The Mouth Count

County began counting the mouths before the city had decided whether mouths were a blessing or an infection.

Liao did it with a notebook no larger than Bao's palm and a patience that made people tell him more than fear would have.

He did not ask, at first, who owned which plank. He asked where bodies could now be heard without restarting.

A worse question.

By second bell he had already marked: South Gate plank, county countertable, lower-quay plank, White Heron rail board, Stone Mouth knot-post.

Five mouths if one counted only the ones crude enough to admit themselves.

"You make us sound like wells," Gao said when Lin told her.

"Wells get covered when the water turns political," Han answered later from the quay.

The count reached the city in pieces.

A basket wife came to the lane asking whether cook-lane ash yards counted as a mouth now that three women there had begun repeating the standard questions over a crate lid before sending bodies uphill. A White Heron boy asked Bao if a rail post was a mouth when no plank sat under it. A county clerk wanted to know whether Gao's standing bowl counted as part of the mouth or merely its wage.

Bao tried to answer all three until Marta stopped him.

"If you start defining it for them, they will only write your answer down."

That did not stop the city from answering for itself.

By noon the lane had settled on its own rude arithmetic.

A mouth was any place where a body could be asked enough to move.

Not every queue. Not every bowl line. Not every woman who gave advice. Only the surfaces where questions altered passage.

That definition pleased no one with ink. It fit too well.

Liao crossed at late bell with the notebook visible.

"How many do you think there are now?" Bao asked before anyone could stop him.

Liao considered the boy with more courtesy than was comfortable.

"Enough that counting them will change them."

Gao barked laughter.

"There. At least he knows one honest thing."

Liao wrote anyway.

At lower quay Han handled the count more roughly. When a clerk asked whether her mat shade itself counted as mouth or only the plank beside it, she pointed at the water.

"Count the tide too while you are here. It interferes with my procedure."

The clerk did not laugh. That made Lin like her more.

The count mattered by afternoon in a way Marta had not anticipated.

People began choosing mouths not only by need, but by number.

"If county counts it, will county honor it?" a dye woman asked.

"If they count too many, which ones will they keep?" said another.

The poor had understood at once what administrators always pretend to discover later: enumeration is the first cousin of selection.

By dusk Shen's interest had spread farther than Liao's notebook.

White Heron had already sent back a message through Lin:

If counting mouths means keeping only the ones that fit a map, tell county the river will rearrange its loyalties before dawn.

Stone Mouth's answer was shorter:

Do knots count. If not, good.

Bao smiled at that until Marta explained why it was not a joke.

After dark he sat by the empty plank and tried to count aloud what the city would lose if one mouth vanished.

"Without Han, quay restarts. Without Gao, the lane goes crooked. Without rail, branch bodies wait. Without knots, Stone Mouth lies to itself."

He stopped and looked up.

"If they count us, they can choose who becomes late."

Marta did not tell him he was thinking too far ahead. He was not.

That night the city slept under numbers it had not asked for and already understood too well.