On the first day of the deadline, Chen Jin went to the old customs house and spent half an hour behind a closed door with Zhou Zhengting.
When he came out, Zhou had a stack of blank work-detail slips in front of him. He sat behind the desk and squared the stack against the wood, his enamel cup at hand, the "Safety First" on its side worn down to three characters. "You supply the men, I supply the paper. Secondments, joint defense, port labor, drain duty—one pretext per slip, every one of them squared with the garrison code. If he can find fault, let him. If he finds one, I lose."
It was the first time Zhou Zhengting had ever used the code as a blade instead of a shield. He knew it too. He drank some water, and set the cup down on the slip he had just finished writing.
That afternoon the men went out. Da Liu took two with him to the labor crews, nominally to recount and restack the gabions—his name with a sandbag on it was known across the city, and the crews had fought over who got him. Xiao Mao went back to the machine shop; the standing order that the reload press worked for the public store was still on the books, and the armory annex filed him a fresh slip. He left with his tool roll on his back, walking faster than usual.
The rest went out in pairs, slotted into the night shifts at the main junction, filling the garrison's rotated-out places one slip at a time. Twelve men, eight slips, every man with a place, every place with a pretext.
The rifles stayed home. All twelve were wiped down and racked in the barracks, muzzles down, hung in a clean row. Da Liu wiped his own a third time before he left, set it butt-out on the rack, and went. He said one plain thing to Chen Jin: "The rifles belong to the Ember Guard. The men are on loan. Any day you want the rifles back—send word, and I'll come get mine."
That evening the foreman of the labor crews came to the barracks in person. The three borrowed men did the work of four and a half, he said—were there more where that came from? Chen Jin said: check the slips. The foreman left smoothing his slip flat before he tucked it inside his coat.
On the second day Chen Jin called the forty-seven candidates together at the barracks gate and laid the cards on the table in front of the whole line. The roster went in three days. What went on it was twelve men; what went into the official register was twelve. "The rest of you don't go in," he said. "The ones in the register are the government's soldiers—their grain comes from the committee, their orders come from the committee. The rest count as day hands. We borrow your backs for the drains, grain comes through the Ember Guard, pay by the day."
The line went quiet for a while. Outside the wall an aunt stood on her toes to see in; somebody up front made room for her by half a step. From the tail of the line, the young man with the fish spear asked: "Where do the day hands get written down?"
Chen Jin took a booklet out of his coat. The pages were offcuts from the granary's grain ledgers, and the stitching was thread Xiaosui had run for him—she had deliberately skipped her pattern twice, saying too-even stitches looked like something made in an office. Chen Jin held the booklet up. "In this one."
The young man knocked the fish spear against the ground. "Good. Then I'm this book's."
Somebody laughed, and nobody left. The registration ran from noon till dark, at one table by the gate, one line per man: name, where he lived, how many mouths at home, what his hands could do. Carpenters went down. Swimmers went down. A hunting bow in the family went down. One old militiaman asked what the list was even for, and Chen Jin said: it's no use to the government at all. The old man nodded, and had them write down that he could tie knots too. Forty-seven lines, not one left blank.
Xiaosui held the paper down at the far end of the table—the wind was up, and she weighed the corners with two stones. The two med-station helpers came and put their names in; Wen Heng herself didn't come, but she sent one line of a message: don't copy the list into the little black book. Accounts kept twice get tangled.
After nightfall, word came up from the main junction: the stone block nearest the mouth had crept another finger-width downstream, and something under the gabions was knocking, every little while, like breaths being drawn down there. Chen Jin went over, held the torch on it for a long look: the seep under the mouth ran faster than it had for days, and the hollow the water had carved under the sandbag course was another span deeper. He handed the torch off, crouched, and listened. The water sounded hollow.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Deep in the night the water shouldered half a gabion loose, and two Hound-classes slid in under the gap along the bottom. The night shift's rifles spoke one round and didn't hold them. One turned in the current toward the dark; one made the bank.
