Meandering River, Ardent Flame

by Vivian Chak

  Chapter 6: Bianjing

  Flame watched as her sister returned from a noodle stand, carrying the several bowls that her alms had afforded her. They had reached Bianjiang that morning, and after collecting several coins, Jiang had decided to rid herself of the money as soon as possible, deeming it un-Buddhist to be carrying cash. Flame didn't mind. It was noon and she was hungry. She took the proffered bowl. Wong looked up from his.

  “Did you purposely choose the oldest noodles?” The monk was evidently finding fault with them. Flame looked at the bowl. They were slightly overcooked and fused together, with a stingy portion of meat and vegetable covering them. She bit a noodle. It tasted slightly sour, and after a few more, she wanted to pitch the bowl.

  “I was given these bowls,” her sister said, sounding somewhat defensive. She ate all the noodles. Flame expected it. Her sister always had an appetite after morning meditation.

  “Ah, one would think that I had been a glutton in my previous life, to be paired with such ill providers of food,” sighed the monk. A haughty-looking man wearing a bejeweled sword passed by the stand. Flame watched him clink several sections from his string of coppers. He was spooned a bowl much larger than her own. She returned to the stand, handing back the bowl.

  “How much for a bowl like that?” asked Flame, indicating the nobleman's noodles.

  “Six qian,” replied the noodle seller gruffly.

  “What?” Flame was outraged. The price was at least twenty times too much.

  “You clergy have it too good,” the vendor snapped, jabbing his finger at Jiang and Wong, “living off the profits of your large holdings. Go ask them for cash.” Flame clenched her fists and turned to leave.

  “Wait,” said the nobleman. “Call them over,” he told Flame, waving a hand languidly in the direction of her sister. Jiang came over. Wong stayed a few paces back.

  “Here,” the man said, hands clasping Jiang's a few moments too long to be proper, as he handed over a string of coppers. “Master Yuan pays his compliments to a morning blossom. Ask at the Inn of Qian.” He stood up and left, jeweled scabbard knocking the wooden posts of the noodle stand as he did so. Her sister stared after him, coppers in hand. Wong raised an eyebrow.

  “You're not having those,” Flame told the vendor, as she pulled Jiang out. The vendor snorted.

  “What was that all about?” Flame asked Brother Wong, as they walked from the noodle stand. Wong sniffed.

  “He just tried to buy your sister there,” explained the monk. Flame noticed that her sister looked mortified, usual composure forgotten.

  “What?” Both of them spoke at once. Wong sighed.

  “You're not at the monastery anymore. Surely you know that men have appetites for more than noodles?” Flame had some vague idea of what he meant, having heard, in passing, pieces of gossip from village girls, but Jiang looked red and furious.

  “I'm a nun!”

  Wong appraised her coolly. “It'll take more than shaving your head bald to hide your face.” Flame glanced at her sister. Jiang did look somewhat like their mother, features composed in dignified manner, eyebrows in delicate tilt. Even the shock didn't detract completely from her sister's otherwise more than agreeable face. Flame found herself wondering if she could be given coins too, simply by looking beautiful. It would be useful.

  “I think I want a cowl,” Jiang said. “Even if I'm not to have that many extra articles of clothing,” she added, invoking more of the endless rules that Flame could never completely remember.

  “I'll buy it,” said Flame, quickly. Her sister definitely couldn't bargain, given that she had just handed over too many coppers for bad bowls of food.

  “Alright then,” said Jiang, handing Flame the string. Grasping the stringed coins tightly in hand, Flame headed for the market.

  Bianjing was large, but Flame could find her way to the markets by the Grand Canal simply by following her nose. The fish at the market smelled strongly. It was near midday, a fact that Jiang had expressed with great interest when they had sighted the clock tower. Powered by a continuous stream of water, Jiang explained that it kept time and showed the movements of celestial bodies. Flame thought it would have been more practical to have a portable one, and Wong said that one could just look at the sky, but her sister had been fascinated to see something out of her books constructed in wood.

  The market was set alongside the Canal by which the merchants shipped their wares. Flame saw an abundance of things being sold—rices, bolts of silk, writing services, and even weapons. She looked around. Weapons seemed to be in great supply, unlike hoods. Those only seemed to come in silk, which promised to be expensive. She looked for a better alternative, and after some searching, Flame spotted a hat stand. It displayed an assortment of wide-brimmed straw hats.

  These would serve. Flame bargained the price down to sixty wen; sixty copper coins. The nobleman had given her sister at least five hundred such coins, all strung through their square holes, but Flame didn't want to waste.

  She wondered why so many stands sold weapons. A shout caught her attention. Turning around, she spotted an angry soldier, sword drawn, yelling at a merchant. From what Flame heard, it seemed that he had been sold a faulty saddle with a seat had been glued instead of studded together.

  “Old Yuan always sells the worst saddles,” commented a nearby vendor, who was also selling saddles, “so don't you buy his things.”

