Wang Tian laid an expedition contract on the study desk and turned it toward his son.
"Read the third section."
Wang Ben drew his chair closer, easing his sore ribs against the back. He passed the witness seals and spiritual binding clauses, then found the passage beneath his father's finger.
"The company will make reasonable efforts to acquire the named materials." He read it again. "They don't have to bring anything back."
"And you will still have paid them." His father unrolled a second scroll beside it. Notes crowded its edges. "A merchant can show you what he sells. An expedition company asks you to pay before it has found anything. Reputation gives it a reason to do good work, but you still have to read what it promises."
Ben followed the notes down to the payment terms.
"Half before they leave?"
"Half before they leave, half on delivery. That is the custom. It suits the company." Tian tapped his own amended terms. "Pay as the work is done, with someone neither side employs to judge whether it has been done. And put a cost on failure. You should not be the only one who loses."
"Will they agree to that?"
"A sound company can. One desperate for your advance may refuse. Better to find that out before you pay."
Ben asked the System to record the lesson, then returned to the first scroll.
At midmorning, Li Mei brought a tray of tea to the desk. There was more silver in her hair than the year before, and she lowered the tray with a care that made Ben reach to help. She smiled at him and moved a cup within his reach.
"Don't let me interrupt."
Tian caught her hand before she could leave. "Stay a moment. I'm teaching him how to bargain with expedition companies."
"Then leave him someone willing to bargain with." She took the chair by the window when he released her hand. "They have pride, Ben. It may make them work harder for their name. It also makes them remember an insult. Ask for what you need without making them regret giving it."
His father smiled and lifted his cup.
When Li Mei left to attend to the household, Tian watched her through the doorway before turning back to Ben.
"Your grandfather and Hongwei were still in the archive last night. Studying Li Cheng's notes?"
"They helped us read the notation in what Senior Shen sent. I could help transcribe that much." Ben set his cup down. "I'm still trying to follow the qi relationships behind it. Grandfather and Hongwei disagree over some of those passages too. If Li Cheng were here, I think he could have taken the design further."
"What do you still need for the work?"
"Most of the central materials are here. Some of the node materials are still on the road, and the crystal won't come before spring. We need the supporting materials as well."
Tian drew the contracts back toward him. "Then we should find a company. Silent Path is already in talks with us about the patrols, but this would be a separate agreement and fee. There are three others worth considering."
He named the Iron Wolves first. They worked quickly and cut corners. The Vermillion Scouts would enter a spirit beast's domain for the right price, which was seldom low.
"I'd choose Clear Spring," he said. "Old Master Qin built it on honest work. I dealt with them for years, looking for materials that might help your mother."
"Would he still be running it?"
"Probably retired." Tian paused over his tea. "It has been decades. But he left them a good name."
Ben glanced toward the door his mother had gone through.
"What did you try for her?"
"Pills to help her meridians widen. Her foundation is stable, but she cannot advance beyond it. Clear Spring brought me the materials, and I refined them myself. None of it helped."
His father set the cup down without drinking.
"I'm a grade-eight alchemist. I've spent decades reading about meridian injuries, and hers still troubles me. The damage is too regular. It looks as though something shaped it rather than broke it. For years I thought it was an inborn flaw. I've never been satisfied with that."
Ben remembered the coldvein lotus and the treatment that had restored his father's burned meridians. Qi had passed through secondary channels to wear down the blockage. If his mother's condition was different, he could not assume the same approach would help her.
"If it was shaped that way, perhaps we should..."
He stopped. His father waited, but Ben had nothing to finish with.
Tian drew the first contract away from the edge of the desk. "Attend to the array for now."
Ben looked down at the clause they had been reading.
"Before we choose Clear Spring, I should look at the Association's dispute records. See how they work now."
His father's mouth eased into a smile. "I wanted to see whether you would rely on my memory or go and check. Qin may have retired years ago. My memory won't tell us who has been running his company since. Go and find out."
As Ben pushed back his chair, Tian rose to take a scroll from the shelf.
"Hongwei left this for you. His notes on resonance tuning."
Ben unrolled it on the desk. The opening covered familiar distances and angles, the measurements used to bring the parts of a formation into accord. Farther down, Hongwei had written about listening for where the lines wanted to settle instead of forcing them into place.
Ben traced the passage with a finger.
"In a layered array, could the secondary nodes find their balance against the layer beneath them? Then they might not need fixed anchors."
He stopped with his finger still on the page. That was well beyond anything he had learned to make. He drew his hand back, wishing he had kept the thought to himself.
His father's hand had stilled on the other end of the scroll. Ben waited for him to ask where the idea had come from.
Tian rolled it closed and passed it to him.
"An interesting thought. The Association closes its record hall by afternoon. You should go."
Ben tucked Hongwei's notes into his sleeve and got up.
...
The Merchant Association occupied a three-storey stone building in the trade district. Its records were open to anyone with cause to consult them, though Ben had to explain his business to several clerks and fill in their forms before one brought out the books.
The man set them on the counter, then pushed a register toward him. His fingers were stained with ink. He was a mortal.
"Expedition disputes. Twenty years, arranged by company. Sign here."
Ben signed and opened the volume at Clear Spring.
