Chapter 5: The Measuring Bell

Lian pulled the notice off the board and walked into the Outer Hall with it.

Xiu came after her, still holding the wooden sword.

The hall was full of evening light and outer disciples queuing at the registrar's long desk.

Two servants on ladders were hanging a red silk banner across the back wall.

Guan Shuo stood beside the desk with two inner disciples, watching them hang it.

Lian laid the notice in front of him.

"You lost a yard fight you were only judging," she said, "so you're taking it out of a sixteen-year-old."

The queue went quiet.

Guan Shuo looked at the notice and then at her, as courteous as he'd been at the Root Stone.

"The fees were my family's gift to my betrothed's family," he said. "I have no betrothed."

"I'm only being correct."

He took a small jade box from his sleeve and shook out a white pill.

He swallowed it dry.

"For my throat," he said to the inner disciple beside him, who hadn't asked.

Xiu stepped up next to her sister.

"It's fine," she said loudly. "I'll go home and work the ferry. I'm good with ropes."

"You're terrible with ropes," Lian said. "You tied Father's boat to a floating log."

"I was seven!"

One of the servants on the ladders let go of his end of the banner, and it unrolled down the wall.

It was red silk, and the gold characters on it were as tall as a child.

They said: The Peak Meeting of the Five Sects, hosted this decade by Jade Spring.

Under it, in smaller characters, were the rules every disciple in the hall already knew by heart.

Every ten years the young cultivators of the five great sects met on one stage, twenty-five years old and under.