Chen Ping'an had thought that, fishing for stones by daylight, he might begin where Liu Xianyang's reach ended and work up the stream — and so this night he chose a stretch farther upstream still than the spot of his first dip, well away from the gallery bridge and the green crag the locals called Qingniu Bei, the green ox's back, where he had first seen the girl in blue. It was thus that he missed the meeting of Song Jixin and the superintendent.
At the gallery bridge hung the plaque "wind and water arising." The man of white robe and jade belt held nominally the post of kiln-bureau superintendent, yet in truth he was Great Li's most powerful vassal-prince. With him Song Jixin came to the foot of the bridge steps; beforehand the boy had bathed, hung an incense-sachet from his sash, and worn a common, dull jade pendant — while that far finer old-dragon-rains jade the man had made him take off, forbidding it outright.
Three sticks of incense in hand, the boy stood at the foot of the steps at a loss. The prince Song Changjing turned, and with two fingers gave the incense-tips a light twist, and they flamed. "Kneel, face the plaque, kowtow three times, stick the incense in ground, done." Though full of doubt, Song Jixin obeyed this "uncle" who had dropped from the sky, kneeling and knocking his forehead three times. The man had spoken with light ease, yet once the boy knelt his own face turned grave, and at the ground where the boy kowtowed there showed a loathing hidden very deep. When the sticks were planted and he rose, Song asked whether the incense did no harm. "It is but going through a form," the man laughed. "Take it not to heart; from now begin to learn to play the part, else you may be busy to a bursting head." And, dropping the smile: "Only forget not — this bridge is your... ground where a dragon rises." Song's lips were blue; he put on a show of ease: "Are not those four characters a little reckless?" The man slapped his belly: "In the capital so; here of no account. No temple-hall hound nor jianghu stray to come snapping at this king." "Do you, too, fear censure?" "This king has beaten every challenger across Great Li, mountain and below alike. Were I to fear nothing else, would I not be easier than the man on the dragon throne?" Song, after hesitation, asked: "Are you hiding your brilliance to bide your time — or raising bandits to hold yourself dear?" The man broke into uneasy laughter: "These treasonous words you dare speak — you know neither weight nor measure. In the capital or some mountain hermitage, rein tongue and deed, or you will surely court misfortune." Song nodded: "I will remember." The man pointed to the gold plaque: "'Wind and water arising. Wind and water arising.' Tell me — how, exactly, does the water arise?" "I do not know," Song answered at once. The man muttered: "'What you know you know, what you know not you know not, that is knowledge.' What rubbish. Bookmen have bowels full of coils." But to the boy he grew more polished: "In this town's three thousand years, however great the flood, this stream's highest water never topped the blade-tip of that rusted sword." Song asked in puzzlement: "The elders by the Iron Lock Well in Apricot Blossom Lane do drum this into us under the locust tree. Is there a true secret in it?" The man pointed far off, to where the stream left the mountains, and smiled: "In hills and woods the serpent has its serpent's road; in houses the rat its rat's path; and in rivers and brooks the flood-dragon has the flood-dragon's way." Then, patiently: "Many another part of Great Li also hangs swords beneath bridges — only those linked-cash, peachwood, or talisman blades ward off one mountain-flood-dragon entering the river, never a second; and many who hung such a blade, shallow in arts, could not bear even one dragon's passage and roused the flood-dragons' ire, till bridges that need not have fallen fell. Save this one sword alone..." He trailed off. "...From its very first day it was never aimed at any dragon marching to the river, but set there by a sage to seal the mouth of the Dragon-Lock Well — the deep pool beneath the bridge — lest the dragon-aura seep away too fast and burst this little heaven-and-earth asunder." Song cut to the quick: "That last true dragon under heaven — is it dead or not?" Song Changjing laughed: "In the dragon-slaughter war of three thousand years, countless qi-refiners died, and even the sages of the three teachings and masters of the hundred schools fell in multitudes. Do you