Chapter 327 — Customer Service

CHAPTER 327

Customer Service

The first escort fleet reached the south dock an hour after sunrise, and it came in two neat lines.

Twenty-four reed boats glided up to the pier with oars lifted in perfect order. On each prow stood a Black Water man in a clean shirt. Each one wore a grey iron plaque tied to his upper arm with a red cord. Tang Hai stood in the lead boat, wearing a new belt and struggling to smile.

Sima Lan stood on the pier with the ledger.

“Again,” Sima Lan said.

Twenty-four men took a breath.

“Welcome to Jinsha Ferry!” they shouted. “May your crossing be smooth!”

“Louder on the second word,” Sima Lan said. “You sound as if you're threatening them.”

One young gangster muttered that they’d been threatening the merchants only last week.

“That was last week,” Sima Lan said. “Zhu Liu, strike that.”

Zhu Liu struck it. The merchants on the dock watched with their mouths open. Silk Dealer Dou, who had demanded a refund two days earlier and been refused, pushed through the crowd and stopped in front of a broad man in a clean shirt. He pointed with a shaking finger.

“You!” Silk Dealer Dou cried. “You took my second cart last month!”

The broad man bowed deeply and explained that the robbery had happened before the contract.

“…”

“He's apologising,” somebody whispered.

“He's holding an umbrella over you.”

“Is he carrying your bag?”

He hurried to shelter Silk Dealer Dou from the sun, politely inviting his former victim to step aside for tea.

Silk Dealer Dou stared from the tea to the slag-streaked plaque on the man’s arm. He still couldn’t read a word on it.

“What does the plaque mean?” Silk Dealer Dou asked weakly.

The man explained that the plaque now marked a customer they had to protect. They’d learned that much this morning, with a picture to help them remember.

Zhu Liu held up a board. On it, in thick ink, a cart was drawn with a smiling plaque on its front, and a stick figure beside it was handing the plaque a copper coin. Underneath was a single character, copied out forty times: PAID.

“That's the one thing you need to read,” Shi Feng said, from his seat on a bollard. He had been up since the third watch rehearsing with Tang Hai. “Everything else is the escort's job.”

Thirty-one carts crossed in the first convoy. The reed boats ran on either side of the barges, close enough to touch the hulls, with a boat at the front sounding the depth with a long pole. Tang Hai's men called the bends in shouts that rolled back along the line like drums. They knew a sandbar that had eaten two barges in the spring. They knew a side channel where the current ran the other way. They crossed the Jinsha in an hour and a half, and the old ferry timetable had needed three.

On the far bank, a salt merchant took his hat off and bowed to a man he had last seen holding a hook.

“Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river,” Salt Merchant Hao breathed. “Unbelievable.”

“I'll take twenty plaques,” Silk Dealer Dou said, to the air.

“The sect's sold out,” Sima Lan said. “Waiting list. Eleven stones to join it.”

By the time the last cart was across, Zhu Liu's receipt book had a new column headed Tribute (Sect), and the ferry earnings finally looked worth recording. Zhu Liu was delighted to enter money collected from a safe crossing instead of another damaged cart.

Lin Langtian came back at noon.

Wet below the knees, Lin Langtian strolled to the pier with a fishing pole and a half-eaten sweet potato.

Black Water men were helping a grandmother off a mule cart. Two more were carrying her baskets. One was explaining, in a gentle voice, how to hold the safety rope.

Lin Langtian stared at them for a long time.

“Junior Brother,” Lin Langtian said at last.

“Senior Brother Lin,” Shi Feng said.

“The pirates are carrying baskets,” Lin Langtian said, staring at the grandmother.

“They’ve been practising since before sunrise,” Shi Feng replied.

“For free?” Lin Langtian asked suspiciously.

“For a wage,” Shi Feng said. “Paid out of the plaque fee. The merchants pay for protection, the gang provides it, and the sect keeps three tenths from the top as a handling charge. The gang pays the sect a tenth of its wage for uniforms and training.”

Lin Langtian lowered the sweet potato. He looked proud, horrified and genuinely envious.

“You take from the merchants,” Lin Langtian said slowly. “And you take from the pirates.”

“That’s the arrangement,” Shi Feng confirmed.

“Who taught you to rob both sides at once?” Lin Langtian demanded.

“You taught one side,” Shi Feng said.

“Impossible,” Lin Langtian said. “I'd never teach that. I'd have remembered.”

“'A man who sells the lock should also sell the key,'” Sima Lan said, writing. “You said it in the Duanyang tea house. I have it in the margin.”

Lin Langtian tried to object, but Sima Lan had quoted his own lesson. He turned toward the river, proud that Shi Feng had learned it and annoyed that he’d thought of a better use for it first.

“I didn't think you'd be this fast,” Lin Langtian said quietly. “I'm… I'm proud, Junior Brother. Truly. And also a little offended.”

“Then I’ll keep doing it,” Shi Feng said, smiling at his senior brother’s offended expression.

“It’s not in the book,” Lin Langtian muttered. “You could at least have let me watch you arrange it.”

A horn sounded across the water.

The low note was deeper than a ferry’s whistle. Everyone turned toward the north bank. Out of the river haze slid a black river-cruiser with an iron-plated prow and a red flag carrying a clenched fist. Behind it came two more boats, riding low with armed men.

Steward Pu Gen turned the colour of old tea.

“Iron Fist Gate,” Pu Gen whispered. “Beating the dog depends on its master. He's come for his cut.”