  “Really?” Flame wondered if he was trying to get her to buy from him. The vendor threw up his hands.

  “It's the truth. Day after day this happens, and then honest folks like me don't get any customers.”

  “He gives us merchants a bad name,” grumbled another, who sold swords instead of saddles. “Maybe this time the regulators will fine him.”

  The saddle seller snorted. “He's spent hundreds of taels in bribes to avoid just that.”

  “And I thought it was because he has the Long Knife gang to intimidate them.”

  “He's got both,” sniffed the saddle seller. “Canny Yuan's not going to have one without the other, lest the other turn on him.”

  A yell interrupted them. One of the merchant's hired securities had tried to disarm the soldier, who in return, had smashed in the man's nose with the sword pommel.

  “Well!” Flame thought the sword vendor looked pleased.

  “He'd best leave,” commented the saddle seller, “before Yuan gets the office on him.” But the soldier didn't leave. Instead, he pointed his blade at the merchant, shaking his faulty purchase with the other hand.

  “You all know he cheats you here, don't you?” the soldier whirled on the bystanders, blade pointing everywhere. The merchant's clients moved back a respectable few paces, nodding in agreement.

  “Give them their cash, then,” said the swordsman, turning to the merchant with a satisfied nod. Flame found herself nodding in agreement.

  “He's going to have constables in a few seconds.” The saddle seller looked confident.

  “Don't be ridiculous,” the sword vendor snapped back. “Even constables have no respect for us merchants. He'll most likely get the Long Knives on him, right now, to avoid losing face.” And it seemed the sword vendor was right. Two men, dao in hand, shoved their way to the front of the crowd and threw themselves at the swordsman.

  Something told Flame that she should probably leave, but another part of her wanted to see how efficient the swordsman was. The soldier's blade had the longer reach on the dao, but there were two of them. She watched interestedly as the soldier positioned himself so as to be facing only one of the two men. The first dao attacked. The swordsman wasted no time in avoiding the slice, and then whirled his own blade under the other man's, to bite the leg. When the second man attacked, he knocked the dao aside with his blade in a heavy slash. The steel rang loudly, and the second man stumbled forward. The sword was deftly thrust through the hired blade's throat as he fell. A third man came from nowhere, short blade in hand to jump at the soldier from behind
, but the swordsman whirled to meet him swiftly, and with his longer blade, easily ran the other through.

  “Give them their money,” the soldier repeated, still baring his blade. “And give me mine.” Flame sympathized with him, over all the trouble he had taken to rid himself and fellow customers of the merchant Yuan's outrageous cheating. Old Yuan, stone-faced, called his assistants to return the coins to the soldier. Satisfied, the man left. The rest of the merchant's clients quickly finished their business, faces polite, as if nothing had happened.

  “Oh ho!” exclaimed the sword vendor. “I was right! And Old Yuan's been humbled!”

  “Don't you think he'll stay that way for long. You'll likely be selling that hot-tempered soldier's sword by this time tomorrow,” the saddle vendor said darkly. Then he brightened. “At least I'll have more business for a few days.” Flame had been viewing the sword vendor's wares throughout this short exchange. Now she turned to him.

  “What can I buy for three qian?” she asked, though she had about five qian. She was curious to see how cheaply steel would sell for.

  “You'll want more than a few taels if you're looking to buy anything remotely new for your brother or whoever,” the vendor told her.

  “What if it's old?”

  “Your father a blacksmith or something?” The vendor rummaged under his stand. “I've a bad-luck sword right here—nice for melting.” He rattled a dirty-looking scabbard with a Tang-style sword. Flame drew it out for inspection.

  “It looks fine.” The steel was smooth, clear of rusty specks, and the two edges—Flame noted this with interest—were still sharp. The saddle seller snorted.

  “That's because he wants to get rid of it.”

  “You're right, I do,” shot back the sword seller. “And if this young lady's father is going to buy it for a bowl of rice and melt it down, I'll consider it a profit.” He turned back to Flame.

  “Two qian,” he said. Flame didn't bother to bargain. Two qian could buy about seven bowls of normally-priced noodles, and her sister had just spent three times as much on terrible ones.

  “That's inexpensive of you,” Flame commented, wondering what was wrong with the blade.

  “There's nothing wrong with the steel,” the vendor said, as if reading her thoughts. “It's just a bad-luck blade, of the old style, that no one wants. I got lots of better ones coming in, from fighting with Jurchens and all, lately. You make sure your father melts this one soon. Don't want ghosts around.”

  So that was where the influx of weapons was coming from. Flame wondered how close to the capital the Jurchen rebels were. Though it didn't matter. She would be leaving soon anyway.

  Thinking of Wong and Jiang made her wonder if she'd worried them by taking so long. She still remembered how being late had upset Sister Ma. But looking up, she saw the two running towards her.