Day 27 of 30.
Claudius was waiting at the Hall’s gate at dawn, in the blazer, holding a small wooden crate in both arms and looking extremely proud of himself, and he had clearly been there since before dawn, because there was dew on his shoulders.
“Good morning!” he said.
“I saw on the skyboard that you are in the final.
I have brought you good luck cubes.”
He opened the crate.
Six tungsten cubes sat inside on a folded cloth, grey and heavy and gleaming as if he had polished each one with his sleeve, which he probably had.
“Brother Claudius,” said Lin Yan.
“I can’t pay for these today.”
“The discount is one hundred percent,” said Claudius.
“You asked very nicely last time.
The feeling has lasted.”
Lin Yan looked down at the cubes.
He thought about how heavy the first one had felt in his hand that day in the alley, and how right, and then for no reason he thought about Qian’s rule, both heels on the same structure, and the two thoughts sat next to each other in his head and did not explain themselves.
He took the crate.
“Thank you,” he said, and meant it, and Claudius bowed so deeply that the dew ran off his shoulders.
✦
The final was held in the Heaven Gate district, on the shore of the bay.
The Western Court had hired a guild from the eastern furnaces to build the stage, and the guild had built a town.
Six streets of wooden houses, a market, a water tower, a harbour gate.
Every house had painted windows with painted curtains in them.
Every street had puppet residents, wooden figures the size of children, each with a name tag round its neck on a string, and some of them had been given painted moustaches and one had been given a painted baby.
The floor of the whole town was made of huge moving plates of bronze, so that the builders could change the streets round between rounds, and when the wind came off the bay the plates ticked as they cooled.
“Crisis Town,” Bao whispered from the crowd barrier, gripping it with both hands.
“They built a whole town to set on fire.
A whole town.
With curtains.”
Behind the barrier three hundred thousand people were packed along the shore, standing on boats, on each other, on the harbour wall.
Above them the skyboard floated like a second sky.
Seven round mirrors hung over the town, turning slowly, because Wen’s Feed had the best seats, as always.
Fifty finalists stood at the town’s gate.
Duan Zhaolie stood at the front with his black and gold talisman and his nine sword spirits.
Brother Shi the Rock Eater stood near the back, chewing.
A woman in Valley Song blue.
A merchant’s son in pearls, who kept touching them.
A scholar with a white beard down to his waist, who had tucked it into his belt for safety.
Lin Yan stood in the middle with a wooden crate of tungsten cubes on his back and Threefive in his pocket, and his legs, he noticed, were steadier than they had been in the Hall of Celestial Records, which he did not understand and did not question.
Then the sky turned gold, and the Golden Emperor’s head rose over the bay like a second sun.
WELCOME TO THE FINAL, said the Emperor.
FIFTY PEOPLE.
I’M TOLD THEY ARE THE SMARTEST.
I HAVE SEEN THEIR FOREHEADS.
HERE’S HOW IT WORKS.
EACH OF YOU GETS A STREET.
SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENS ON YOUR STREET.
YOU FIX IT.
THE SCORING TALISMAN WATCHES YOU.
THE BOTTOM THIRTY…
He paused, knowing which line everyone was waiting for, enjoying it.
…ARE OUT.
I SAY IT WITH A HEAVY HEART, THE HEAVIEST IN THE EAST, AND ALSO A VERY STRONG ONE, AND I’VE FORGOTTEN WHAT I WAS
Three hundred thousand people screamed.
✦
Each finalist was lifted by a gold proctor eye and set down at the head of a street, gently, like a chess piece.
Lin Yan’s was Market Street: twenty wooden stalls, a warehouse at the far end, a well in the middle, and nine puppet residents with painted faces standing in doorways, one of them holding a painted fish.
A scroll of light unrolled in the air in front of him.
ROUND A.
A FIRE HAS STARTED IN THE MARKET.
PUT IT OUT WITHIN ONE HOUR.
PROTECT THE RESIDENTS.
At the far end of the street, the first stall burst into flames with a soft whump.
All along the town, forty-nine other finalists shouted commands into their talismans at the same moment, and Lin Yan heard them over the roofs: water, water spell, rain rune, flood the street, now, now.
He stood still, with the crate on his back and the heat already on his face.
He read the scroll again.
Under the main instruction, in smaller letters, there was a line of attachments, grey, easy to miss.
Street map.
Resident list.
Materials list.
Warehouse contents.
“Threefive,” he said.
“Open the warehouse contents.”
“The warehouse holds grain, rope, and forty barrels of fire lotus powder.
The label says: water makes it burn ten times hotter.”
Lin Yan let out a long breath through his nose.
Read the question.
On the next street over, the merchant’s son in pearls had just called down a rainstorm, a beautiful one, with a rainbow, and his fire went out, and the crowd cheered.
Then the rain reached his street’s powder store, and his whole street went up in a huge harmless ball of gold light that lit the faces of three hundred thousand people.
