Ember Legion

The hand order said ”at morning,” and it had come at dusk-dark. By the time Chen Jin folded it along its own creases, most of the lamps in the camp were out. He slept badly in what was left of the night. Not from worry — he did not know how to carry an easy day. In fifty-odd days since the sky fell, this was the first morning the wall would stand without him on it.

He left the camp gate before first light. No armor, no rifle, his belt empty. Two enforcement men on patrol stopped at the street corner and watched him; their helmet brims sat low, and under them there were no faces to read. They did not stop him and they did not step aside. He walked between them and nobody said a word. The city was quiet, quiet enough to hear the sea — the tide kept its old count, wave on wave, counting down what was left of the audit.

The second floor of the port authority building was the same room. The long table was gone; in its place one small table and two chairs. The defense officer sat behind the table, fifty or so, his committee gray washed pale, two ink stains on the cuff. Beside him a clerk with new paper and new pens, the caps barely pulled. The silk-vested man stood at the window with the charge book in his arms; when Chen Jin came in, his arms tightened around it.

Chen Jin sat down. Nobody asked him to, and he did not wait. There was one cup of tea on the table, untouched — the man asking did not drink, and the man answering did not dare.

The questioning started with grain and pay. The defense officer read a line, asked once, and Chen Jin answered once.

”Three hundred mouths. Which book does the grain come from?”

”Shelter-district work tickets. Traded for grain.”

”The grain ledger itself?”

”Zhou Zhengting’s book. Every line counted.”

”Arms.”

”Three hundred rifles. Twelve came up from the gully with the old hands; the other two hundred eighty-eight were drawn from the ordnance store in the first days, receipts on file.”

”Three cannons. Who built them.”

”The arsenal.”

”Name of the master of it?”

”Xiao Mao.”

The clerk’s pen stopped. He glanced up at the defense officer; the defense officer did not look up. After a while the clerk bent back to the paper, wrote master of the arsenal, and swung the pen in a small circle around the two syllables Xiao Mao until they were gone.

Chen Jin watched the circle close. At the window, the silk-vested man’s eyes followed it once, then dropped back to the book in his own arms. The arsenal’s own roll carried that name, and the work-ticket book carried it, and the materials receipts carried it; the committee’s roll did not. And those three cannons had been hammered together, blow by blow, by a man the committee’s roll had no line for. Saying so would change nothing. He said nothing.

The record of troop movements went slowest. For every entry in Bi Chengzhang’s book the defense officer read it out and made him own it.

”One night action at the north wall. Six men.”

”The six were mine. The firing line on the wall is a separate count.”

”Search of the warehouse district.”

”Hands first, paperwork after. I own that one.”

”One night on the East Sluice water line. Three men.”

”All three were recruits, learning off the old hands. Not one came back broken.”

”The night the fleet came in. Three hundred on the wall.”

”The whole guard stood. It was their first night.”

The defense officer made his note and read the next line. The room was quiet enough to hear the pen travel the paper. At the window the silk-vested man shifted his weight twice and held the book tighter — he had carried it in, and it burned in his hands, and nobody in the room looked at him twice today.

At the end the defense officer closed the book.

”Arrangement during the audit. Defense of the wall changes hands this afternoon. You will attend.”

It was not a question.

”I’ll be there for the handover,” Chen Jin said.

”You’ll assist the handover,” the defense officer raised his eyes. ”The serving officers assist the handover. That is what the order says.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from NovelPhoenix. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Chen Jin looked at him for two breaths. The man was right; that was what the order said. He stood and left. At the door he heard the clerk ask, ”Do we record what he said just now?” and the defense officer answer, ”Record it. Word for word.”

The afternoon sun sat low and pale. The defense officer took his men up the wall: two enforcement men, one carrying the regulation book, the silk-vested man last, the same book in his arms.

Yesterday, when the hearing broke up, nobody had said which door the takeover would use to reach the wall. Today there was an answer: the ramp. Step by step, up the old ramp of the north wall.

The handover went by the list. Posts, ammunition crates, cannon positions, matched line by line. Chen Jin handed it over without hurry. He knew this work — the old garrison’s handover list. What Lei Changgeng had handed him at the gap, he now handed on to the men taking the wall.

Which parapet stood half a brick low and wanted half a sandbag; which loose brick slipped under a new man’s boot, first time every time; which rail sang what note in the dark, and how far the sound carried. Line by line, passed to the men receiving it. Back when he took the gap, Lei Changgeng had passed it the same way, line by line, and he had found it wordy. Now he dug the lines out one at a time and knew the wordiness was numbers bought with lives.

