With his cheek pressed against the riverbed and a new boot on his neck, Lu Jiujin kept counting. From the seven iron cleats on the sole, he deduced that the person stepping on him hadn't been at the lock last night. He pointed out that at midnight two boats without signal flags had each been loaded nine inches too deep, identified which plank hid the finger-wide gap at the bottom of the lock, then calculated that forty-one people spent ten days clearing three feet of silt for a total of eight hundred copper coins, less than two coins per person. He asked whether the old rules said people didn't need to eat, then shoved thirty-seven shi of rice from Warehouse Three in the East Wing, held by Hu Wanshan at his waist, onto the table. Below, more than twenty people clutched empty bowls.