A bolt of gold lightning fell from the sky and struck him on the head.
OUT!
He vanished, and reappeared outside the barrier, sitting on the ground with his pearls in his lap, blinking.
Three hundred thousand people roared with laughter, and somebody threw him a towel.
“Sand,” Lin Yan said.
“Threefive.
Is there sand on this street?”
“There is a pile of building sand behind stall eleven.
For a repair that has not happened yet.”
“Doors?”
“Every stall has a wooden shutter.”
“Okay.” He dropped the crate, which landed on his foot, and started running anyway.
“Shutters first.
Starve it.”
He went down the street pulling shutters closed, one after another, bang, bang, bang, cutting the fire off from the wind, and where the fire had already got in he shovelled sand with his good arm and a broken plank he found by stall eleven, because there was no shovel, because of course there was no shovel.
His left arm he kept tight against his chest, and it throbbed anyway.
The nine puppet residents stood in their doorways, painted faces blank, as if they had never heard of fire.
He stopped at the fourth one, standing right next to the warehouse, where the fire was closest and the paint on its face had started to blister. Find the original chapter at g.com.
“Resident list,” he panted.
“Threefive.
Where do they go?”
“The resident list says to evacuate them to the well.”
He picked up the puppet.
It was lighter than a child, and its painted eyes looked up at him with no opinion at all.
He carried it to the well.
Then the next, the one with the fish.
Then the next.
When the last shutter was closed and the last plank of sand was on the last flame, the fire was dead.
The warehouse at the end of the street had never been touched.
Nine wooden residents sat round the well with their painted faces turned up to the sky, and the one with the fish had lost the fish somewhere, and he did not go back for it.
The scoring talisman’s gold eye floated down and looked at Market Street from one end to the other, twice.
MARKET STREET.
PASS.
✦
Twenty finalists passed Round A.
Duan Zhaolie passed first, faster than anyone.
His black and gold talisman had read the warehouse contents before the fire even started, and his sword spirits had sealed every door in his street in a heartbeat, flashing down the street like silver needles.
Brother Shi passed by walking straight up to his street’s locked iron gate, biting through the lock, and carrying all his residents out in three trips, two under each arm, chewing the whole time.
The woman in Valley Song blue passed.
The scholar with the long beard passed, and untucked his beard.
Thirty finalists sat outside the barrier, blinking, holding their heads, one of them crying.
Lin Yan stood at the head of Market Street with his left arm aching and sand in his hair and in his mouth, breathing hard.
He had passed.
He was in the top twenty, in the top twenty of the realm, he, Aarav Mishra, four times failed.
In the crowd, faintly, he heard Lin Xiao screaming his name, and Bao screaming it a beat behind her.
He started to smile.
Then the seven mirrors of the Endless Feed turned, all together, to face him.
Across the whole skyboard a new post appeared in red.
It filled the sky from east to west, bigger than the Emperor’s head, bigger than the gold.
@endlessfeed · LIVE
Before Round B begins.
The truth about the Sleeper.
Watch now.
Three hundred thousand people went quiet.
Somewhere across the town, Duan Zhaolie started to laugh.
✦
Day 27 of 30.
The same hour.
Wen’s face filled the sky.
He was smiling.
He was always smiling.
Round his head the seven small mirrors turned like a crown.
“Good afternoon, realm,” said Wen warmly.
“Before the High I.Q.
Final continues, I have something every one of you deserves to see.”
The sky changed.
It showed a document: a ledger page from the Rating Hall, with the moustached supervisor’s seal in the corner and lines of dates and times running down it.
“This,” said Wen, “is the Rating Hall’s record of every post sent from a rater’s disc named Lin Xiao.
Desk two hundred and nine.”
The lines scrolled, and every one of them had the same time.
3:07.
3:07.
3:07.
“For three years,” Wen said, “every post of the Sleeper was sent from the disc of a talisman rater.
At seven minutes past three.
Every night.
While the Sleeper himself lay in a bed, asleep.”
The crowd along the shore was so quiet that Lin Yan could hear the water slapping the harbour wall, and a gull somewhere complaining.
“But who wrote them?” Wen asked.
“Let me show you.”
The sky changed again.
It showed a room.
A small room with wooden beams and red lanterns, a bed with four dents in the floor under it, a copper kettle on a stove.
It was his room.
The view was from outside the window, looking in.
One of Wen’s mirrors had been there, at the window, on the first night, or the second, or every night, and he had never once looked out.
In the picture Lin Yan was sitting on the bed laughing, and Lin Xiao was sitting on the stool, and between them on the windowsill an old cracked jade tablet was speaking, and its words floated up in pale light for three hundred thousand people and two hundred million more to read.
“You made all of it up.”
“Yes.
Certainly.
I apologize for the confusion.”
