Gloomy

The servant boy took a winding route, twisting this way and that, and slipped into a narrow alley. Two men he knew were standing at the gate of a certain house, shivering in the cold wind and muttering curses. "Is the young master in?" the servant boy asked softly. The two looked at him by moonlight, saw that he was one of their own, and let down their guard. One of them cursed at him. "Wang Wu, you really do have it good — you still get food and drink. Meanwhile we're stuck out here listening at the wall." Wang Wu couldn't help laughing. Lamplit glow showed inside the house, and faintly, again and again, came a woman's cries — mournful, and yet enough to set a man's heart burning. He couldn't help cursing too. "Listen with us, then." The two looked at him with gleeful malice. Wang Wu had no way out. At a time like this, Zhou She could not tolerate anyone interrupting his enjoyment. It had taken him no small effort to escape the poverty of the fishing households, and with the young master's borrowed authority behind him he could even skim a few coins for his own spending. He truly never wanted to go back to that tumbledown house of his. So he had no choice but to tuck his hands into his sleeves, stamping his feet lightly now and then to shake off the chill while he chatted with the other two. "Last time you went to Xiashachang in Songjiang Prefecture — what's that relative of yours called again?" one of them asked. "Gu Sanjian?" Wang Wu said. "Right, him. What is he to you?" "My cousin, my father's sister's son." Wang Wu said, "He's a good deal older than me, though. Why?" "Just asking." The man grinned sheepishly, then, as if he could not quite let it go, asked, "Wang Wu, when you go to Songjiang in the twelfth month, you'll still moor near Xiashachang, won't you? Why not find a way to get hold of some salt? Slip it onto the boat — nobody inspects. Zhou She won't blame you either. You won't get rich, granted, but it's no small help; it would cover our spending for a long while." The other man nodded silently, his gaze burning. Wang Wu said nothing. He had gone with the Zhou family's fleet to Shanghai three times, and each time they moored near Xiashachang. There was no other reason for it: there the reed marshes stretched on and on out of sight, thick and dense, so that even locals easily lost their way in them, let alone outsiders. Xiashachang itself was a vast salt works, split into eight boiling wards, with over fifteen thousand salt conscripts on the registers and an annual output of forty-five thousand yin of salt (one yin being four hundred jin). Wang Wu's cousin Gu Sanjian was a salt conscript in the fourth ward, living near the reed marshes at the outermost edge; his usual job was guarding the fuel store — reeds, mostly. Gu Sanjian's father, Gu Shouwu, was a salt conscript as well, and his work was boiling the brine. The salt households of the works earned very little in truth, and their days were hard. Poverty drives a man to seek a change, as the saying goes — with no money to spend, of course they had to think of something. Intercepting salt on the sly and selling it to salt smugglers was commonplace; it was only a question of whether you dared to buy. "I—" Wang Wu looked at the two of them, hesitant. "I'm not sure I'll be going." The two exchanged a look. They knew Wang Wu had lost his nerve, and both cursed him silently for a good-for-nothing, but there was nothing they could do about it. Silence settled over the three of them. A moment later, the house fell quiet as well. All three turned grave at once, stood up straight, and waited in silence. A while longer, and the door opened. Zhou She came out with a thin single-layer robe thrown over him, cursing. "Wang Wu, are you courting death? Of all the times to come, you pick now to spoil my pleasure." "Young master, I—" Wang Wu grew frantic. "Come in." Zhou She gave a cold snort and went back into the hall. Wang Wu answered, then hurried into the house at a trot with his head down, not daring to look at anything, and reported what he had observed at the Chen Family Distillery. "Foreigners? Foreigners from where?" Zhou She's gaze sharpened, and he asked without thinking. Wang Wu gaped, at a loss for words. How would he know? Zhou She waved him off and thought it over in silence. The foreigners settled in Liujiagang all had names and were known; a little inquiry would tell. He had a relative who held office in the Zhenjiang Circuit. When they drank together over the New Year last year, the man had mentioned that Zhenjiang had no more than a dozen or so Uyghur households, several dozen Huihui households, and twenty-odd Erke'un households — all of them counted and accounted for, and there could not be many. Zhenjiang did have over five hundred Uyghur, Huihui and Erke'un bondsmen besides, and, ah, more than four hundred Mongol slaves as well. There were probably more foreigners in Liujiagang than in Zhenjiang, but those who settled for good generally bought land and built houses, and most would be on the government registers; looking them up would not be hard. But another possibility occurred to him: that the foreigners who had dealings with Zheng Fan and Shao Shuyi were new arrivals who had not yet been registered. That was worth thinking about. At that thought he felt a sudden touch of glee. Sun Chuan, ah, Sun Chuan. You egged me on to move against the Zheng family and then sat back to watch the show. If the Zheng family has started undermining you, can you still sit still? Didn't you make your name twenty-odd years ago by undermining other men? Ha, interesting, interesting. Zhou She laughed aloud before he knew it, and at the same time grew somewhat wary. Was Shao Shuyi involved in this? Hard to say. At that thought, he gave a