Chapter 1000 — The Law Is Done

CHAPTER 1000

The Law Is Done

“Guest Elder Shi,” Qin Wuyan said. “This one will speak for a while.”

It was the third morning out of Shuoyang. The beacon road ran north across a white plain, and the only things on it were the two of them and the wind. Since Qin Wuyan had begun guarding him, the old man had never announced that he was going to talk. Shi Feng heard the seriousness in his voice and gave him his full attention.

Shi Feng stopped walking.

“I’m listening, Senior Qin,” Shi Feng said.

Qin Wuyan didn’t stop. He kept walking at the same slow pace, his hands in his sleeves, and Shi Feng fell back into step beside him.

“The law has finished with you,” Qin Wuyan said. “The Censorate filed its finding. The court sent the censor to the frontier. The witness is dead. The clan has its papers. Everyone who could act against you with a brush has done it, and lost.” He was quiet for ten paces. “This one has guarded the Pavilion’s people for two hundred and eleven years. When a court fails, the people behind the court don’t stop. They put down the brush. They pick up a knife.”

“They’ll attack now that the hearing has failed them,” Shi Feng said. “That’s why you’re warning me.”

“The knife doesn’t need anything,” Qin Wuyan said. “It doesn’t need a witness or a hearing, and it doesn’t care what the Tianji issue says about you. It only needs a road with nobody on it.” He looked at the empty plain around them. “Like this one.”

“You think the people behind the memorial and the people behind the knife are the same,” Shi Feng said.

“This one doesn’t think,” Qin Wuyan said. “This one watches. In the south, a censor wrote you a memorial. In the north, a witness died with grey ash in his mouth. Two hands. One body. You saw it before this one did.”

Shi Feng thought Qin Wuyan was right. He’d avoided naming the connection to Pang Yue because the deputy still had a post and a life to lose. The old guardian already understood.

“Then what do you want me to do?” Shi Feng asked.

“Nothing different,” Qin Wuyan said. “Walk. Eat. Sleep with your back to a wall. And understand this, Guest Elder. The Pavilion keeps its alchemist alive. It does not go to war. When the knife comes, this one will tell you whose fight it is.” He walked on a few more paces. “That is all. This one has said more today than in a month.”

“I’m glad you told me,” Shi Feng said. “I won’t mistake the court’s finding for protection on the road.”

Qin Wuyan didn’t answer that. But the corner of his mouth moved, very slightly, and for the rest of the morning he didn’t say another word.

In the afternoon they reached the salt waystation at Bitter Willow, and it wasn’t there anymore.

Only the walls and blackened hall posts stood. Charred stable beams lay under snow. Smoke still rose from the ruins. A county magistrate in a fur hat sat on a horse at the gate with four constables, and one of them was writing on a board.

“Bandits,” the magistrate said, before anyone had asked him anything. He took in the Pavilion grey, and then the young man beside the old one, and climbed down from his horse in a hurry to bow. “Honoured guests. This lowly official apologises that you have to see this. Bandits, sirs. They’ve been all over the north since autumn. We’ve sent to the Ninth Beacon for soldiers, but distant water can’t put out a nearby fire.”

“How many people lived here?” Shi Feng asked.

“Eleven, Honoured Guest,” the magistrate said. “The keeper, his wife, two sons, the stable hands, and whatever travellers were staying the night.”

“And how many bodies did you find?” Shi Feng asked.

The magistrate opened his mouth. Then he shut it.

“None, Honoured Guest,” the magistrate said in a smaller voice.

Shi Feng walked through the gate.

The snow in the yard was trampled, but not by many feet. There was no blood anywhere. He went to the doorway of the main hall and crouched down. On the threshold, where the snow hadn’t settled, lay a line of fine grey ash. It wasn’t wood ash. Wood ash was black and gritty. This was pale and soft, and when he rubbed a pinch of it between two fingers, it gave off a faint bitter smell he’d smelled once before.

Under Cao Shuncai’s tongue, in a Lantern Guard cell in Shuoyang.

He checked the next doorway, and the stable door, and the kitchen door. The same grey line was laid across every threshold, neatly. Someone had taken the time to do it properly. But there were no dead behind any of the doors.

“Whoever burned this place didn’t come to rob it,” Shi Feng said, standing up. “The salt’s still in the cellar. I can smell it from here. They came for the people.”

“Bandits take people for ransom sometimes,” the magistrate said weakly.

“Then someone will write to you asking for money,” Shi Feng said. “If they do, send the letter to the Sky Pavilion tower in Beiling. I’ll pay it.”

The magistrate stared at him. The constable with the board stopped writing.

Shi Feng walked to the middle of the yard. Here the snow had held one clear set of tracks: four men walking side by side, from the gate toward the burned hall. Halfway across the yard, all four sets of footprints stopped.

They didn’t turn. They didn’t scuff. In the middle of the yard, four men had stepped off the ground and gone nowhere a foot could follow.

Qin Wuyan came and stood beside him and looked down at the place where the tracks ended.

“Shattering Void,” Qin Wuyan said.

“Four of them,” Shi Feng said. “Walking in step.”