Tsenkin

The Archive Terraces. Seven stone terraces climb above the lake, lined with windowless storehouses raised on stone piers against the damp. Locals call the whole archive the Tsênmàde ("archive"). The Hall of the First Measure and the Law Wing stand on the highest terrace, and the lower ones hold nine centuries of accounts in corner-counts.

The Copyists' Ward. The lodging houses, ink shops and Page Hall lie west of the terraces. The ward is full in summer and nearly empty in winter, when the road from Kokrin often closes.

The Broken Shore. In 890 the lakeshore gave way, and the lakeside wing of the archive went into the water with a third of the manuscripts. What remains is a raw cliff with fishers' huts at its foot and the Tsenkin mandarin ducks paddling in pairs below.

The Servants' Stair. The Hill-Folk servants live in this steep quarter of timber houses behind the archive. Their doorsteps hold spirit-bowls, which no magistrate in Tsenkin mentions. The ministers pretend the Hill-Folk are Kaishoni. They are not.

The Muhau Landing. A small river port where the Muhau leaves the lake loads ginseng, silk-goat cloth and dried sturgeon for Chaiyo. The roads to Tsentsui and Shanyo and west to the Iron Gate start here.

The Hall of the First Measure. This small, windowless hall holds the rope of Dezau Kokdau, which no one may see. The Doctrine says he measured his father's field with it and found the landlord had cheated by one pace. The door has not been opened in fifty years, and the key is kept in Kokrin.

The Page Hall. This is the long hall of desks where, since the earthquake of 890, every visiting scholar has copied one page by hand before leaving. At its far end stands the desk where the cast-down Emperor Tokrai Koimu, sent here in 725, copied manuscripts until he died. The Page Ledger by the door records that Grand Chancellor Makok has copied four thousand pages, and that Princess Seitotai copied the succession law, twice.

The Law Wing. This storehouse keeps the imperial house's laws, the succession law among them. It is the best-guarded building in Tsenkin and the only one lit at night.

The Drowned Steps. A stone stair that once led to the old shore now runs straight into the lake. On calm days the fishers say they can see the roofs of Old Tsenkin far below. They are right.

The Ginseng Walls. Walls of stone and bamboo netting ring the physicians' gardens of Tsenkin ginseng, a root worth its weight in silver. The macaques get over them anyway, and gardeners' boys are paid a tsinkya a month to throw stones.

Tsenkin lives to feed, house and serve the archive. The recopying after the earthquake took forty years, and some copies were made from Kokrin originals that then burned in the Great Fire of 927, so the archive holds copies of copies with nothing behind them. Nothing new has come out of Tsenkin in two centuries, and its officials count that a success. The Hill-Folk supply half the servants, the ginseng and the silk-goat fiber, and are paid in rice and cloth. Fishers take Tsenkin sturgeon from the deep water. The panda of the bamboo slopes is the imperial beast and is never hunted. Meals are rice, sturgeon, mushrooms and bamboo shoots. Dúiyôntá Page-Counter, an old copyist, has kept the Page Ledger forty years and can tell a scholar's rank from his hand. Ínasôn Goat-Hand, a Hill-Folk woman, runs the archive's servants and decides who goes home for the winter.

• A fire in the Law Wing would destroy the succession law, and the one who would gain most is the one who would never set it.
• Dúiyôntá Page-Counter says Seitotai's two copies of the succession law differ by one character.
• Ínasôn Goat-Hand's grandmother swept the Hall of the First Measure as a girl and told her the rope had rotted away. Ínasôn has told no one else.
• A scholar of the Celestial Table has asked to dive at the Drowned Steps for manuscripts from the lost wing. The officials refused, because by the rolls nothing lost is missing.
• Empty Bowl monks have been seen copying pages in the Page Hall, though they sit no examinations and own nothing.

FADING. Tsenkin is as orderly as ever, and the Measured still call it the heart of the Dominion. But it keeps copies of copies, it lost its Builder records and its oldest counting tables in 890, and it makes nothing new. Since Emperor Shaiku opened the examinations to the southern provinces, fewer ambitious scholars make the climb north, and the Page Ledger grows more slowly every ten years. Its servants were never Kaishoni, and its protector, the Grand Chancellor, is sixty-three with no son who has passed the examinations. If the Meritists win in Kokrin, Tsenkin will be the first thing they stop paying for.

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