The house seemed much larger without the Wang brothers in it.
There was a table, a hearth, two narrow beds, a few clothes and basic cooking utensils. Er Bao had kept everything tidy. Apart from a jar of water, there was little to eat.
That would have to change tomorrow.
He took the pouch from his vest and counted the money Er Bao had given him.
Forty gold coins.
Forty sounded like a considerable sum. But he still had no idea what one gold coin could buy.
He returned the coins to the pouch and took out a strip of bark. His charcoal stick was almost worn down to a nub.
Food. Water. Shoes. Clothes.
He tried to squeeze another word beneath them, but the bark had begun to split.
"Paper," he muttered. "First, I buy paper."
A scholar writing his shopping list on a piece of tree. How far he'd fallen.
He hid the money and lay down. The mattress was thin, but the roof was sound and the door locked.
He missed the brothers already. Still, tomorrow no one would make him run up a hill before breakfast.
---
A rooster woke him before sunrise.
Another answered it. Then a third joined in, apparently determined to make up for his companions' lack of enthusiasm.
Xu Hao opened one eye.
Were those wild roosters?
He'd never heard a bird so certain everyone ought to get out of bed.
Perhaps they were ordinary chickens. That would mean eggs.
He sat up, considerably more interested in the day.
He washed, checked the little pond for future bathing, and dressed. The pond looked clear, but he'd boil its water before drinking any. Then he hid his money beneath his vest and locked the door.
He had a town to explore.
The first thing he noticed was the noise.
Hibiscus Town had seemed busy last night, but morning was an entirely different affair. Wheels knocked over the stones. Porters shouted for people to move aside. Shopkeepers raised their voices above one another, each certain that his goods were worth stopping for.
The second thing he noticed was the smell.
Roasting meat, hot oil, incense, damp straw, fresh vegetables. Somewhere a vendor was frying little cakes, and Xu Hao followed their scent for half a street before remembering he was supposed to be looking at prices.
Then he forgot about prices as well.
One stall sold purple mushrooms as broad as dinner plates. At another, strings of dried herbs hung above shallow baskets of fruit with translucent skins. Polished horns and beast teeth were arranged beside leather goods. A man selling knives kept tapping the blades with a small hammer so customers could hear them ring.
Xu Hao had studied ancient markets for years, handled their coins and unearthed their pottery. He'd never walked through one alive with customers.
And the goods here were rather less ordinary than anything he'd ever catalogued.
A boy carried a cage of green birds whose feathers flashed silver. A woman demonstrated a lantern whose light shifted from amber to blue as she turned a dial.
Xu Hao stopped so abruptly that someone nearly walked into him.
"Buying or just staring?" the lantern seller asked.
"Staring, I'm afraid."
"Well, do it from the side. You're blocking the customers."
He apologised and moved on.
At a fish stall, he discovered a creature with a broad, flattened head and whiskers almost as long as its body.
"Stone-whisker fish," the seller said, seeing his interest. "Good in soup."
The fish opened its mouth.
Xu Hao stepped back before he could help himself.
"It won't bite," the seller assured him.
"I was beginning to wonder if it might speak."
The man laughed and went back to his work.
Xu Hao finally took hold of himself. He couldn't spend all morning examining fish.
He watched a woman bargain a basket of vegetables down from twelve coppers to nine. The next customer at a cloth stall tried the same method and was told to take the cloth or leave it.
Different world, different goods. Merchants were merchants everywhere.
He exchanged one gold coin for smaller denominations at a moneychanger, checked the count, and went in search of paper.
Xu Hao took out the folded address the travelling herb merchant had given him. She'd said the shop carried a remarkable range of supplies. He showed it to a nearby stallholder.
"Golden Meridian," the man said, pointing towards the broad avenue. "Big place. If they haven't got paper, try the bookshop two streets over."
The address led Xu Hao to a building that occupied nearly half a block.
GOLDEN MERIDIAN TRADING HOUSE.
The gold characters shone on dark wood above wide doors. Porters carried sealed crates towards a side yard.
He went inside.
For a moment, he forgot why he'd come.
The enormous hall held cabinets of jade bottles and rows of strange weapons. At one counter, an attendant touched a strip of paper to a metal stand. A flame sprang up and vanished without marking it.
At another counter, a man argued over a beast core. Shelves held minerals in impossible colours.
He drifted towards a glass cabinet containing a short sword. The blade had no visible ornament, yet something like a thin mist moved along its edge.
Five hundred gold, said the tag.
He'd woken with forty gold and thought himself well provided for.
A nearby jade bottle bore a price of two hundred gold. The label described a cultivation pill with a name he could barely pronounce.
He decided not to touch the glass.
Wealthier customers had attendants at their elbows; Xu Hao, in rough boar hide, was left to wander. He didn't mind.
"Welcome to Golden Meridian, young master."
A young woman in a blue uniform stood nearby, smiling politely.
"Are you here to buy or sell?"
"Sell?" Xu Hao repeated. "You buy things here?"
"Of course. What would you like to bring us?"
"Nothing today. I didn't know you purchased goods. What sorts of things?"
"Medicinal herbs, beast hides, bones, cores, minerals, artifacts. Most things of value. We have appraisers for the more unusual items."
"So if someone hunts a beast, they can bring the materials here?"
"Provided they're in usable condition. We buy ordinary hides too. You don't have to be a cultivator."
So this was one place to sell a hunter's catch.
