Brothers

The dinner had been a thoroughly cheerful affair. Its one blemish, perhaps, was that it had cleaned out every last coin of Yu Yuan's pocket money. By the time the moon had risen above the willows, Yu Chu took his leave and went to stay at the post station. He had come to Liujiagang on official business in the first place, and had only stopped by to see his younger brother on the way. Yu Yuan stayed on in the little courtyard. Even at bedtime he was still fussing over that bronze hand cannon; he'd handled it so much he was practically rubbing a patina into it. Even after he climbed into bed he went on murmuring to himself, his hands going through the motions of loading the powder and ramming in the shot one after another, until Liang Tai sat up and gave him a look — only then did he quiet down. Shao Shuyi and Kong Tie shared a room, talking freely of the past and looking ahead to the future. "Actually, the best way to Dadu is still by sea," Kong Tie said. "Head north in the third month, and you're there by the fourth." Shao Shuyi nodded. An oil lamp burned on the table, and beside it sat a pouch of frankincense. He fingered the pouch of aromatic resin without thinking, pondering quietly. In truth, he understood: for the Yuan dynasty, going by ship from Liujiagang to Zhigu was already a relatively safe route. When to set out, which way to go, which way not to go, where to put in along the way, which stretches of sea were more dangerous and called for extra vigilance, where pirates were likely to surface — all of it was well charted. That was what they called a "mature" route. On an untried route, every step had to be explored for yourself, and the odds of a shipwreck were high. That was why the pioneers who opened up new routes were so remarkable — they were truly risking their lives, and those who came after could often feel their way across in their wake, and travel far more safely for it. "On this trip north, we actually reached Zhigu by the fifth month," Kong Tie went on. "But then we waited several months and didn't weigh anchor for home until the eighth. After a haul like that, who knows how many men can't take the strain. If you really want to buy a ship, there's no reason you can't. Some men don't even bother repairing their vessels anymore — they're getting ready to flee with their whole families." Shao Shuyi nodded again. Keeping a ship had its costs — repairs and upkeep, and those came to no small sum. Before setting out it needed a major overhaul to check for every kind of hidden trouble, and that cost money. After returning it needed repairs and upkeep again, plus there was now the extra chore of scraping the hull, which cost money as well. And the sums could vary enormously: there was a poor man's way of maintaining a ship and a rich man's way. The former cost less but lowered safety; the latter bought more safety but cost far more. In short, picking up a ship at this moment might not be so hard, but holding onto one long-term came at no small cost. "I still want to—" Shao Shuyi rubbed the pouch of aromatic resin. "Frankincense isn't cheap," Kong Tie said with a glance at it. "The year before last I went along on a ship to Qingyuan. When the Maritime Trade Supervisorate levied its tax, it classed frankincense, aloeswood, sandalwood, cloves, ambergris, and storax oil all together as fine goods. That batch you have on hand—" "Here in Liujiagang it only fetches four ding a jin," Shao Shuyi said. "The elder Officer Zheng says it'll sell for a bit more in Suzhou and Hangzhou." Kong Tie said no more. To have said this much today was already an exception for him. Since Xiaohu had come to his own way of thinking, there was no forcing him down — you couldn't press a man like that into place by main strength. All Kong Tie worried about now was that once Xiaohu had a ship, it might bring disaster down on him. Shao Shuyi said no more either. He tucked the frankincense carefully away, blew out the oil lamp, and lay down to sleep in his clothes. Kong Tie squeezed further inward to make room. With a laugh, Shao Shuyi moved to sleep at the other end. In the darkness, Kong Tie smiled faintly too. Wang Huadu and Yu Yuan were the two he had introduced to Xiaohu. They hadn't been close at first, but after these few months, both had come to trust Xiaohu deeply — and for a time that had left him feeling a little out of place. But it didn't matter now. They were all brothers struggling for their lives together in this rotten world; what was the point of keeping such count? * * * After the rooster crowed for the third time, Kong Tie rose and went out into the courtyard. Wang Huadu was splitting firewood with an axe, grumbling away to himself. "I practice the axe to kill men, not to chop wood." As if in a great temper, he sent the wood flying in every direction. The little girl crept up beside him, hands clasped behind her back, timid. "What are you looking at?" Wang Huadu snapped. "Go help your mother with the fire." The little girl said "oh," and before she went, she brought her hands out from behind her and held out a flatbread to him. "Daddy, I got this for you." Wang Huadu froze where he stood. After a moment, he gently took the flatbread and muttered, "Got myself a daughter on the cheap, and she's dutiful enough." The little girl darted off. Yu Yuan held the bronze hand cannon in his left hand, murmuring to himself, while his right hand twitched every so often as if in a spasm. From the look of him, he seemed to be tipping something from his loosely closed fist into the muzzle, then jamming something else in and giving