Chapter 223 (Patreon)

As soon as we come out into the square, Lianhua stops, not because anything has happened, but so I can tell her how I want to go, since the Guild of Spirit Goldsmiths is on the south bank of the Xun, almost at the other end of the city, as Lu Zhiyu showed us on the map.

Which, in a city of several million inhabitants, isn’t exactly around the corner.

“How long would it take us through the streets?” I ask her.

“A good part of the morning, Xiaojie”, she replies. “And not all the streets along that route are safe for the chair.”

After her answer, I look toward the other side of the square, the way we came this morning, because the alternative is only a few streets from here and seems like our best option.

“And by river?” I ask her.

Lianhua doesn’t take long to answer, and I suspect she had already worked it out while Lu Zhiyu still had her finger on the map.

“Down the Miao to the mouth of the Xun, and then up it, keeping close to the south bank”, she tells me. “It is faster. And from the water, the guild is close.”

“Then we go back to the boat”, I tell her.

“Yes, Xiaojie”, she replies, and turns the chair.

The way to the dock is the same one we took this morning, only in reverse.

The boat is still where we left it. Lianhua sets down the ramp, takes me down it slowly, the planks creaking a little under the wheels, fits the chair into the anchoring on the bottom and checks the fastenings with a tug, one after another.

Lianhua casts off the line, pushes the boat away from the dock with her foot and starts rowing.

Until today, this boat has only taken us on short trips that Lianhua makes almost without looking, during which I simply watch the dock or the wall of our house getting closer, depending on which way we are going.

But today, as soon as we leave the last landing stages behind, Lianhua doesn’t turn toward the Rong, but follows the bank of the Miao instead, and for the first time we cover enough distance for me to realize that my first impressions when we arrived in the city were correct.

The rivers are a street, or rather, the main street of the whole city.

Because a river twenty kilometers wide can’t be crossed with a bridge, and that means everything that has to go from one bank to the other, or from one quarter to another far away, goes by water.

Absolutely everything, so the water is full of boats.

The first thing I notice is that nobody goes wherever they feel like, although there is nobody directing it either.

The small boats, like ours, keep close to the bank, some twenty or thirty meters from it, while farther toward the center go the cargo barges, broad and flat, so heavily loaded that their gunwales almost brush the water.

One carries sacks piled into a mountain so high that the man at the tiller stands on a platform to see over it. Another carries blocks of cut stone. And another, which passes a good deal closer than I would like, is full of clay jars tied to one another with ropes, hundreds of them, in rows so tight that from here they look like a honeycomb.

I keep watching it until it moves away, because in my other life I spent entire weeks reading about ships that sank loaded exactly like that, with every piece fitted against the one beside it so that nothing would shift during the voyage.

And what I had never imagined is that one day I would see one of those ships afloat, with all its cargo on board and a man at the bow calmly eating a bun.

Even farther out, in the middle of the river, where the water is deepest, go the large ships. From here they seem almost still, with their high hulls and their mat sails taut, and one of them looks enough like Shen Fei’s ship that I give it a second look.

Although among all of them, cutting straight through the middle as if the others didn’t exist, are the ferries.

They are long and narrow, with a boatman standing at the stern and two or three benches where people sit with their bundles on their knees, and they don’t follow the river, but cross it, from one bank to the other, passing in front of everything else.

Which means that, every so often, one of them has to pass in front of a barge that can’t stop.

And when that happens, someone shouts something from the bow of the barge, the ferryman shouts something back, I don’t understand either of them, and they pass each other with a couple of meters of water between them without anyone getting the least bit flustered.

At the first of those crossings, I grip the armrests, but by the third, I no longer do.

Because that is familiar too, although in another context. In the Chinese city where I lived for a while in my other life, there were intersections without traffic lights where cars, bicycles, electric scooters and pedestrians all went through at once, and the only thing that prevented disaster was that everyone knew exactly what the person next to them was going to do.

Here there is no wheeled traffic, but the rule seems to be the same. The small one gets out of the way of the big one, the one that can stop yields to the one that can’t, and nobody ever does anything the one beside them doesn’t expect.

And then there are the ever-present street vendors.

A boat with a brazier in the middle and a pot steaming on top of it pulls alongside a barge loaded with sacks, hooks onto its gunwale with a gaff and, for as long as they sail together, the man in the boat passes bowls up while the people on the barge lower coins to him in a basket tied to a pole. When they finish, he unhooks the gaff and waits for the next one.