"And cards?" he asked, spotting a small notice behind her desk.
"Completed cards, yes. Those are handled by our specialist appraisers. We don't see many."
Could he someday earn money by making cards?
Then he remembered what the brothers had told him about Card Drawers, and why powerful people—including the king—might want to keep one close.
Selling a hide was one thing. Walking into a shop with a card he had made himself was quite another.
"I see," he said.
"Do you have anything to sell today?"
"No. I came to buy paper."
"Certainly. What kind?"
"Something to write on."
"This way, please."
She led him to a counter stacked with carefully wrapped bundles.
"These are talisman sheets," she said, unfolding a pale yellow packet. "The fibres are treated to hold inscriptions. Two hundred gold for the bundle."
Xu Hao stared at the paper.
"Two hundred?"
"For these, yes. The spirit-silk variety is five hundred. It's used for more demanding work."
She opened a second case. The sheets inside were almost translucent, with fine lines running through them like veins in a leaf.
"And those?"
"Card-inscription blanks. Two thousand gold for a prepared set. We don't often sell them here."
Cards.
His eyes lingered on the delicate material. He had created Sia's card without anything like this, using the brush and blank cards in his mind palace. But clearly there were methods and materials he knew nothing about.
He would remember them.
The attendant looked pleased by his interest. "Would you like to see another grade?"
Xu Hao cleared his throat.
"Erm."
"Yes, young master?"
He leaned forward and lowered his voice.
"Do you have anything... ordinary?"
"Ordinary?"
"Just paper," he whispered. "For taking notes."
Surely a place selling two-thousand-gold paper wouldn't stock plain stationery.
"Oh, certainly," she said.
Xu Hao blinked. "You do?"
"Loose sheets or a bound notebook?"
"A notebook, please."
"Brush and ink as well?"
"Yes. That would be wonderful."
She fetched a plain notebook, a brush, an inkstone and an ink stick. Nothing glowed, and the price was within his means.
Apparently, he'd been whispering for no reason at all.
He paid, tucked the notebook into his bag and thanked her.
"You can bring goods to any of our branches," she added as he turned to leave. "If you travel, just look for the Golden Meridian sign."
"You have other shops?"
"In most large towns. Many smaller ones too."
Xu Hao looked around the hall once more.
"I'll remember that."
Outside, he found a quiet place beneath an awning and opened his new notebook. He wrote down the shop's name, then what it bought. Beside the word cards, he made a small mark that meant, to him alone, not yet.
He added a few prices, pleased to be finished with bark.
After that, he resumed his search for food.
He compared rice, dried fish and vegetables, recording the prices. Then he noticed two sacks on a merchant's counter.
One sack held ordinary white grains. The other contained rice with a faint pearly sheen.
Beside it stood a jar of pale blue water.
"Looking for something, young master?" the merchant asked.
"Spiritual rice?"
"Good eyes. Grown in fields rich with spiritual energy. Nourishes the body, helps cultivators strengthen their foundations."
Xu Hao examined the grains.
"And the blue water?"
"Spiritual spring water. It contains spiritual energy of its own. Cook the rice with it and you get the benefit of both. Ordinary water works too, of course."
"How much?"
"Three gold for half a kilogram of rice and half a litre of spring water."
Xu Hao considered the price. Three gold was a great deal to spend on food he knew nothing about.
Still, he'd dealt with enough antique merchants on Earth to know that asking about old stock was sometimes a useful way to begin bargaining.
He decided to try his luck.
"This wouldn't happen to be last season's rice, would it?"
The merchant's smile faltered.
"Spiritual rice keeps its properties for a long time, young master."
Oh?
Xu Hao hadn't actually expected that to work.
"So it is last season's."
"There's nothing wrong with last season's rice!"
"I didn't say there was." Xu Hao smiled. "Two gold."
"Two gold? Young master, you're trying to rob me!"
"Then perhaps I should find another merchant to rob."
The merchant stared at him.
"I'll also need ten kilograms of ordinary rice and fifty litres of drinking water," Xu Hao continued. "Can you deliver everything to a house near the outer wall?"
The man looked from Xu Hao to the sacks at his feet.
"Two gold for the spiritual rice and water," he said at last. "The other supplies cost extra."
"Naturally."
"And I'm not reducing it another copper."
"Agreed."
The merchant seemed slightly disappointed that the argument was over.
They settled on fifty coppers for the ordinary supplies and delivery. Xu Hao wrote down the address, checked that the porter would come that afternoon, and paid. The merchant kept the spiritual rice and spring water with the rest of the order, ready to send together.
Xu Hao recorded the purchase in his notebook as he walked away.
Two gold. He'd saved one simply by making a guess. Whether the rice was worth even that much remained to be seen.
His stomach growled.
A much more immediate problem presented itself.
He'd explored half the market and still hadn't eaten.
He followed the smell of broth to a small restaurant with open shutters and a row of steaming baskets beside the door.
"One person?" the woman at the entrance asked.
"Yes, please."
She showed him to a table by the window and offered him a choice of noodles, dumplings or rice porridge with eggs.
Xu Hao thought of the roosters that had woken him.
"Porridge and eggs," he said. "And tea, if you have it."
While he waited, he glanced through his notebook. He understood very little of what he'd seen, but he already knew where to look for more.
When the woman returned with breakfast, Xu Hao moved the notebook safely out of the way.
The porridge was hot. The eggs smelled wonderful.
For the moment, he had done enough research.