take them for men with holes in their skulls, keeping a last true dragon to rear like birds and fishes?" Song retorted: "Perhaps they could not kill it outright, and could only use the delay of a parley and the gnawing of slow erosion." "You are half right," the man said. "The dragon is dead, past doubt. As for its true form and meaning — 'not simple' cannot bear half that weight." He went up the steps: "Ask me why the sages slew dragons and I cannot answer. But ask why you were flung here, why you are the august crown-prince of Great Li's own line, and I can give the whole truth." Song kept his head down. At the topmost step the man turned to the town: "Bear a larger heart hereafter. To contend in temper with Liu Xianyang, and nurse a killing thought besides — is it not beneath you?" Song sat and looked north with him, then asked wide of the mark: "Are we Great Li at the north end of the Baoping Continent?" "Mm," the man nodded. "Counted barbarians for near a thousand years. Only now, with fists hard enough, have we won a little respect." Song's head stayed down, but his eyes burned. "In the capital, beware a man nicknamed the 'Embroidered Tiger,'" the man said flatly. At Song's bewilderment he laughed: "He is our State Tutor — the tutor of your twin younger brother. That our Great Li grew in fifty years from seventy commanderies and eight hundred cities to a hundred and forty and fifteen hundred, half that widening is his doing." Song's head shot up. The man smiled: "Boy, your guess is right." And he too sat, hands on knees, gazing afar — the other servant who had made Great Li's borders vast, plainly far yet near at hand. Song trembled, his scalp creeping. Then: "Uncle, though I nurse murder toward Liu Xianyang, and have weighed a bargain with Fu Nanhua of Old Dragon City to have him killed, yet I have never felt a Liu Xianyang worthy to sit level with me, not with all his long lineage. I would kill him only because killing him would cost me little." Song Changjing grew interested: "By that reckoning, you carry another knot in your heart?" The boy touched his neck and said nothing.
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At the dead of night, when a thousand sounds are still, there was yet one walking the town's streets — a slender, thinly clad girl. Passing the Iron Lock Well she ground her teeth; at the memorial arch she kicked a pillar; and at last she came to the old locust tree, whose falling branches, by the elders' word, never struck a soul. Beneath it she opened the old book borrowed from her young master and began to "seek the quarry by the map," calling out names one by one like a general mustering his host. When her throat ran dry she pointed at the tree and bawled: "I offer you face and you refuse it — is that it?!" No answer came. She stamped and let fly: "Four surnames and ten clans — begin with the four. Lu, Li, Zhao, Song — be sensible, quickly! At least three locust leaves per surname; one short, and I, Wang Zhu, will never be done with you! Once out, I'll settle with you one by one, stripling or graybeard, woman or child — a pack of white-eyed wolves you can't feed to gratitude!" Gasping, she still railed: "You Songs — for Great Li to bear your surname, whose is the greatest merit? Playing the fool with me? Believe me, once out I'll have Great Li take any name but Song!" "The ten great clans, two leaves each; the common, one at least. Whoever stakes more, the more the better — I'll see him repaid richly!" "And the Cao of the ten: yes, the Cao of that turtle-brat Cao Xi! What vile deed did that whelp not do, wicked to the core while still in open-seat trousers! Besides your two, you owe me one more by way of amends, or I swear once out I'll have Cao Xi's line cut off root and branch! Pissing into a well — how did such a virtue-starved wretch become a state's true sovereign?!" "And the Xie clan — you gave us a Xie Shi, did you not? Had it not been for me, the flood would long since have swept him away; so won't one more leaf be only right?"
Afar off, Qi Jingchun watched in silence, like a stern father only ever beating lessons into a child who grows the more wayward the more it grows — a little helpless. Yet as he watched her turn the pages and the leaves drift down between them, he felt some gratification. At last he only murmured: "When you have left this home — take good care of yourself." The girl seemed to feel something and whirled round — there was no one there. She shook her head and turned back to cursing the locust tree.