The Levee Across the Turbid Sea

The snow had stopped in Great Peace City. The north wind tore several rents in the sky, revealing a sky even grayer and heavier beyond.

The snow had not melted. It lay on the eaves along Vermilion Bird Street, bending the roof tiles beneath its weight. Now and then, a large slab slid off and struck the flagstones with a dull thud, breaking into two or three pieces and exposing bricks blackened by snowmelt underneath.

Zhou's Tea Broth Shop opened before dawn. Its owner, Zhou the Third, was fifty-seven, and his family had made a living at the west corner of Vermilion Bird Street for three generations.

His grandfather had leased the shopfront under a binding contract renewed every thirty years. The first thing Zhou the Third did when he opened the door was not light the stove, but take a bamboo broom to the snow on the steps.

The shop gradually filled. Three traveling merchants sat by the window. They sold silk and had fled Bing Prefecture.

Bing Prefecture was gone. They said it lightly. One of them, surnamed Ma, was missing half the index finger on his right hand. Cloth wrapped the stump, yellow fluid seeping through it.

He set his tea bowl down hard. Porcelain struck wood with a sharp crack.

"The demonic plants never reached the city, but nothing grows in the fields anymore. Wheat sprouts ears three days after it's sown. The ears are golden, and you can't eat them. Old Liu, who had the shop next to mine, didn't believe it. He broke off a grain and chewed it. That night, he strangled his own wife."

At the next table sat a scholar in a blue cloth robe. Around thirty, he had failed the imperial examinations three times and rented a room in Great