Chapter 1014 — The Sect’s Book

CHAPTER 1014

The Sect’s Book

At dawn the family from the middle house came to the well.

The man carried one child and the woman carried the other, and both children were wrapped in the same quilt. Their faces had gone from dark to pale in the night. The man was a reed-cutter with big cracked hands, and he didn’t seem to know what to do with them.

He knelt in front of Shi Feng on the wet stones and knocked his head down three times before anyone could stop him.

“This lowly one doesn’t know your name, Master,” the reed-cutter said. “My wife says you walked through our house. She says she saw you go past the kang. I didn’t see anything. I was already...”

He stopped.

“You were asleep,” Shi Feng said, and pulled him up by the elbow. “That’s all. Get up. The stones are cold.”

“But you didn’t stop,” the reed-cutter’s wife said, staring at him. “You walked right past us.”

“If I’d stopped, you’d be dead,” Shi Feng said. “I had to reach the man behind your house. Once he opened his hand, the air came back.”

The woman looked at him for a long moment. Relief and shame filled her face when she understood. She held her children tighter and bowed, unable to speak.

The reed-cutter was still holding Shi Feng’s sleeve.

“Master, your kindness,” the reed-cutter said fiercely. “This lowly one will repay it in the next life if I can’t in this one.”

“You don’t owe me your next life,” Shi Feng said, easing the man’s hand off his sleeve. “Keep your children away from the reeds. Those two bandits are still out there.”

He coughed, and the cough tore at his chest. His lungs had been burning since midnight. Every breath went in hot and came out short.

The outer elder found him at the well an hour later.

He carried a brush and a thick book bound in white silk. He stopped exactly three paces away and bowed exactly as deep as he had at Whitereed.

“Elder Shi,” the outer elder said. “On behalf of the Serene Jade Sect, this old man thanks the Sky Pavilion’s guest for the lives of Eastreed. Fifty-three houses. Two hundred and nine people. The sect won’t forget it.”

“I’m glad they’re alive,” Shi Feng said.

The outer elder opened the white book on the well’s rim, wet the brush and wrote. Shi Feng could read it upside down.

Eastreed, the twelfth night of the month. Bandits struck by night. Repelled by the patrol, with the help of the Sky Pavilion’s guest. The bandit chief slain. Village losses: none.

“Bandits,” Shi Feng said.

“Bandits,” the outer elder agreed, without looking up. “The sect’s book is read in the elders’ hall, Elder Shi. A word in this book is a word every elder must answer for. This old man writes only what the hall can carry.”

He blew on the ink, closed the book and bowed again.

“This old man will report the guest’s help to the hall in full,” the outer elder said. “How the hall chooses to remember it is the hall’s own affair.”

“I understand,” Shi Feng said.

The outer elder walked away. He hadn’t once come closer than three paces.

Shi Feng didn’t hold it against him. A man of his rank couldn’t be seen getting close to the guest the elders had refused, and in the book he’d still written help. In the Serene Jade, that was a lot.

He sat down on the well’s rim and took out the folded sheet of oiled paper from the Seventeenth’s ring.

In daylight he could see it properly. It was a map of a stretch of low grey hills, drawn by someone who’d walked them more than once. A track wound up from the north through two valleys. At the foot of the third hill, under a cliff, was a small square building marked with a single character.

Kiln.

Beside it, in smaller writing, were three more words: every tenth day.

Shi Feng looked at it for a long time.

Shi Feng felt uneasy. A kiln on an Elder’s map might hide another furnace prison. He needed to check before deciding what to do.

Footsteps crossed the square. Shen Yaoqing stopped beside the well with her sleeve bound up and her sword back across her shoulders.

“Greyback Hills,” Shen Yaoqing said, looking at the map.

“You know them?” Shi Feng asked.

“They’re outside the sect’s boundary stones by half a day,” Shen Yaoqing said. “The west end of them borders our patrol road. Nothing lives there but goats.”

“Somebody’s built a kiln,” Shi Feng said.

“So I see,” Shen Yaoqing said coldly. “I’d like a copy for the sect’s book.”

Shi Feng looked up at her.

“The outer elder writes bandits,” Shi Feng said.

“The outer elder writes what the hall can carry,” Shen Yaoqing said. “I’m the chief disciple. I keep a book of what the hall might need later. If the Heavenly Sect is building in hills that touch our patrol road, my master will want to know before the elders’ hall does.”

Shi Feng took out a blank sheet and his brush and copied the map onto it line by line, the track, the valleys, the cliff, the kiln and the three small words. His hand was steady. His chest burned with every stroke.

He held out the copy, and Shen Yaoqing took it and checked it against the original, line by line.

“It’s all there,” Shi Feng said.

“I can see that,” Shen Yaoqing said, and folded it into her sleeve. “The patrol rides back to the gate this morning. The sect’s lands are the sect’s business again.”

“And the Greyback Hills?” Shi Feng asked.

“Those are outside our boundary,” Shen Yaoqing said, meeting his gaze. “The patrol won’t be going there.”

She bowed the exact bow of a chief disciple to a guest elder, and went to her horse.

Qin Wuyan came down from the gatehouse roof and stood beside the well.

“The Pavilion does not fight that house,” Qin Wuyan said, looking at the map in Shi Feng’s hand.

“I know,” Shi Feng said. He folded the map and put it away, and coughed again. “But I haven’t asked the Pavilion to fight anyone, Senior Qin. I’ve only asked it for a horse back to Beiling.”

Qin Wuyan looked at him a little longer than usual. Then he went to fetch the horses.