Lianhua, meanwhile, rows with her eyes closed as if she were alone on the river.

She clearly has the Vision of Horus active, because she easily dodges a log raft coming downstream with two men on top, moves aside in time for a ferry I didn’t see coming and slips between two fishing boats without grazing either of them.

After a good while, the bank we are following starts to curve, and the water changes.

Not all at once, but along a line that can be seen perfectly from the boat. On one side is the water of the Miao, and on the other, that of the Xun, a different shade, and for a good stretch they run side by side while they begin to mix.

Lianhua crosses that zone, and I turn my head toward the opposite bank out of curiosity.

It is ten kilometers away, so it is nothing more than a gray strip between the water and the sky, and if Hou Deming hadn’t told me that the Willow Terraces are there, with their stone platforms and their streets made of stairs, I wouldn’t know it.

On the Xun there is somewhat less traffic than on the Miao, but not much less, and Lianhua crosses it just as before, keeping close to our bank, while the sun slowly climbs until it stops shining in my face and starts beating down on the top of my head.

Finally, Lianhua turns the bow toward a stone dock that isn’t very large, with a handful of boats tied up and a couple of boatmen sitting on the edge with their feet dangling over the water.

The two of them stop talking when Lianhua sets down the ramp, and they still aren’t talking while she takes me up it.

Lu Zhiyu was right, because from the dock to the guild there are only a few streets, and you can tell we are getting close, because the shops keep changing.

First the warehouses and the fish stalls disappear, then shops start appearing with latticework on their windows and silk-lined trays on their counters, and by the end of the last street there is nothing else. Rings, hairpins, bracelets and pendants, all set out in rows on dark silk and watched over by shop assistants who look at anyone who comes near as if they were already calculating the weight of their purse.

The guild is at the end of that street, a two-story building with a roof of glazed tiles and doors lacquered in black, with bronze fittings so polished that they reflect the whole street. Above them hangs a sign of dark wood with the name carved into it and filled with gold.

Hall of Celestial Gems.

The entrance has no steps, but it does have one of those high wooden thresholds, so Lianhua turns around to take me over it backward, which is easier than wasting a Minor Levitation Talisman, and we go in.

The vestibule is smaller than that of the Hall of a Hundred Circles, but considerably more luxurious. The floor is polished stone, the columns are lacquered red, and in the walls there are niches with pieces displayed on silk cushions. A bracelet of braided silver, a ring with a green stone the size of a fingernail, a gold hairpin with a flower so delicate it looks as if it would come apart if anyone breathed near it.

I activate Sensing the Qi for just an instant, and every one within my sight lights up, making it clear that not a single one of the pieces in those niches is there merely as decoration.

And meanwhile, as always, the people in the vestibule look at us.

Although here the looks don’t go to the wheels, as in the Ten Thousand Trades Quarter, nor do they linger on the chair, as at the dock. Here they go to my clothes, to Lianhua’s, to my hands and to my neck, and it is the first time in this city that I have the distinct feeling of being appraised.

Which, considering where we are, I suppose is the professional look.

At the back there is a counter, and behind it, a receptionist. Lianhua stops me in front of it, and since the counter comes up to my chin, from where I am all I really see of her is her face, her bun and a brush suspended above an open book.

“Welcome to the Hall of Celestial Gems”, she tells us. “How may I help you?”

She says it to Lianhua, as was to be expected.

“I’d like to know what the requirements are for joining the guild”, I tell her. “Or for taking lessons, in case that is the requirement for getting in.”

The receptionist lowers her gaze to me, and simply rests the brush on the edge of the inkstone, very carefully.

“Which family is sponsoring you?” she asks me.

I stare at her.

“Family?” I ask her.

“To join the guild, the applicant must come sponsored by one of the guild’s families”, she replies. “It is the only requirement.”

She says it in the same voice one uses to announce opening hours, and that, more than what she says, is what makes me frown.

“Nobody is sponsoring me”, I tell her. “Nobody had told me that a requirement of that kind was necessary.”

“Then I am afraid I cannot process your application”, she replies.

“And is there someone who could explain to me how one gets that sponsorship?” I ask her.

The receptionist doesn’t answer me right away; she only looks toward the vestibule, then toward a staircase leading up to the second floor and then toward a side corridor, as if she were going over in her mind whom she can bother without getting into trouble.

