Chapter 1011 — Whitereed

CHAPTER 1011

Whitereed

Whitereed Village had been forty houses on a slow river, with reed beds on both banks and the Serene Jade mountains white above it.

Now it was forty black squares of ash.

Shi Feng stood in the middle of the main street at dawn with Qin Wuyan two paces behind him. He’d crossed the boundary stones in the dark, and nobody had stopped him. The smoke had stopped rising some hours ago. The reed beds had burned too, right down to the waterline, and the river carried grey flakes past the empty landing.

Shi Feng walked slowly between the burned homes. He was angry, but he made himself examine each doorway before moving on.

The houses hadn’t burned from the outside. Every one of them had burned from the inside out, roof beams falling in on the hearths, and the doors were still shut. Nobody had run.

At the fourth house he crouched and touched the ash on the threshold. It was cold and fine, and under it the packed earth floor had a smooth, glassy patch the size of a table.

Space had been folded here. When a fold closed on a room, the air in it stopped. A sleeping family wouldn’t even wake.

“They were dead before the fire,” Shi Feng said.

“Yes,” Qin Wuyan said.

Hooves sounded on the river road. A column of riders in white came round the bend in pairs, twenty of them, each with a small jade lotus at the collar. At their head rode Shen Yaoqing on a grey horse, her sword across her back, her face cold and still.

She saw him standing in the street, and her expression didn’t change.

The column stopped at the edge of the ash. Shen Yaoqing dismounted and walked forward alone. Behind her, an old man in an outer elder’s white robe dismounted more slowly and came after her.

“Master Shi,” Shen Yaoqing said, and gave him the exact bow a chief disciple owes a guest elder of the Sky Pavilion. “You’re inside the sect’s lands.”

“I heard there was a fire,” Shi Feng said. “I came to see what kind.”

“And?” Shen Yaoqing asked.

“Someone folded the space inside these rooms,” Shi Feng said, pointing to the threshold. “The fire came afterward. Look at the floors.”

Shen Yaoqing looked at the glassy patch on the threshold for a long moment. Shen Yaoqing was furious. She kept her voice steady, but tightened her grip on her sword strap.

The old outer elder reached them and bowed deeply to Shi Feng, deeper than Shen Yaoqing had.

“This old man greets Elder Shi of the Sky Pavilion,” the outer elder said. “We’re grateful for the guest elder’s concern. The sect’s patrol will handle the rest.”

Then he stepped back and stood at a polite distance, as far as courtesy allowed and not one step closer. He didn’t look at Shi Feng again. In the elders’ hall, the guest who had been refused had become a question nobody wanted to be seen answering.

Shi Feng let him keep his distance.

“How many?” Shi Feng asked Shen Yaoqing.

“One hundred and sixty-one,” Shen Yaoqing said. “The patrol counted at midnight. No survivors.”

“What will the sect write?” Shi Feng asked.

“Bandits,” Shen Yaoqing said coldly.

Behind her, two of the younger patrol disciples looked at each other. One of them opened his mouth.

“Bandits don’t fold space, Senior Sister,” the young disciple said under his breath.

“Bandits,” Shen Yaoqing repeated, without turning round. “The sect writes what it can prove in the elders’ hall. Everything else gets written down when we can prove it.”

The young disciple shut his mouth.

Shi Feng understood. The Serene Jade could no more accuse the Heavenly Sect in public than the Sky Pavilion could. Nobody accused that house in public. They just buried its dead and wrote the word bandits over them.

“Then call them bandits for now,” Shi Feng said. “But keep the evidence. We’ll need it.”

Shen Yaoqing took a small white jar out of her sleeve and held it out to him.

“Wound salve,” Shen Yaoqing said. “From my master.”

“I’m not wounded,” Shi Feng said.

“You fought the Eighteenth four days ago, and my master heard of it the next noon,” Shen Yaoqing said. “It’s her order. Take it.”

Shi Feng took it. Elder Ye Wanqiu had a habit of knowing things before she was told them. He opened the lid and smelled bitter snow-root and white jade moss, and closed it again.

“Thank your master for me,” Shi Feng said. “Tell her the Eighteenth’s palm went into my stomach. Salve won’t reach it.”

“I’ll tell her you said thank you,” Shen Yaoqing said firmly. “Keep the salve. You might need it.”

The outer elder was giving orders to the patrol. The riders spread out through the ash in pairs to search the houses again, though there was nothing left to find. A few of them muttered to each other as they went.

“Inside our own boundary stones.”

“Three hundred years, and nobody’s dared.”

“The sky has eyes. They’ll pay for this.”

“Whitereed paid its grain tithe every year. Every single year.”

Shi Feng walked on to the end of the street. The village gate there was a plain wooden frame with a reed mat roof, and it was the only thing in Whitereed that hadn’t burned.

He stopped.

A strip of grey cloth was tied round the left post at the height of a man’s eyes. It was a torn piece of a sleeve, plain grey, knotted twice.

It hadn’t been there when he walked in.

He’d come in through this gate an hour ago. He was certain of it. He’d walked past this post close enough to touch it. Since then, twenty Serene Jade riders and a Profound Heaven guardian had been standing in this village, and someone had walked up to the gate behind all of them and tied a grey sleeve to it.

Shi Feng had seen grey sleeves like that once before, in an alley in Luoxia, on the arms that had taken him out of it.

“Senior Qin,” Shi Feng said quietly.

Qin Wuyan was already at his shoulder, looking at the strip of cloth.

“Below the line,” Qin Wuyan said. “This one did not feel it.”

“Neither did I,” Shi Feng said.

Shen Yaoqing came up behind them, saw the cloth, and stopped. For a moment nobody spoke.

Then the wind came off the river, and the grey strip lifted and pointed east, down the reed river toward the next village.