Chen Jin jumped off the course after them. The one in the water he took on a knee, bayonet going through the neck joint at the instant it committed downward, the current pinning it so it couldn't roll; the one on the bank went for the sentry behind the sandbags, and Chen Jin got between them, caught the first swipe on the bayonet and finished it with the reverse. Half the sandbag course came down. No man was hurt. The dying kick of the one in the water caught his right shoulder plate and punched a new dent into the armor, deep enough to catch a fingernail.
[Night tally: Hound-class x2]
[Embers: 1143]
He killed the panel and put the crew back to work stacking sandbags, the gabion rewired with a double turn of wire. By the time they finished it was nearly light. He sat under the parapet with a slab of hardtack soaking in hot water from the stove, and while it softened he loosened the strap over his right shoulder and looked: the new dent sat square on the old bruise, bruise stacked on bruise, and his arm went heavy past halfway up.
On the last day of the deadline, Chen Jin went to the port authority building.
The top floor looked the way it always had: paper squared on the desk, the spittoon empty, not one personal thing on the windowsill. Bi Chengzhang stood by the window with it open, the wind pinning the corners of his pages. He took the roster and went through it page by page, slowly, and where another man would have skipped pages, he went through every one.
At the last page, the signature line, he stopped.
The room went quiet. Through the window came the sound of nails from the berth works, one stroke at a time.
Chen Jin had signed in pencil. Bi Chengzhang looked at the line of graphite for two breaths, then took his own pen from his breast pocket—without handing it over—and laid it on the desk beside the signature, nib toward him.
"Pencil."
"Ink's expensive."
Bi Chengzhang let that go. He closed the roster and said something fair: "Twelve. Not one missing, and your hand is neater than mine. Three days, Captain Chen, and not a smudge on it." A pause. "What I don't know is whether this book still matches the men."
"It matches."
"Good." Bi Chengzhang rolled the roster and clamped it under his arm. "I won't keep you up tonight. Tomorrow morning I'll be passing the barracks anyway—twelve men, one line, that's all I want to see."
On the stairs going down, Chen Jin said it: "Committee member—I don't like it. But the drains can't spare the men." The words were out before he heard how much they gave away—more than the roster did. Bi Chengzhang stopped on the landing and looked back, and he wasn't annoyed. "No need to like it. The book likes it fine. The men—you said yourself they came for the Ember Guard. Don't let them have come for nothing."
Next morning the iron pipe at the gate sounded—the old pipe that called the mess, three long blasts today. In half an hour the twelve came back from every quarter of the city: the two from the labor crews with their armbands still on and a gabion sling over one shoulder; Xiao Mao with his tool roll, welding smoke still in his hair; the four off the drains with mud to the knee. They lined up in one row. Not one missing.
Bi Chengzhang walked the line with his hands behind his back, head to tail, then tail to head.
"The men are in your hand."
"The men are in the drains," Chen Jin said. "There's work in the drains, so they work the drains. If the city calls, one blast on the pipe and they're back."
Bi Chengzhang nodded and patted the rolled roster under his arm. "The book I keep. The men, you keep." He went down the steps, stopped after two paces, and turned. "Captain Chen, I can read your ledger. Rifles on the rack, men all over the city, roster in government hands. The day a committee order comes down that you can't bend—does your book turn its page?"
Chen Jin didn't answer that one. Bi Chengzhang didn't wait for an answer. He brushed off dust that wasn't there and went. Chen Jin stood at the barracks gate and watched the wool coat get small, then looked back at the gun rack and had the lock changed for a new one.
At dusk Wen Heng came to the barracks with her case, saying she'd come to look at the hands of the two men on loan—raw from hauling gabions. She saw them, and didn't leave. She came to Chen Jin, undid the strap over his right shoulder herself, and looked at the fresh dent. Her fingertip rested on the new mark for a breath, then moved to the old bruise beside it, and she laid the two side by side.
"The pit's getting deeper." She repacked the strap. "Noon tomorrow. Come to the station."
"For a wound check?"
"For you."