The Rooster Who Would Be Immortal — Chapter 4: The Debt That Fed Itself

The man who came to take Ling Yue away did not carry a sword. He carried an abacus, and Brass decided at once that this was worse.

For nine days the rooster had kept his back turned to her. It was the hardest thing he had ever done, and he had once fought a weasel.

"Broker Shen," the man said, bowing to nobody in particular. "From the valley town. I am here about ten pieces of silver."

Ling Yue had gone the colour of rice paper. She stood by the well with a bucket in each hand and did not put them down.

"My father's loan," she said. "For seed, after the flood. I signed beside his name. I have been paying, Broker. Every month. Nine silver so far."

"And very prettily paid." Shen flicked the beads of his abacus. They clicked like teeth. "But the terms were one part in ten, each moon. Twelve moons have passed. The debt now stands at thirty-one silver and four coppers. You have paid nine. So you owe me twenty-two and a little, today, or you come down the mountain and work in my counting house. Five years should cover it."

Elder Mo came out of the kitchen wiping his hands. "She is a disciple of this sect."

"She is a name on my paper." Shen unrolled it. "The sect may keep its disciples. I will keep my debtors."

Brass understood every word, and for one long breath he understood nothing at all. Ten silver. One part in ten each moon. That was one silver a moon. Twelve moons, twelve silver. Ten and twelve made twenty-two.

So where had thirty-one come from?

Then something surfaced, the way it always did at the edge of morning: a room with rows of desks, a board, a piece of chalk in a hand that had once been his. And a line climbing across the board that did not climb straight. It curved. It curved up like a hill that gets steeper the higher you go.

Interest on interest.

Shen had not charged one tenth of the ten silver each moon. He had charged one tenth of whatever the debt had become. The first moon, ten became eleven. The second moon he took a tenth of eleven, not of ten. Then a tenth of that. Each month's interest was poured back into the pile, and next month the bigger pile was charged again. The debt was not being fed by Ling Yue. It was feeding itself.

[SYSTEM] Brass learned: interest on interest — a debt charged on itself grows faster every month · cost: knowing it does not pay it

Brass opened his beak to announce this to the yard.

And shut it.

Because at the gate, thin and grey and patient, with a ledger under her arm and a bronze badge on her chest, stood the Deacon of Duties. She had said the Hall would be watching the yard. She was a woman who kept her promises.

If a rooster did sums in front of her, the rumour was true. A cursed beast in the kitchen. And Ling Yue would fall with it. That was exactly why he had turned his back on the girl for nine days.

So he could not solve it. Not where anyone could see.

Somebody else had to.

"BRAWK," said Brass, as stupidly as he could manage, and fell off the woodpile.

He landed beside the gravel path, shook himself, and began to peck. Peck, peck. He pushed ten pebbles into a row. Then he looked at Ling Yue. Then at the pebbles. Then at Ling Yue.

"The bird is hungry," said Shen.

"The bird is always hungry," said Mo. But his eyes had narrowed.

Ling Yue set down her buckets. She crouched. Nine days he had ignored her, and now he would not stop staring at her, and she was too frightened to be angry about it yet.

"Ten," she said slowly. "Ten pebbles. Ten silver?"

Brass pecked one more pebble and set it apart from the row. Then another, apart. Then another. Twelve pebbles, in their own little line, never touching the ten.

"One for each moon," Ling whispered. "A tenth of ten is one. Twelve moons. Twelve." She counted with her finger. "Twenty-two. That is what I thought I owed. That is what my father thought."

Brass swept the pebbles flat with one wing and started again. Ten in a row. One pebble for the first moon, and this time he shoved it INTO the row. Eleven. Then he looked at her as hard as a rooster can look.

"Eleven," she said. "And the next moon he takes a tenth of eleven. Not of ten." Her voice changed. "That is more than one."