The defense officer listened impatiently. He had the regulations in hand, and the regulations were cleaner than all this talk. But he did not cut in — the takeover had to go smooth, and if it went wrong, it would sit on him.

At the watch-call entry, it stopped.

The regulation book said: city watch-calls per committee standard. One long and two short — bug alarm. Two long — withdraw.

The call on the wall was: two short, take position; two short and a long, bugs on the wall.

”This one changes,” the defense officer said. ”Per the book.”

”Don’t change two short and a long.”

The words were out before he knew they were wrong. He should have said the whole of it — that on the first night of the war it was this call that pulled men scattered along the parapet back into one line; that the bugs knew that note, and so did the men; that the three hundred on the wall had spent these days drilling for exactly that sound. Any one of those sentences was worth more than four words. What came out was four words, and four words laid against a regulation book hang light, like a man guarding his own. The book had no bugs in it. The wall had them every day.

The defense officer looked at him for two breaths and made his note: ”Referred to the committee.”

He did not say whether it would change. Chen Jin did not press. Pressing would have bought back the same four words, and he did not want to add one more to them. It was the twentieth time his words had outrun his mind by half a step.

The watch-change call came at dusk-light.

At the call, the Ember Guard came off the parapets and the defense officer’s men went up the ramp, taking the positions post by post. The two sides crossed at the wall-top, and nobody spoke. Before coming down, the old hands tapped the heel of each stock once against the parapet stone — checked; the rifle is sound, the post is sound.

The men taking over did not know the sign; they slung the rifles and went, and the tap fell behind them, and nobody looked back. One old hand put a cord-end for a rifle sling into the hand of the man receiving his post — worn soft at the edge, tougher than new cord. The man squeezed it and pocketed it. From start to end the two of them did not say one word.

The three hundred stood in the camp, not drilling, not dispersing. Chen Jin walked along under the wall and three hundred pairs of eyes moved with him, and not one man asked. They could not ask. Tomorrow the wall would be stood by the men who went up today; that reason held inside the camp and out of it.

He checked the racks on his way. Three hundred rifles, and on handover day, cleaner than they had ever been. Nobody had ordered it. The old hands cleaned, and the new men cleaned, and the tiptoe boy stripped and rebuilt his bolt three times before he let it be. A show for whom? The wall was not theirs anymore — a show for whom? But the rifles were clean. The rule of the wall lives in the hands, not on the wall. Nobody said it out loud.

At dusk-dark he walked back. The queue at the granary was shorter than in past days — the fleet’s grain had come ashore and the ration had not broken. The chest count had gone into Zhou Zhengting’s book, one stroke to a chest, all afternoon. Few people in the queue talked, but several at the tail stood facing the camp the whole time. The reloading yard was strangely quiet tonight; the work in the hands never stopped, but every ear stood toward the wall. Behind the shelter fence the cooking smoke rose, thread by thread, straight. The lamp in the med shed was lit, and the pot inside it was still on.

The whole city knew. The audit was not finished, and the wall had changed hands first. Nobody shouted. By now they had learned not to — yesterday they had sent him out of the port authority with half a morning of silence; today they watched him hand over the wall with a whole city of it.

In the duty room he was alone. He did not turn the wick up.

He went over the day’s account in his head: the watch-call was reported up, no answer on whether it would change; the wall was handed over, not one man lost; three hundred rifles on the racks — the book said so, and the racks said the same. Tomorrow the wall belonged to the defense officer; the camp belonged to him. Subject to committee orders. Four words on the hand order, and he had chewed them all night, and they were still four words.

He blew out the lamp.

Sometime past midnight, three knocks came at the camp gate, very soft. The sentry came to report: nobody there, one sheet of paper under the doorsill.

Chen Jin pulled his coat on and went out. The paper was rough stock, folded in four — the way things travel in this city when they cannot travel in the open. He opened it and found a column of names. The first line was written heavy, in pencil — Zhou Zhengting, a red thumbprint pressed beside it, pressed hard. The hand that had gone line by line against the defense officer’s questions over the grain ledger that morning had signed first that night. Below it the names ran on, twenty-odd of them, some square and careful, some crooked, and where a man could not write, there was a red thumbprint.

On the back, one line in small characters, slow strokes:

”The wall changed hands. The accounts haven’t.”

Chen Jin stood with the sheet in his hand a while. The sea wind came in at the street mouth and made the paper speak in his grip. He folded it and put it away inside his coat, with the accounts he had never finished counting — nine killed and nine swept off was one, the water coming in from the moat was one, and tonight this sheet was one too.

On the way back in, he looked up at the wall. There was a lamp on the parapet, lit by the defense officer’s men. Half the oil Chen Jin would have burned, and half the light.