Chapter 3: The Paperwork

The Bureau came down the river in the middle of the morning on the sixteenth, in a hired boat, and it was seasick.

Mei watched from the landing as the narrow boat tacked toward her with its ragged mat sail and its boatman wearing the expression of someone who had charged too little. A small young woman sat straight in the middle with a wooden writing box clutched to her stomach, her dark blue robe neat, her heavy brows level and her face the color of yesterday's rice. Beside her sat a tall young man in gray with a rust-red sash, holding a paper fan over her head and murmuring into her ear.

The young woman shut her eyes. Her husband fanned harder. The boat struck the steps, and she stood, swayed, rejected the hand he offered and stepped onto the stone with the dignity of an official arriving by sedan chair, provided nobody looked at her feet.

"Recorder Lin Ming," she said. "Bureau of the Unrecorded, Anping county. I've come to enter a binding."

"I know," said Mei. "He said someone would come. He didn't say she'd arrive green."

"I'm not green."

"A little," her husband said.

He closed the fan. He had brown eyes and a laugh line on one side of his mouth, and he followed Mei's glance down to the ferry, where the Eighth Prince sat in the bow in a carter's jacket that showed too much wrist and shin. The prince had his arms folded and his face arranged to make the entire crossing understand that he had been insulted, although nobody had yet done anything to him that morning.

The tall man's eyebrows rose. "Oh," he said. "Oh, that's a dragon."

"He says so."

"He is wearing a carter's clothes."

"It was all I had. He came naked."

Song Lan turned to his wife, and Recorder Lin looked back at him. It was a married sort of look, quick and complete, and Mei decided they'd met naked trouble before.

"Song Lan," he said, bowing to her. "I carry her box. I make the fair copies. Hers are..." He considered his wife, who was no longer green but might become so again if he chose poorly. "Legible."

"Song," said Recorder Lin.

"Very legible."

They did the work on the ferry because the prince could not leave the lamp, and Mei was not about to carry the lamp up the bank for the Bureau's convenience, and Recorder Lin said the bound party had to be present while the entry was made.

"Fine," said Mei. "A morning of ferry time is twelve coppers. Tea is extra."

"The Bureau doesn't pay ferry hire for its own entries."

"The Bureau has never made one of its own entries on my boat."

"Then six."

"Six and tea."

"Tea included."

"Tea is never included."

Song Lan opened his fan again and studied one of its painted cranes with great interest. Mei smiled at the Recorder, the smile of a person being reasonable and waiting for the other person to notice.

"Six and tea," said the Recorder.

She paid the six from her own sleeve. Mei counted them twice and bit one, because Bureau coppers had no reason to be different from other coppers. Auntie Tang sent down a pot of tea after Mei shouted up that it was official business and therefore ought to be the good leaves. What arrived tasted like the ordinary leaves with more hot water.

Recorder Lin sat on the stern bench with her writing box open across her knees and braced the inkstone against Song Lan's thigh while she ground the ink. He sat shoulder to shoulder with her and kept his eyes on the shore. Mei sat on the box of paper money. The prince remained in the bow.

"I will not sit in the presence of a clerk," he said.

"Good," said Recorder Lin. "I won't have to ask you to stand."

His eyes narrowed.

"Name," she said.

He gave her the whole thing. Ao Bo, eighth son, Eighth Prince, his father's waters from the hills to the sea. Recorder Lin wrote it in a heavy square hand, each character pressed firmly into its place. Song Lan watched the brush. His laugh line deepened once, but only once.

"The binding," said the Recorder. "Tell me what happened."

The prince glanced at Mei, who counted another copper at her belt, although she had counted them while the hired boat was coming in and knew exactly how many there were.

"An arrow struck me while I was in carp shape," he said. "She caught me in her net, removed the arrow and treated the wound. By the law of the waters, a life saved must be repaid with a life saved."

"For three coppers," Mei said.

"The plaster cost three."

"You told me I owed you three."

"You do."

"I owe you my life."

"That is more than three."

"I am glad we agree."

Recorder Lin stopped writing and looked from one of them to the other. Song Lan lifted his teacup to cover his mouth.

Recorder Lin dipped her brush again. "Range of the binding?"

"As far as her ferry lamp reaches," said the prince.

The Recorder opened a thin book with a weed-green cover and a red paper marker tucked between its pages. "Of the Waters. The wording is kept at the back of the Code."

She turned it toward Mei.

The black characters crowded together in columns. Mei knew there were people who could glance at marks like those and hear words in their heads, which seemed a poor exchange for all the hours it took to learn.

"I can't read that."

Recorder Lin lifted her head.

"I can read prices, boat names, numbers and dates. Also Danger and No Mooring." Mei tapped the page. "If the law wants ferrymen to read it, the law should use fewer words."

The Recorder considered this, then nodded and turned the book back without pity, surprise or the offer of a lesson. Mei liked her better for all three things she did not do.