snort. This Shao Shuyi was far too restless, clawing his way upward by any means, and Zhou She disliked him for it. So eager to be sunk to the bottom of the Lou River? You dare touch anything, offend anyone — if you don't die, who will? ****** Zhou Ziliang waited in Liujiagang several days, and it was not until the twentieth of the eleventh lunar month that he finally got to see Sun Chuan. At that time Sun Chuan was drinking tea with his three sons, chatting about this and that. Seeing Zhou Ziliang come, he cleared his throat lightly and waved the three of them away. As the three left, the eldest son and the second son, whether on purpose or not, shoved their younger brother amid their laughter and nearly sent him sprawling. The third son flushed red with anger but dared not say anything; he only walked off with his head down in another direction, as if going to complain to his mother. "It's late in the eleventh month, Zhou She. Why aren't you at home taking your ease? What brings you to me?" Sun Chuan asked with a smile. Zhou Ziliang laughed heartily. "Squire Sun, disaster is at hand." Sun Chuan shook his head and laughed. This young dandy turned every rumor into a downpour; he would first see what trick the boy was playing. Seeing Sun Chuan show no reaction at all, Zhou Ziliang was a little disappointed, but he told him everything he knew all the same. When he had heard it all, the smile on Sun Chuan's face stiffened slightly. He rose without hurry, drew his fur coat tighter, pulled in his protruding belly, then clasped his hands behind his back and looked at the plants in the courtyard. It was the depths of winter now, and every plant had withered — much like the state of affairs at present. Sun Chuan looked for a long while without moving, then cupped his hands toward Zhou Ziliang. "Thank you for the warning, Zhou She. However—" Zhou Ziliang stood up as well and looked at Sun Chuan. "Twenty years of wind and rain, and I came through all of it." Sun Chuan smiled. "Now that I'm old, do you think a child's coffin could do me in?" Zhou Ziliang sneered to himself. He had heard his late father speak of Sun Chuan, and say that the man had been ruthless in his youth. At about the age Shao Shuyi is now, he had come from Zhenjiang to make his way in Liujiagang — first helping out in his uncle's shop, then setting up on his own, climbing slowly upward on sheer ruthlessness and scheming. His father had been vague about the details, but Zhou Ziliang suspected it had not been so simple. Some brokers could not collect enough tax and were cast off by the Maritime Trade Supervisorate, their houses ruined. Some brokers were thick as thieves with foreign merchants and seafaring merchants at first, and later drifted far apart. And some brokers died for no clear reason, and once the tree fell, the monkeys scattered. In twenty years Sun Chuan had gone from being nobody worth noticing to a name known throughout Liujiagang; there had to be a reason for it. And today Liujiagang had another ruthless young man in it. "Enough. I'll go ask at the Maritime Trade Supervisorate tomorrow." Sun Chuan turned back around and said with a smile, "Even if the Zheng family has a hand in it, what of it? It's nothing more than—" He made a grabbing motion in the cold wind. "A little wind and frost, that's all." "I admire you, I admire you," Zhou Ziliang said. Sun Chuan sat back down in his chair, toying with his porcelain cup, and asked with a smile, "The Taizhou goods reach Songjiang on the fifteenth of the twelfth month, don't they? By then the naval patrols will have grown slack and won't be making many rounds. The usual place?" "The usual place, yes." Zhou Ziliang nodded. "Nobody bothers with that stretch; they can even go ashore at night." Sun Chuan grunted and said no more. "What sort of goods are they?" Zhou Ziliang asked curiously. Sun Chuan shot him a glance and said unhurriedly, "No harm in telling you. Goryeo celadon, bronze wares, Goryeo ginseng, Goryeo pine nuts, Silla lacquer, paper, hawk and swan meat, dried seafood, and the like." Zhou Ziliang understood at once: a Goryeo merchant ship had been robbed. Where it had been done he did not know, but most likely in the waters off Wenzhou — the Yuan dynasty had only three Maritime Trade Supervisorates, at Qingyuan, Quanzhou and Guangzhou, yet Wenzhou had a Maritime Trade Branch Office (under Qingyuan). "Not worth much," he said, smacking his lips. "There's real craft in Goryeo celadon — inlay, white piling, carving, printed patterns, painted designs — and plenty of people love it." Sun Chuan shook his head. "Silla lacquer dries faster than Chinese lacquer, and it's prettier, with a good sheen. Nowadays, when you make furniture of any kind, what household doesn't finish it with a last coat of Silla yellow lacquer? Goryeo pine nuts are a favorite of the rich and noble. Their bronze wares aren't bad either, and they have many admirers..." "All right, all right, I'm an ignorant man," Zhou Ziliang said helplessly. Sun Chuan said no more and only played with the lid of his cup. Zhou Ziliang sat there awkwardly for a while, found it dull, and took his leave. Once his figure had disappeared, Sun Chuan's face turned gloomy all at once. He had not wanted an open clash with the Zheng family, so he had held back. He had not expected them to press him step by step, without leaving him the slightest scrap of face. And that Shao Shuyi was truly irritating. Sun Chuan was seven parts in ten certain that Shao Shuyi could not be separated from this business, for if the Zheng family had wanted to approach foreigners, they would have acted long ago. Why wait until now? Why couldn't you just live out your days as a boat household, quietly and plainly? Why did you have to climb? You've overreached yourself!