Her Fiancé Dumped Her for Crippled Roots, So She Climbed the Mountain on Ash novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Sleeves Up

Lian hides her gray wrists in the lineup, then catches the Steward's cane before it lands on the head carrier and claims a yard challenge that Guan Shuo asks to judge.

Forty carriers pushed up their sleeves on the bottom steps of the Ash Terraces.

Lian pushed up hers.

Overnight the gray lines had sunk back into her skin.

All that was left was one faint gray thread across the inside of each wrist.

The ash lay under it, hot and heavy, wanting to move.

If she let it move, the gray would climb her arms in front of everyone.

So she stood still and let it burn.

The Steward came down the line with his cane under his arm.

He was forty-six and thick through the neck, with the Foundation rank that let him strike a man down from ten paces.

He took each woman's wrists and turned them over.

He got to Lian and grinned.

"The golden disciple's bride," he said. "Look at these hands."

Her palms were blistered from the bucket handles, raw and weeping.

He turned her wrists toward the light.

The thread of gray was right there under his thumb.

He was looking at the blisters.

"First night," he said. "They all cry the first night."

He dropped her hands and moved on.

When he reached the end of the line, nobody had confessed.

"Then the terrace pays," he said. "The head carrier chalked that bucket. Hands out, old woman."

The head carrier held out her scarred hands without being asked twice.

Lian could tell she had done it before.

"Thirty strokes," the Steward said, and raised the cane.

Lian caught it.

She hadn't decided to.

Her hand closed around the cane above the old woman's palms, and the ash in her went up her arm.

The burn doubled.

It ran out of her chest into her shoulders, her back, her legs, and everywhere it went it stayed.

Her heartbeat slowed and grew loud.

The cold of the stone steps came up through her straw sandals.

She could hear the cane creak in her fist.

She could hear a carrier breathing three terraces up.

Then the heat settled into every part of her at once.

She knew this feeling.

It was Gathering, the first realm, where qi stays in the body instead of passing through it.

She had reached it once before, at fourteen.

This time it had come from a bucket of ash in one night.

She pulled her sleeve down over her wrist with her free hand.

The Steward tried to jerk the cane loose and couldn't.

His face went red to the ears.

"A carrier who lays a hand on a steward goes to the Discipline Hall," he said.

"There's a law older than that one," Lian said.

She had learned it in her first month as an outer disciple, in a lesson nobody stayed awake for.

"Anyone on the mountain may answer a punishment with a challenge in the Outer Yard."

"If she wins, the punishment is void, and the loser takes it."

The head carrier closed her eyes. "Fool girl."

"Carriers don't have qi," the Steward said. "That's why no carrier has ever called that challenge."

"Then you've got nothing to worry about."

He laughed, and two of the carriers flinched at the sound.

"Noon tomorrow," he said. "Thirty strokes to the loser. I'll make them count."

He let go of the cane and left it in her hand.

Then he picked up one full bucket from the row by the well, the one set apart from the rest.

He carried it up the north stair instead of down into the grate.

"Where's he taking that?" Lian asked.

"Golden Pavilion," the head carrier said. "For the plum trees. He says ash makes them bloom."

"Every night?"

"Every night for nine years." She looked at the cane in Lian's fist. "Is that what you're thinking about right now?"

That night Xiu came down the west stair with a cloth bundle and her wooden sword banging against her back.

She was not supposed to be on the terraces after dark.

She dropped the bundle in Lian's lap. Pork dumplings, still warm, stolen from the outer kitchen.

Then she grabbed Lian's wrist and pushed the sleeve up before Lian could stop her.

The gray thread lay across the skin.

Xiu stared at it.

"You drank it," she said.

"One ladle."

"They put girls down the well for that!"

"Keep your voice down."

"You keep your voice down!" Xiu was crying now, furious and wet-faced at the same time. "You said you were staying for me!"

"I am."

"You can't stay for me from the bottom of a well!"

Lian ate a dumpling.

"These are good," she said. "Did you steal them yourself, or did you bribe somebody?"

Xiu hit her in the shoulder, not hard, and then sat down against her and cried into her sleeve.

The twins came along the shed with their bowls and sat on either side of them without asking.

"Are those pork?" said one.

"Those are pork," said the other.

Xiu wiped her nose and untied the bundle all the way.

There were twelve dumplings, and the carriers split them twelve ways, and the head carrier took hers last.

When the bowls were empty, Xiu wiped her face on her own sleeve.

"Everyone in the outer court is talking about tomorrow," she said.

"I'd hope so."

"They're betting on how many strokes you'll take before you faint."

"What are the odds?"

"Lian. Listen to me."

Xiu took a breath.

"Guan Shuo asked the Outer Hall if he could judge your challenge. They said yes."

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