the exact instant in which she decides that I am not asking out of courtesy, but because I truly have no idea how the world of Enchanters works.

“Do you know anything about Enchantment?” she asks me.

“Only what I’ve read in books”, I reply. “And that’s why I was looking for the guild, so I could learn more.”

Lu Zhiyu sighs.

It is a short, polite sigh, that of someone who has just understood she is going to have to start from the beginning, and then she rests her clasped hands on the table.

“You should know that an Enchantment cannot be engraved on just any object”, she tells me. “It has to be done on newly created objects. Do not ask me why, because I am not an enchanter, but that is how it is.”

She pauses briefly.

“So, very often, it is the creators of those objects themselves who have a basic knowledge of Enchantment”, she continues. “Smiths who finish a sword or tanners who finish a piece of armor know enough to engrave a simple enchantment on it themselves before delivering it. For them it is a second profession.”

Something clicks into place as I listen to her, because if the Enchantment has to be done when the object has just been finished, an enchanted object isn’t bought ready-made to have the Enchantment engraved on it afterward. It is enchanted while it is being made, or right as it is finished.

“Another thing that often happens is that the guilds, such as the Guild of Spirit Smiths or the Guild of Spirit Tanners, finance the studies of their own Enchanters”, Lu Zhiyu continues. “And afterward the members of the guild can hire them to help create their objects.”

Something that clearly had to happen, because if the object has to be enchanted as soon as it leaves the workshop, the most practical thing is for whoever engraves the enchantment to be in the same workshop, or at most in the room next door.

“And that is why there is no official guild of Enchanters”, she finishes. “Because they are scattered among all the guilds that exist.”

She pauses again, more briefly.

“Even the few Enchanters who are not affiliated with any guild are usually people who first belonged to one”, she adds. “And who later earned enough renown in some particular type of Enchantment to go independent. People whose services are so valued that there are those who seek them out by name, always for very specific jobs.”

Now it is all clear to me, and it is such a simple explanation that I am even a little embarrassed not to have seen it on my own.

Because there is no door to knock on. There is no school of Enchantment, so to speak, but a department hidden inside every school, each with its own customs, and the only way into any of them is to enroll in that school.

I sigh.

“In my case”, I tell her. “If I wanted to learn more about Enchantments, what would you recommend?”

“Joining a guild”, she replies without hesitation.

She must see something on my face, because she immediately raises a hand.

“You can learn a great deal by reading, I will not argue with that”, she continues. “Since the study of Enchantment is so fragmented, it is very easy to find books on the subject, unlike with talismans or formations, which are much more controlled because they have guilds that control the information.”

Then Lu Zhiyu looks at me, and this time her gaze drops for a moment to the chair.

“But with your condition”, she tells me. “The only ones I can recommend are perhaps the Guild of Spirit Weavers or the Guild of Spirit Goldsmiths. The rest require physical activity that would be difficult for you.”

She says it without pity and without lowering her voice, and I am grateful to her for it, because I prefer that a thousand times over someone acting as if the chair weren’t there.

And she doesn’t need to explain it to me either; I only have to picture myself in front of an anvil, or dunking hides in a vat, to know she is completely right, but that doesn’t stop me from sighing.

“I took embroidery lessons for years”, I tell her. “And given how that turned out, if the Guild of Spirit Weavers has, as its name suggests, anything to do with sewing, it’s ruled out from the start.”

Because I was never good at embroidery. I got by, which isn’t the same thing, and getting by is fine for a handkerchief, but not for something that has to do more than decorate.

And if Master Mu’s robe is what I have always suspected, a storage space made of embroidered runes, the person who embroidered it was certainly not someone who just got by.

Lu Zhiyu doesn’t ask me how it turned out, since, from the way I said it, she doesn’t need to.

“And the Guild of Spirit Goldsmiths makes jewelry, as I suspect?” I ask her.

“That is right”, she replies.

She nods once.

“And besides, it is the guild that, proportionally, has the most Enchanters”, she continues. “They can make perfectly ordinary jewelry, of course. But when a cultivator is looking for a ring, an amulet or something similar, they usually do not want it only as an ornament.”

She pauses briefly.

“What they want is for it to be able to do something more”, she finishes.

I fall silent after hearing her, thinking it over.

Because if this world resembles the ancient eras of mine in anything, it is in the way things are made, and I see no reason for jewelry to be an exception. And I know the ancient jewelry of my world well, because I have drawn it, catalogued it and read excavation reports on it until I knew by heart how it was made.

Gold hammered until it was as thin as a sheet of paper. Metal threads twisted and soldered into filigree. Tiny grains placed one by one on a surface. Stones set by pressure.

All of it made by artisans sitting at a table, with small tools, a steady hand and infinite patience.

And that is the key: sitting.

If there is one thing I know how to do, it is spend hours sitting at a table with a steady hand, because I have been doing it since I learned to hold a brush. And where my hands can’t reach, I have ten others that can hold the piece, the tweezers and the tool all at once, without tiring and without trembling.

So, with the help of my techniques, it is very likely I could take up something like that.

And if I make the piece myself, the piece leaves my hands right when the moment comes to engrave the enchantment on it, which is precisely what Lu Zhiyu has just said is needed.

But while I am still turning that idea over, another one comes to me, and my hand goes to my chest before I realize it.

Over my clothes, my fingers find the pendant and close around it.

The leaf, with its veins so sharply marked that it looks as if it had been plucked from a tree this very morning. My mother gave it to me on the last night, convinced I would figure out what it is for, and since then I have examined it more times than I could count, by the light of the lamp in my study and by the morning light in the courtyard, turning it between my fingers in search of anything that might tell me something.

Although I still haven’t made any sense of it.

But a guild of people who spend their lives making rings and amulets is exactly the place to find information that could clear up my doubts. Or, at least, a place where someone could tell me where to start looking for that information.

And I realize it is the second time this morning I have thought about my mother.

After that thought, I let go of the pendant, rest my forearms on the edge of the table and look at Lu Zhiyu.

“Lu Zhiyu”, I finally tell her. “Where is the Guild of Spirit Goldsmiths? I’d like to go and visit it.”