it a few forceful tamps. Having run through the whole sequence once and finding it wanting, Yu Yuan drew a deep breath and began a second round. Liang Tai stood off in the distance, a gleaming ring-pommel saber in hand, drilling with meticulous precision. It was the first time Kong Tie had seen a military household man practice the martial arts, and he found it rather interesting. In the countryside, when men brawled, they sometimes used weapons too, and the ring-pommel saber was a common one. But such men mostly went on raw courage alone, swinging their blades wildly with no real method to it. Liang Tai's movements, by contrast, were far easier on the eye — clean and economical, nothing superfluous, never spending effort where it wasn't needed. His whole approach came down to simplicity, speed, and precision; every technique was thoroughly practical. If he had a wilder streak in him, and were willing to stake his life, you could turn him loose and he'd be a man who could rule a whole village by force — even fiercer than those other men, since they mostly had no real skill to fall back on and it came down to nothing but who was more ruthless. One more remained. Kong Tie searched with his eyes and soon spotted Shao Shuyi. He was conditioning his body over by the wall, and his movements were somewhat strange. "Doing push-ups," Shao Shuyi said with a grin, panting. "In a few days I'll have someone rig up a wooden bar so I can work on pull-ups." What kind of gibberish was that? Kong Tie couldn't make sense of a word. "Got to work on squats, too." After his last push-up, Shao Shuyi stood up and laughed. "In the future, if ever the time comes... uh... at least some woman won't be telling me I'm no good." "Brother Shao, there are stone lions in front of Sun Chuan's gate. How about young Yu and I steal them one night to give you something to train your strength on? Save you from always sprawled out on the ground," Wang Huadu put in from the side. "I don't steal things," Yu Yuan said instinctively. Then, having said it, he stole a glance at Shao Shuyi, lowered his head, and said in a small voice, "If you really want them, brother..." "No! Is that all the ambition you two have got?" Shao Shuyi scolded with a laugh. Then he gave a light sniff. "The rice porridge smells just right today — let's eat." Everyone answered in unison, then looked at one another and burst out laughing. Kong Tie laughed too. Without anyone quite noticing when it had happened, Xiaohu's standing among them had been firmly established. * * * After breakfast, Kong Tie took his leave. Shao Shuyi asked him to look in on how his home was doing on the way — his exact words were "see whether the house has fallen down yet." Kong Tie was happy to oblige. He lived to the west of the Shao family's place, with nothing but a small stream and a bamboo grove in between. Both his parents had passed away, but he still had brothers and sisters, and the family got by with difficulty — even paying their taxes was a struggle. Fortunately, having come back from this voyage with several ding of paper money, he should be able to pay next year's kechai. But if he was called up for miscellaneous corvée duties, things would turn dangerous at once — corvée service paid nothing and often carried a man off for months, badly disrupting everything, and that was to say nothing of the dangers the duty itself posed. "Xiaohu, I've gotten to know some people on this voyage," Kong Tie said in a low voice before leaving. "I can keep an eye out for you on the matter of a ship." Shao Shuyi gave a slight nod. After hearing Kong Tie talk about the grain-transport fleets yesterday, he could already barely contain his eagerness. If factories could be sold off for a single yuan in modern times, why not in ancient times? The main reason they went so cheap was that the factory had already become a bad asset, saddled with a mountain of debt; and unless a man was willing to cut off his own arm to save the rest, the bleeding would only worsen until it dragged the whole body down. The ships in the hands of the boat households were really just hot potatoes. The previous time the Provincial Branch Secretariat had conscripted wealthy households as new boat households, some men sold their ships for a pittance or gave them away for nothing — and the reason was really the same. Another way for a boat household to evade corvée duty was the guohu — transferring a ship's registration into another man's name — what the common people called gui ji: the vessel would be registered under one man's name while another used it day to day. Needless to say, that came at a price. Shao Shuyi didn't expect to get a ship for nothing; he only hoped to pay as little as he could. There was no harm in trying, was there? After Kong Tie left, Shao Shuyi went back to work at the shop. So it went until the end of the tenth month, when the summer transport fleet also returned and the foreign merchants' ships all departed, and Liujiagang settled into its quiet season of the year. On the tenth day of the eleventh month, Shao Shuyi left the celadon shop and, taking Wang Huadu and Yu Yuan with him, sailed west back to Taicang. There was nothing urgent, really; he'd been away from Taicang for a long while, and was going back for a look. On top of that, the scar-faced man had asked him to come by the Xiachuan boatyard to discuss the coming trip to Suzhou. Around noon, just as Shao Shuyi and the others disembarked at the Sea Transport Granary and had only just reached home, Kong Tie came over from a distance. "There's a lead on the ship," he said.