"It says the bound party can go as far as the saver's light."

"He told me."

"Have you measured it?"

Mei glanced at the prince. "He starts complaining before I get far enough."

"I do not complain."

Recorder Lin took a coil of thin red cord from her box and handed one end to Song Lan, who looped it around the lamp pole while she gave the other end to the prince.

"Walk," she said.

They went up the landing steps with the red cord sliding after them and Recorder Lin counting from the stern. Mei walked beside the prince because it was her lamp and her landing and because if an old law intended to pull him over backward, she wanted a close view.

Auntie Tang came out of the tea shed. Two carters stopped beside their loads. The egg woman came down from the north road with her basket, and a boy brought a goose for no reason except that boys and geese appeared whenever dignity was likely to be damaged.

The lamp burned in full daylight, a pale flame behind its horn shade. The prince crossed the warm stones barefoot, shoulders square, while the cord uncoiled between him and the ferry.

"If you fall over," Mei said, "I'm charging you for the entertainment."

"I will not fall over."

He gave her a cold look. "Do you speak to every passenger this much?"

"No. Some of them pay."

At the largest willow, his next step failed.

His foot came forward, but the rest of him caught against empty air. The red cord went taut. He rocked back, recovered and tried again, leaning his shoulder into a boundary nobody else could see.

It pushed him one scraping pace across the stone.

Mei caught his sleeve before he could topple into her. His arm was hard beneath the carter's cloth and cold enough that she felt it through her palm.

"I wasn't falling," he said.

"Of course not."

"Take your hand off me."

"That's one copper for keeping a prince upright."

"You said you would charge for entertainment."

"This wasn't entertaining enough."

The goose honked. The boy laughed into both hands.

"Forty-one paces," Recorder Lin called from the ferry. "In daylight. Farther at night, when the light carries."

The prince turned his head toward Mei. She still had his sleeve in her fist.

"One copper," she reminded him.

He drew himself free with all the grandeur available to a prince tethered to a ferry lamp by red string. "Put it on my account."

Back aboard, Recorder Lin wound the cord into its coil and opened a second book, long and red, with the corners worn pale. She placed it across her knees and turned to a page near the back.

"The Lake Register copy for this crossing," she said. "The binding is entered against the day it was made."

Mei recognized the date at the top of the page. The sixteenth of the third month. Today.

Recorder Lin ruled a place beneath it and entered the prince's name, the lamp, the daylight measurement and Mei's name. Her brush moved without hurry. When she finished, she sanded the ink and blew the grains away.

"When did you pull out the arrow?" she asked.

"Yesterday," said Mei. "First watch."

The Recorder turned back one page.

Mei knew that date too. The fifteenth of the third month. Yesterday.

There were two short entries beneath it. Recorder Lin lowered one square fingertip to the second, and whatever she saw took the last of the seasickness out of her face.

Song Lan leaned nearer. His open fan stopped moving.

"What?" Mei asked.

The Recorder read the lower line. "A carter drowned at the east ford at the second watch. His cart went off the road in the dark."

Mei glanced toward the two carters on the landing, but neither had heard. One was arguing with Auntie Tang over tea, and the other was feeding a willow leaf to the goose.

"Last night?" Mei said.

"Yes."

Recorder Lin moved her finger to the line above.

The prince had left the bow. He stood beside Mei now, close enough that the cold from his sleeve touched her bare arm, and close enough to read over the Recorder's hand.

"Ao Bo," Recorder Lin said. "Eighth Prince. To drown, the fifteenth of the third month, at the first watch."

Mei turned to him. He was already watching her, and for once there was no insult waiting in his face and no answer prepared. The first white scales showed at his throat.

"Yes," he said. "I thought it might be written."

"Written by who?"

"Not today."

His voice ended the question. Mei wanted to seize it again, shake it and make the answer fall out, but the page lay between them with yesterday's date at the top, his name on the first line and the carter beneath him on the second.

First watch, a gold carp in her net with a black arrow in its back.

Second watch, a cart going into the east ford.

Mei put her finger beside the date. "He didn't drown, so somebody else did."

"Yes," said Recorder Lin. "A written drowning that doesn't happen has to be balanced. The river takes someone else."

The ferry seemed to settle lower in the water under the four of them, the red book and the six coppers at Mei's belt.

She had pulled out the arrow because leaving it in would have been cruel, and because the plaster was already open, and because three coppers was three coppers. A watch later, somewhere beyond the east bend, a carter she had never met had driven his cart into dark water.

The prince's hand rested beside hers on the red cover. He didn't touch her. His fingers curled against the boards, and the cold spread under them in a thin white rim. He looked angry enough to freeze the lake, and none of it was for her.

The carter would probably come to her landing tonight, dripping as they all did, and stand beneath her lamp asking her if it was far.