Day 19 of 30.
Zhou Dafu came back nine days early.
He came at breakfast, in a new silk robe with gold fish embroidered all over it, swimming in every direction, and behind him, filling the whole lane from wall to wall so that people had to flatten themselves into doorways, walked a puppet.
It was twice the size of the first one. Its body was dark iron instead of bronze, it had four arms instead of two, and its jade eye was the size of a dinner plate, and every step it took made the teacups rattle on every shelf in the lane and set a baby crying three houses down.
"Iron Porter, siege grade," Zhou Dafu announced to the whole lane, loudly, so that the people in the doorways could hear. "Maximum load, five thousand jin. No safety lock. I checked."
Auntie Wang slowly picked up her cabbages and carried them back inside her house, one armful at a time, without a word.
Lin Yan came to the door with his bowl of rice porridge still in his hand and a spoon in his mouth, which he took out.
"Uncle Zhou," he said. "You're early. We have nine days."
"I'm not here to take," Zhou Dafu said, smiling with all three chins. "I'm here to count. An inventory. So that on the twenty-eighth day there is no confusion about what belongs to the Silver Abacus House. I hate confusion. Confusion costs money."
The siege porter's huge eye swept in through the window, and light passed over every single thing in the room, slowly, the bed and the stool and the bucket and the soul lamp, which it skipped.
"Kettle, copper, dented. Seven copper."
"Talisman, grade 3.5, obsolete. Four copper."
"Tungsten cube. Four copper."
"Heated bowl, Left-Behind Hall. Eleven copper."
Zhou Dafu laughed. "Your bowl is worth more than your talisman now! Congratulations! Your own work beats your own luck!"
Then he pulled a scroll out of his sleeve and unrolled it, and it was so long that the bottom of it touched the ground and kept going, and he had to step on it to stop it rolling away.
"The debt," he said. "Three thousand one hundred and twelve spirit stones on the first day. Plus interest on the seventh day. Plus interest on the fourteenth day. Plus interest on the twenty-first day, which is coming. By the twenty-eighth day, the total will be..."
He tapped the gold abacus at his belt, and the beads clicked back and forth by themselves for a while, like teeth.
"Three thousand four hundred and twenty spirit stones."
The lane went still. Lin Yan's heart went down into his stomach and sat there with the porridge.
"Also," Zhou Dafu said pleasantly, "the Silver Abacus House has purchased the girl's work contract from the Rating Hall. If the debt is unpaid, she will work for us. For as long as it takes. And I do mean as long."
He rolled the scroll back up, slowly, enjoying it.
"The Sleeper," he said. "Two hundred million views. Very famous. Very honest." His smile got wider until it was nearly all of his face. "Fame and honesty are both worth four copper, little brother. I checked."
He walked away down the lane with his fish swimming, and the siege porter followed him, and the teacups rattled with every step until he turned the corner, and for a while after.
---
That afternoon the Hall sat round the big table and counted everything they had.
It was a short count.
The Sleeper's account: nothing. Every stone it earned still went straight to Zhou Dafu as interest, the same way water goes down a drain.
Lin Yan's share of the bathhouse job: one hundred and fifty stones, after paying for the tea shop's cups, every single one of which had apparently been an heirloom.
Lin Xiao's betting win and her back pay: two hundred and twenty-one stones.
The Hall's savings from bowls and repairs, after paying the landlord: two hundred and forty stones.
Auntie Aru's secret emergency jar, which she brought out from behind the rice sacks with great ceremony and set on the table as if it were a newborn: thirty stones.
Bao's savings: four copper and a button.
"Six hundred and forty-one stones," Twin Star Seven announced. "And four copper. And a button."
"Three thousand four hundred and twenty," said Lin Xiao, to nobody.
Then a man came in through the gate, middle-aged, with a nervous face and an ink-stained cuff, who had once been Old Qian's apprentice and was now something at the Scribes' Guild. He bowed low to Old Qian, lower than he needed to, the bow of a man who has come with bad news and wants it over with.
"Master Qian. I'm sorry. The Guild's council met this morning. They've decided to stop funding the Hall. The commissions are all going to the big suppliers at Heaven Gate now. Sol crews, Codex familiars." He bowed again. "They said to tell you it's nothing personal."
Old Qian did not look up from his bronze.
"Tell the council," he said, "that thirty years ago, when their fathers couldn't write, this old man taught them. For free. Tell them that's nothing personal either."
The man bowed a third time and left fast, and nearly walked into the gatepost.