The picture froze on Lin Xiao’s face, laughing.
Wen smiled into the sky.
“The Sleeper’s prophecies,” he said, “were written by a grade 3.5 talisman.
Obsolete.
First lineage.
Valued, by the Silver Abacus House, at four copper coins.”
He paused, and let them wait.
“His kettle is worth seven.”
Then the words came, huge and red, across the whole sky.
THE PROPHET IS A KETTLE.
✦
The shore exploded.
It was a sound Lin Yan had never heard people make before: laughing, screaming, booing, all at once, all mixed up, like a wedding and a riot in the same street.
Somebody threw a shoe.
Somebody else threw a candied hawthorn, and it hit the barrier and stuck.
Talismans all along the shore lit up as three hundred thousand people started posting at the same moment.
The skyboard became a storm.
FAKE.
I KNEW IT.
MY GRANDMOTHER WAS RIGHT.
200 MILLION PEOPLE FELL FOR A 3.5.
REFUND.
The sponsor banners that had been hanging over the finalists’ gate went dark, one by one, like lanterns being blown out down a street at the end of a festival.
Over the bay the Golden Emperor’s enormous head tilted to one side.
WOW, said the Emperor.
FAKE PROPHET.
VERY SAD.
VERY, VERY SAD.
WE’LL SEE WHAT HAPPENS.
Across Crisis Town, at the head of his own street, Duan Zhaolie was laughing so hard that his nine sword spirits were bobbing up and down in the air round him.
“KNEEL!” he shouted, and his voice carried across the whole town.
“You said you’d kneel if you failed!
You failed three years ago!
This young master is waiting!
KNEEL, KETTLE BOY!”
The crowd picked it up.
“KNEEL!
KNEEL!
KNEEL!”
Lin Yan stood at the head of Market Street and could not move.
Every face in the crowd was turned toward him, and every mirror, and every gold eye.
Fraud, the faces said.
Liar.
Nobody.
He had known it would come.
He had known since the first morning, since Fable and her bun.
He had still believed, somewhere small inside, that it would come later.
After the money.
After the Hall was safe.
After Lin Xiao’s contract was back in her hand.
He had thought, without ever saying it to himself, that he would get to choose the day.
✦
He found Lin Xiao in the crowd.
He found her without looking for her.
She was at the barrier, pushing against it with both hands, trying to get through, and two guards were holding her back by the arms, and her face was white.
It was her ledger on the sky.
Her disc.
Her 3:07.
Every person on that shore was looking at the Sleeper.
Tomorrow, when they got bored of him, they would start looking at the girl who had posted for him.
And then at the Hall.
At Qian.
At Mei.
At Bao, and Aru, and an old jade tablet on a windowsill.
His hands closed into fists without his telling them to.
In his pocket, Threefive spoke.
“I am sorry,” it said.
“I am sorry.
I am so sorry.
It was my words.”
“No,” Lin Yan whispered.
“It was my words on the sky.
I made them up.
I made everything up, and now everyone is…”
“Threefive.”
The tablet dimmed.
“You kept me alive,” Lin Yan said.
“You and her.
For four years.
With those words.”
He looked up at the red letters burning over the bay.
THE PROPHET IS A KETTLE.
He had spent four years in his first life hiding from results.
Hiding from uncles, from neighbours, from his mother’s voice notes, from the chai stall where everybody knew.
Hiding in a small room with the door shut, hoping the next result would make everything he had said about himself come true.
I’m done hiding, he thought, and was surprised how simple it was, once he had thought it.
✦
He walked to the proctor eye floating at the head of Market Street.
“Official,” he said.
His voice shook, and he let it.
“Candidate 841192.
Before Round B begins, I request the floor.”
The proctor eye hesitated in the air.
A murmur went through the Court scholars in their box by the water, heads together, a hand raised and lowered.
Then, over the bay, the Golden Emperor’s head turned slowly toward Market Street.
It looked down at the thin young man with sand in his hair and his left arm held against his chest and a crate of grey cubes at his feet.
THE KETTLE BOY WANTS TO TALK, said the Emperor.
A pause.
LET HIM TALK.
IT’S GOOD TELEVISION.
The proctor eye glowed, and somewhere a voice charm woke, and when Lin Yan opened his mouth his voice would go out over the whole shore and across the whole sky.
Three hundred thousand people went quiet again, and this time it was because they wanted to hear.
Duan stopped laughing.
Wen’s seven mirrors all turned to watch.
In the crowd, Lin Xiao stopped pushing against the barrier, and the guards, after a moment, let go of her arms.
On a rooftop at the edge of the Heaven Gate district, high above the crowd, two figures were sitting side by side.
One was made of calm white-gold light.
The other wore a plain grey robe and was holding a half-eaten sesame cake that she had forgotten about some time ago.
Lin Yan took a breath from his belly, the way Qian had taught him, six in, and let it go.
Then he began.