His spurs went hard as steel. He dragged one across the packed clay and it cut a clean line, then another, each a little longer than the last. Twelve marks. A staircase that got steeper as it went.

[SYSTEM] Iron Spur — twelve marks cut into hard clay · cost: nothing a rooster would admit to

Ling Yue stood up. Her hands were shaking, but her voice was not.

"Broker Shen. You added each month's interest to the debt, and then charged interest on the interest."

"Naturally."

"The paper says one part in ten each moon. It does not say one part in ten of what."

Shen's smile stayed exactly where it was. "It is how every lender in the valley counts."

"Then every lender in the valley is charging my father for money he never borrowed." She pointed at the clay. "Ten silver, twelve moons, a tenth each moon. Twenty-two. I have paid nine. I owe you thirteen. Not twenty-two more. Thirteen."

"A kitchen girl," said Shen pleasantly, "is going to teach me arithmetic."

"No," said a thin voice from the gate. "I am."

The Deacon of Duties crossed the yard without hurrying. She took the paper from Shen's hand, and he let her, because she was the kind of person people let.

"A debt that a disciple brought with her," she said, reading, "is judged by the Hall. The Hall counts interest on the sum that was lent. It does not count interest on interest unless the paper says so in plain words. This paper does not." She rolled it up. "Thirteen silver, Broker. She will earn it here, at kitchen wages, and the Hall will send it down each season. You will not take a disciple off this mountain for a sum you grew yourself."

"And if I take it to the magistrate?"

"Then bring your ledger," said the Deacon. "All of it. I should like to read how you count for everyone else."

Shen thought about that for the length of one breath. Then he bowed, much lower than before, and went to see to his mule.

He left the ledger on the well-stone while he tightened the straps. The Deacon looked at it. She did not open it. She only read the names written down the outside edge, the way a careful person reads anything left in front of her.

One of them made her stop.

She said nothing. She tucked her own ledger under her arm, and before she left she looked down at the clay, at twelve neat marks, each one a little longer than the last.

"Curious," she said. "Your rooster pecks in tens."

"He is a very stupid bird," said Elder Mo.

"I am sure," said the Deacon, and went.

When the yard was empty, Ling Yue knelt in front of Brass. Up close she did not look grateful. She looked furious.

"Nine days," she said. "You would not even look at me. I thought I had done something wrong. I thought you were only a rooster after all, and I had imagined the rest." Her eyes were wet. "And then you save me with gravel."

Brass looked at his feet.

"He did it for you, girl," Mo said gruffly from the doorway. "If the Hall proves that bird is more than a bird, they take the yard, and you with it. He was keeping you out of the pot." He scowled. "It is the only clever thing he has done all year, and he did it badly."

Ling Yue was quiet for a while.

"I asked you to teach me," she said at last. "And I kept wondering how. How does a rooster teach?" She touched one of the marks in the clay. "Like that. You do not tell me. You make me say it."

Brass lifted his head. His chest swelled. A teacher. He had a student. He was, he felt, the greatest teacher on Cloudpine Mountain, and possibly the only one with feathers.

[SYSTEM] Brass taught his first lesson: one student, twelve pebbles · cost: he had to look stupid to do it

He strutted to a clean patch of earth. Lesson two would be magnificent. He began to lay it out in rice from the spilled feed, row after careful row, a diagram of such beauty that —

The hens arrived.

There were eleven of them and they were thorough. In the time it takes to say it, lesson two was gone, and so was the patch of earth it had been written on, more or less.

"Your school," said Elder Mo, "has been eaten."

Ling Yue laughed. It was the first time in nine days, and it went on for some time.

Brass stood very straight, with a single grain of rice stuck to his beak, and decided to count it as a compliment.

Far below, where the mountain road bent out of sight of the gate, Broker Shen stopped his cart. Someone was waiting for him there, under the pines, in robes that were very clean and very blue.

"You are late with this month's payment," the lender said. "Senior Brother."

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