“Wait a moment, please”, she finally tells me.

She comes out from behind the counter and goes down the side corridor, and something tells me that choice matters.

She comes back right away, and behind her comes a man.

He looks middle-aged, he wears a gray robe of good cloth but without a single embroidered stitch, and the first thing I notice is his hands, because he is drying them on a cloth as he comes. His fingers are covered in small old burns, and his fingertips are stained with something dark that looks like metal dust.

They are the hands of someone who works in a workshop, not of some kind of manager.

The man looks at me, then at the chair and then, like almost everyone, lowers his gaze for a moment to my legs.

But when he raises it again, there is something like pity on his face, although, for an instant, it seems to me that it isn’t because of my situation.

After looking at me, he picks up a stool that stands beside the counter, places it in front of me and sits down without saying anything.

The receptionist goes back to her book and dips her brush, although I don’t see her write anything.

“I am told you wish to join the guild”, he tells me.

“I want to learn about Enchantments”, I reply, deciding to be honest. “And I was told this is the guild that knows the most about them.”

“You were well informed”, he tells me.

He folds the cloth and lays it on his knee.

“May I ask why Enchantment?” he continues. “And why jewelry?”

I could tell him many things, and some of them would sound a good deal better than the truth. But this man has picked up a stool so he can talk to me face to face, so I decide that he deserves, at the very least, the same.

“I’ve been studying Enchantments since I was little”, I tell him. “But I’ve never been able to put them into practice.”

I tap the wheel with my knuckles.

“An Enchantment has to be engraved on a newly made object, and I can’t forge a sword or tan a hide”, I continue. “So I studied how jewelry is worked. Beaten sheet, filigree, granulation, settings. Everything that can be done sitting at a table, with a steady hand.”

“And I came here to go deeper into Enchantments”, I finish. “Because if there is anywhere in this city where people know about them, it’s here.”

Although everything I have told him is true, what I haven’t told him is that I studied half of it in another life, drawing pieces in field notebooks and reading excavation reports, and I don’t think that figures among the admission requirements of any guild.

The man looks at me for a moment, with his eyebrows a little higher than before.

“You know what you are talking about”, he tells me slowly.

It isn’t a question, so I don’t answer.

Then he looks at the chair again, just for an instant, and sighs.

“I am going to be frank with you”, he tells me. “Or as frank as one can be in here.”

He says it in a lower voice, and as he says it, he glances sideways toward the staircase.

“This guild is not entered by examination”, he continues. “It is entered by someone’s hand.”

He pauses briefly.

“There are a few families in Sanjiang who have been taking care of this guild for many generations”, he adds. “The best workshops are theirs, the Enchanters work for them and the masters who teach, almost all of them, bear one of their surnames. So, when someone wants to get in, one of those families sponsors them.”

Taking care of, he says.

And he says it with a great deal of care, too, and the fact that he chooses precisely that phrase already tells me quite a lot.

Because I have heard this before in this city. It is the White Hawthorn Compound all over again, only instead of streets, workshops, and instead of one family, several.

“And how does someone who doesn’t know any of those families get them to sponsor them?” I ask him.

This time he takes a while to answer, since I can see him choosing every word before letting it go.

“The families greatly appreciate anyone who shows appreciation for the craft”, he finally tells me.

“And how is that appreciation shown?” I ask him.

“The same as everywhere”, he replies. “With a gesture of goodwill toward the sponsoring family. How large a gesture depends on the family.”

He pauses again.

“And on the applicant”, he finishes.

He doesn’t say spirit stones, he doesn’t say pay, he doesn’t say a single word that anyone could repeat later in front of the wrong person, and even so he has made everything clear.

And then his eyes drop, just for an instant, to my clothes, and then move on to Lianhua, who is still standing behind me without moving a muscle.

“If you were interested in making that gesture, I could tell you which door to knock on”, he continues, even more quietly. “Not all the families are equally… demanding.”

He offers it without any hurry and without insisting, leaving it on the table the way one leaves a cup of tea in case someone feels like it. And from the way he says it, and from those hands full of burns, I don’t get the impression that he would see a single stone of whatever I paid.

He offers it the way one points a stranger to the least bad inn in the neighborhood, because it is the only thing in his power to do for them.

“And it would be a pity for someone who knows what you know to be left at the door”, he adds.

And this time, as he says it, he looks at the chair without hiding it.

Listening to him, I remember the competitions for academic posts in my other life.

