Medicine and Iron

The medicine shop owner cut open the strip of cloth on Helian Yuan's chest, but his first question wasn't about the injury.

"Where did you get hurt?"

"I rolled down a rocky slope."

"Do rocky slopes leave claw-tip marks now?"

Helian Yuan looked down. The three shallow marks on the outside of his left ribs had already scabbed over, and the deepest did look like a claw mark.

Without waiting for him to invent another story, the shop owner slapped a lump of medicinal paste onto the wound. "If you don't want to tell me, don't. Next time you lie, pick a wound somewhere I can't see."

The paste was cold enough to numb him. Helian Yuan clenched his teeth without making a sound.

"Don't wrench your waist for at least seven days," the owner said. "If you take another palm strike within three days, your ribs really will break."

"How much?"

"Nine coins."

"It was five last time."

"Last time you only scraped the skin on your arm."

Helian Yuan paid.

The buyer looked even more displeased than the medicine shop owner when he saw Helian Yuan come out. "How many days has it been since you got paid for that level-three Ironmane Bear?"

"I still have some left."

"I meant your life."

Helian Yuan set a small bag of bear armor scraps on the counter. "Trade these for sheet iron."

"What did you go and provoke?"

"I'm not selling information."

The buyer was too speechless to answer for a long moment. Finally, he tossed the scraps onto the scales. "Who wants it anyway?"

He still called the blacksmith over and had him wrap another section of the short spear's shaft in thin iron and add a ring at the butt for attaching a rope. Once the work was done, though, he deliberately quoted a high price.

"Twenty-eight coins."

Helian Yuan looked at him.

"If it's too expensive, do it yourself."

"What's the real price?"

"Fifteen."

"Then why did you say twenty-eight?"

"For the people outside to hear." The buyer lowered his voice. "If a hunter who just sold a level-three bear hide can still afford a pile of good things, it means he has other goods on him. Someone in debt is less worth watching."

Helian Yuan tipped the last six silver coins out of his outer money pouch. "Six upfront."

The buyer immediately raised his voice. "You still owe twenty-two! If you don't pay by the end of the month, I'll buy all your bear hides at half price from now on!"

Footsteps outside the shop stopped for an instant.

Helian Yuan slung the short spear over his back and said calmly, "Last time you said seventy-three."

"Compound interest. Got a problem with that?"

The footsteps outside moved on.

A carriage draped in black cloth rolled slowly past the shop. Helian Yuan didn't follow it with his eyes. He only saw in the reflection of a copper plate on the wall that the gray-trimmed attendant was sitting on the driver's bench, with someone in a full gray robe beside him.

The buyer waited until the carriage was far away before lowering his voice.

"The one in charge is here."

"Did they ask about me?"

"Not by name. They asked whether any young hunters had come back with old wounds recently, and whether anyone had sold ironware picked up in Blackwater Ravine."

"What did you say?"

"I said young hunters all have wounds, and the scrap iron from Blackwater Ravine doesn't fetch a good price." The buyer pushed Helian Yuan's six silver coins back to him. "That debt just now is real. You can owe me for now. If you die in the mountains, I can still curse you for it."

Helian Yuan didn't take the coins.

"The debt has to be real for the act to be convincing."

They looked at each other for a moment. The buyer stuffed the money pouch into a drawer. "Then I'll put it on your account."

It was the first time they had shared a lie.

It was neither trust nor an alliance. The buyer simply didn't want outsiders turning his shop into a net for gathering information about hunters; Helian Yuan needed a convincingly impoverished identity.

The boundaries were clear, which made the arrangement reliable.

The blacksmith handed over the modified short spear. The sheet iron covered only the front three feet of the shaft, so it hadn't gained much weight. The rope ring at the butt would let Helian Yuan tie the weapon to his wrist in the tunnels, so water or a demonic beast couldn't knock it away.