There were complaints about lesser materials supplied in place of those ordered. Others concerned deliveries made within the agreed time but too late for the work the client needed them for. He turned back to compare the wording of two entries, then continued through the later years. The complaints kept coming.
He copied a few before turning to the Iron Wolves. Damage to property, threats, disputes that had become fights. His father's warning about them still held.
The Vermillion Scouts had few complaints. Ben lingered over that section, but the cost of pursuing a dispute could keep clients from filing one. A short account of complaints could not tell him much by itself.
He asked for the shipment registries next, to see where the materials were going.
Some of the materials being bought up across Redstone were listed as being sent onward. Ben followed the recorded routes with his finger. They ran toward the frontier, toward the Frozen Jade border.
He had expected to find the materials going into the Crimson Bastion. These entries gave him another direction to follow, but no explanation. He copied them onto a separate sheet before returning to the company records.
Silent Path had only eight years to its name. Its founder, Lin Suyin, had been a captain with Clear Spring. The account of her departure called it a disagreement over practice.
Ben read the following entries. The company was small, its prices fair, and the work it took on had been completed. No complaint had been filed against it.
[CROSS-REFERENCE: Lin Suyin's departure from Clear Spring coincides with the beginning of its decline in the records examined.]
Ben went back to the dates beside the Clear Spring complaints. Then he added Lin's name and the Silent Path entries to his notes.
The company already talking to his family about patrols deserved a visit. He gathered his copies and returned the books to the clerk.
...
Lin Suyin set the kettle on the iron warmer in Silent Path's receiving room. By the door hung the satchel she still took on expeditions. The strap had darkened where it lay against her shoulder.
She was at foundation establishment and still went out with her people. Eight years as a Clear Spring captain, then eight running her own company, had worn the leather smooth.
She touched the strap. She had carried that bag out of Clear Spring the morning Master Qin's son substituted lesser stone for the seventh-grade material named in a contract. He had called the substitution honest.
The complaints had accumulated since then. Silent Path kept its traders by bringing their goods back whole. She paid the patrol foremen their full rate and knew the records-hall clerks by name. Those people remembered her when work came their way.
She had spent years building those relations. They brought her business she could never have found alone.
Lin let the satchel hang and went back to the kettle.
...
Ben followed his father away from the trade district's larger shops to a plain building with Silent Path's name on a wooden plaque.
Tian paused at the door. "Let me lead. Watch how she answers."
Lin Suyin received them in robes made for expedition work. She looked about forty, with callused hands and no ornaments. She bowed to each of them before inviting them to sit.
"Master Wang. Young Master Wang. Your father's inquiry reached me. What can I do for you?"
"We need materials for a formation," Tian said. "My son can explain what is required."
Her attention moved to Ben. He took the list from his sleeve and laid it on the table between them.
She read through the resonance crystal fragments, formation chalk, binding pastes and stabilizing reagents, then stopped at the soul-affinity jade.
"Most of this I can bring within two weeks, at the usual rates. The jade will have to come through my southern contacts. I can arrange that quietly." She moved her finger back up the list. "Clean resonance crystal takes longer."
"Fragments will do," Ben said. "The crystal for the central work is separate and still pending until spring. We need these for the supporting work. It can hold with imperfect resonance."
Lin looked up from the paper. "Your clan has taught you well."
She left the list facing him while Tian leaned forward.
"There is one thing we haven't written down. Refined void-touched essence. Can you find it?"
Lin took her hand off the list.
The raw void-touched obsidian had been their first plan. Wuyan's people had searched for weeks without finding it; the Bastion's buying had reached even those sources. Refined essence could be distilled from the same stone, a smaller amount they might still obtain.
"What would you use it for?" Lin asked.
"Spiritual isolation," Tian said. "A protected space for a careful working. There are legitimate uses for it."
"There are." She glanced at Ben, then back to his father. "I don't handle it. The sources are tangled, and so is the law around them."
Tian waited while she drew the ordinary list toward herself.
"I can give you a name. Fang Wei. He deals in materials the regular companies won't touch. His goods are genuine, his prices fair, and he won't ask what you intend to do with them."
"What else does he ask?" Tian said.
Lin turned to Ben as she answered. "Future consideration. He helps you now, and later he asks for help in return. Nothing unlawful, or anything that would cost your clan its name. You should still understand what you would be taking on."
Ben rested his hands on his knees. His father had not agreed to anything.
"The Bastion has bought up everything it can find for spiritual isolation," Lin continued. "The honest trade has nothing left to offer you. If you cannot carry another obligation, I don't see how you will get the essence."
Ben thought of the shipment entries he had copied. These were materials their array needed, being bought out of reach and sent elsewhere. He still could not account for it.
Tian brought the discussion back to the list. He went through the promised deliveries and payment terms with her, asking her to be precise where an answer left room for doubt. Ben watched Lin check the paper before she answered. His father gave her time to do it.
By the time they rose, they had agreed on the standard supplies and the terms Lin had stated. The essence remained outside the agreement.
"We will think on your broker," Tian said.
Outside, people turned to look as they passed. Ben walked beside his father, considering Lin's recommendation. If the deal went well, both the Wangs and Fang Wei would have reason to seek her out again. He did not begrudge her that, but he would remember it.