At more than one university, teaching positions were put out to public competition, with their official call, their selection committee and their application deadline, all perfectly in order. And then it turned out that, among the requirements, there was one so specific, a line of research so particular or such a rare combination of merits, that in the whole world only one person met it, and that person happened to be the protégé or the nephew of the head of the department.

Everyone knew it and nobody said it, and those who applied without being that person spent months preparing for a competition that had been decided before it was ever published.

But at least there they kept up appearances, and here they don’t even bother to fake an examination; here they tell you the price straight out.

So I don’t have to think twice.

“I’m very grateful for your honesty”, I tell him. “Truly.”

The man inclines his head, only slightly, and for an instant I think I see something like hope on his face.

“But I have no intention of paying to get into a guild that is completely corrupt”, I finish.

I don’t say it loudly, but I don’t say it quietly either, and in a vestibule as silent as this one, that is enough. Behind the counter, the receptionist’s brush goes still above the book, and behind me I feel a couple of conversations break off in mid-sentence.

The man closes his eyes for a moment, but he doesn’t contradict me, which, coming from an insider, tells me more than everything he has told me so far.

He gets up slowly, picks up the stool and returns it to its place beside the counter.

“I wish you luck”, he tells me. “I mean that.”

“Thank you”, I reply.

And I turn my head toward Lianhua.

“Lianhua”, I tell her. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Yes, Xiaojie”, she replies.

She turns the chair without any hurry, crosses the vestibule among several looks that follow me with a certain hostility, gets us over the threshold and, a moment later, we are back on the street of jewelers, with the sun in our faces.

And only then, once we have left the black doors behind, do I realize that, with all this, I never even got to ask about the pendant.

I move my hand to my chest, and over my clothes, my fingers find the leaf.

It will have to wait, because there is no way I am showing the pendant to a guild like that.

We haven’t gone even half a street when Lianhua speaks.

“Xiaojie”, she tells me. “Would you like to try your luck at the Guild of Spirit Weavers?”

She asks it in her usual voice, flat and polite, but half a smile escapes me, because a while ago I told Lu Zhiyu what I think of my embroidery, and above all, because Lianhua has seen my embroidery.

“No”, I reply.

The chair keeps moving at the same pace, so I go on.

“I’d rather take the back road”, I continue. “Learn on my own.”

“Lu Zhiyu said there are plenty of books on Enchantment, precisely because there’s no guild controlling the information”, I add. “And you know I don’t want to make a living selling enchantments; what I want is to learn more about runes, and for that the books may be enough.”

Because what really interests me about all this, ever since the first time I saw one, is runes. Talismans are runes on paper, formations are runes on a surface, and an Enchantment is nothing more than runes on an object.

Lianhua says nothing, but the chair doesn’t slow down either, which makes it clear she is listening to me.

“And if someday I want to make an object, there’s a way”, I continue. “I can do exactly the opposite of what Lu Zhiyu said is normal.”

“The opposite, Xiaojie?” she asks me.

“Instead of a craftsman hiring an Enchanter to enchant what he makes, I’ll be the one hiring a craftsman to make me the object”, I tell her. “And then I’ll engrave the enchantment on it myself as soon as he’s finished it.”

At the end of the street I can already see the water, and the dock, and our boat bobbing beside its post.

“But that will be for later on”, I tell her.

Because there is something that has been going around in my head since we left the guild, and that has probably been going around in it since long before, since this morning when we started talking about weavers, embroidery and needles.

In my other life, there were machines that by then you only saw in antique shops or in the corner of some grandmother’s house, made of black iron with gold lettering, on a wooden table with an enormous iron treadle underneath.

Because before the electric ones arrived, there was a time when almost every home had one.

And in this world, every stitch of every garment is sewn by hand, including those on the brassieres I sold to the Tower of the Five Dragons a few months ago, which someone must be sewing piece by piece in some workshop.

“Because with all this talk of sewing”, I continue. “I’ve come up with a new invention that the Tower of the Five Dragons might actually be interested in.”

Lianhua keeps pushing, but she takes a couple of steps before asking, and I am sure she spent those two steps trying to guess it on her own.

“And what invention is that, Xiaojie?” she asks me.

I turn my head toward her as far as the backrest allows.

“A machine that can sew thanks to a sort of lever you work with one foot”, I reply, glossing over the fact that I am describing something I myself can’t use without resorting to some technique.