Helian Yuan also bought two torches, fifteen iron nails, and a small flask of lamp oil. He didn't have enough silver left for a new bow, so he could only trade for a bowstring.

Helian Yuan didn't leave the smithy immediately. He tested the new rope ring at the spear's butt three times. First, he wrapped the rope around his wrist, but if a demonic beast bit the spear and pulled it away, it would drag his arm along with it. Next, he tied it to his belt, but it caught on his legs when he turned. Finally, he secured the rope to the outside of his wrist guard, leaving a slipknot he could cut with his hunting knife.

The blacksmith watched impatiently. "You can spend half the day fussing over one rope."

"If I drop it in the cave, I won't be able to get it back."

"Then buy another spear."

"No money."

That left the blacksmith with nothing to say, so he could only reinforce the stitching around the slipknot for him. Though he said, "Don't come to me if it breaks," he wrapped the edges most likely to wear through in leather. This kind of unacknowledged help was common in Greystone Town. No one wanted to call concern what it was, because once spoken aloud, it became like a debt that had to be settled.

Helian Yuan kept track of every expense in his head. Between the hemostatic powder, medicine for his chest wound, torches, lamp oil, iron nails, and the unpaid cost of modifying the spear shaft, he had spent most of the silver from the level-three Ironmane Bear. If he found nothing he could sell in Blackwater Ravine this time, he wouldn't even be able to afford enough medicine before his next trip into the mountains.

That was why the high price offered by the gray-robed people was dangerous. It didn't just tempt the greedy. It appeared precisely when resources were tightest, making hunters mistakenly believe that giving up a route could put an end to their troubles.

As he was about to leave the shop, the buyer called him back. "The gray-robed man asked one more thing."

"What?"

"Whether anyone had seen an iron tag with a number engraved on it."

Helian Yuan's hand stopped on the door curtain.

"What number?"

"He didn't say," the buyer replied. "But the sample tag the attendant showed me had a seven engraved on it."

Helian Yuan didn't leave immediately. He lingered outside for a while under the pretext of choosing dry rations. The gray-robed people's carriage stopped briefly in front of the tavern, and the attendant passed several sheets of paper into the carriage. The corners of the sheets had columns drawn on them like those in the old camp's records, showing that they were entering the information gathered around town into the same set of ledgers.

A drunk hunter came out of the tavern and shouted after the carriage that he knew where a black tiger's lair was. The attendant didn't drive him away, but told him to get in and talk. Less than half a quarter of an hour later, the hunter got out with two silver coins, his face flushed with excitement.

Two silver coins couldn't buy a reliable hunting route, but they were enough to record how far a person was willing to go in making things up for money. The gray-robed people weren't afraid of false information. They collected even that, because every piece could help them sift out which places the hunters had been.

Helian Yuan swallowed the questions he had planned to ask about the route to Blackwater Ravine. Any inquiries he made today could become another entry in their ledger.

The street was as noisy as ever. The butcher was still chopping bones, and people in the tavern were arguing over half a silver coin. No one knew that a number had already formed a connecting thread between the bear's den, the old camp, and the gray-robed people's sleeves.

Helian Yuan left the shop, but didn't return to the hunters' shelter.

He first went to the riverbank outside town and took the new torches apart to inspect them. Nothing was hidden in the torch cores, and the iron nails were ordinary goods too. Once he had checked, he hid the real iron tag and the old iron chain in separate places: the tag against his body and the chain sewn into his wolfskin roll.

If one was found during a search, the other might still be safe.

As he crossed the bridge, he deliberately stopped at a stall selling old boots and replaced the hemp insoles stained with Blackwater Ravine's black mud. He tore the old insoles into three pieces and threw them into the river, a firewood cart, and the alley behind the butcher's shop. If the gray-robed people started tracking him by mud or scent, at least they wouldn't get a complete trail.

Before the sun had set, he was already back on the eastern road.

The gray-robed people had started asking about numbered tags.

The next time he returned to town, the question might become who had been to Blackwater Ravine.