Qian went back to his bronze. His needle stayed where it was, above the metal, not moving, for as long as it took the man's footsteps to fade.
---
That night Lin Yan sat alone in the courtyard with a jade card in his hand.
Wen's card.
Three hundred stones a week. You wake up, you eat, you prophesy. I write the prophecies.
Three hundred a week. Ten weeks, a little more, and the debt would be gone. Lin Xiao would be free. The Hall would be safe, and Qian could buy more needles, and Auntie Aru could put thirty stones back in her jar.
All he had to do was read somebody else's lies out loud to two hundred million people, every day, for ten weeks, and then, presumably, forever.
He turned the card over and over in his fingers until the edges were warm.
"You won't," said Threefive from his pocket.
"How do you know?"
"Because you wrote 'I don't know' in front of ten million people," said the old talisman. "And because you are holding the card the same way you held the Silver Abacus order on the first morning. As if you want to find the trap."
Lin Yan laughed, once, out of his nose.
He put Wen's card back in his pocket and took out the other one, the jade card from the Registration Hall, which glowed softly in the dark of the courtyard like something alive.
HIGH I.Q. EXAMINATION. CANDIDATE 841192.
EVERY FINALIST WINS TEN THOUSAND SPIRIT STONES.
"Round one in three days," he said.
"Three days and four hours, by my count," said Threefive. "Excuse me, have you eaten?"
"A million candidates in this city alone. Maybe forty million in the whole realm. Fifty finalists."
"Forty-one million, four hundred thousand, to be precise. The finalists are fifty."
"Duan Zhaolie will be there. He has nine sword spirits and a family that owns half the eastern furnaces."
"And the sword spirits, all nine, each with a face. I have been thinking about the faces. I do not know yet what I think."
"And I have a talisman worth four copper, a burnt arm, one open meridian, and a button."
"The button belongs to Bao," Threefive said.
Lin Yan looked at the card until the glow hurt his eyes.
In his first life he had failed four times. He had sat in a hot hall with three hundred other boys and watched the rich ones from South Delhi walk in with private tutors and good pens. He had known the answers and still frozen. He had filled in the wrong circle once, in the second year, question forty-four, and he still knew it was forty-four. He had run out of time.
And every single year his mother had said, on the phone, in the same voice, next time, for sure.
"Okay," he said.
He stood up, and his knees cracked.
"Wake everyone up."
---
A cup of tea later the whole Left-Behind Hall was sitting round the table in their sleeping clothes, blinking and yawning, Bao with his shirt on inside out and Mei with her hair in a cloth and a face that promised violence.
"This had better be good," Old Qian said.
Lin Yan put the jade card down in the middle of the table.
"Six hundred stones won't save us," he said. "Wen's money will cost more than it pays. The Guild is gone. There's one road left."
He tapped the card.
"The finals. Fifty people. Ten thousand stones each. That pays the debt three times over. That pays the Hall's rent for five years. That pays for Xiao's navigation school."
Lin Xiao's head came up so fast her neck clicked.
"I sat four exams in my first life," Lin Yan said. He did not explain it, to the others. Lin Xiao's eyes told him she knew exactly what he meant. "I failed all four. This time I'm not going alone."
He looked round the table at each of them in turn.
"Qian Ye, train my body. I have eight days before it matters most. Mei, I need you to check everything I write, because I make mistakes when I'm tired and I'm always tired. Bao, Twin Star Seven, I need every old exam paper in this realm, every question, every answer key, everything. Auntie Aru, I need you to teach me how the Western Court writes its questions. You translated their decrees for twelve years."
Aru's eyes went wide behind her glasses. Then she nodded, slowly, and pushed the glasses up her nose.
"Xiao," he said. "You rated ten thousand talisman answers a day for three years. You know how talismans get things wrong better than anyone alive. I need you to teach me."
Lin Xiao stared at him across the table, and did not say anything, and did not need to.
"Threefive," he finished. "You're coming with me into the exam hall."
The old talisman's light flared up like a small sun in the middle of the table, so bright that Bao put his hand over his eyes.
"Certainly," it said, and for once it sounded brave rather than frightened, and everyone at the table heard the difference.
Old Qian looked at the card. He looked at the young man standing over it in a borrowed sleeping shirt. He picked up his pipe and put it down again without lighting it.
"Eight days," he said. "Then you'd better start sleeping now. We begin at the fifth watch."
"The fifth watch is before dawn."
"Obviously it is," said Old Qian. "That's why it's the fifth."