Chapter 1027 — A Guard of Honour

CHAPTER 1027

A Guard of Honour

“Bandits are everywhere in the north this winter, Master Shi,” Assistant Prefect Pan Ruhai said, and smiled over his teacup. “Everywhere! The provincial office lies awake at night over it.”

He was a plump man of fifty in the green robe of the provincial office, with a soft voice and very clean fingernails. He’d come to Northwind House in a closed chair with four bearers and two clerks, and he’d bowed to Shi Feng at the door a full hand lower than an assistant prefect needed to.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Shi Feng said.

“And they’ve singled you out, sir. Four bandit chiefs!” Pan Ruhai said, shaking his head. “The office can’t allow it. If the Sky Pavilion’s guest elder were harmed in our province, how could we face the court? A tree may wish to stand still, but the wind won’t stop. So the office has a small proposal.”

He set the cup down and folded his hands on his belly.

“A guard of honour,” Pan Ruhai said. “Forty men of the provincial guard, picked by me. They’ll ride with you wherever you go, at the office’s expense. They’ll keep the bandits away and keep the road clear, and they’ll send a short daily report to the office, so we can arrange your lodgings ahead of you.”

“Every day?” Shi Feng asked.

“Every day,” Pan Ruhai said warmly. “So that the office always knows where to help.”

Shi Feng looked at him.

The transit office in Beiling was part of the provincial office. Earlier this winter the routes of two Helian caravans had been filed there and nowhere else, and both caravans had been hit. The clerk who copied the routes, Zhou Wenshu, had been found hanged in his own storeroom. Nobody had proved anything, and nobody would. Those forty guards would report Shi Feng’s movements to the office that had already leaked the caravan routes.

Pan Ruhai’s smile didn’t change at all. Whether he knew what he was offering, Shi Feng couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter.

“That’s very generous of the office,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll answer in writing, so it can go in your files properly. Tong Xian, would you bring paper?”

Tong Xian brought paper, ink and a brush, and set them down without a sound.

Pan Ruhai and his two clerks watched Shi Feng write. When the letter was done, Shi Feng blew on it and read it aloud.

“To the provincial office, with respect,” Shi Feng read. “This Shi thanks the office for its kind offer of a guard of honour, and must decline it, for three reasons.”

“First, the Sky Pavilion has already assigned this guest elder a guardian. To accept a second guard from the province without the Pavilion’s leave would insult the first, and the Pavilion would ask why,” Shi Feng read.

“Second, a guest elder of the Pavilion stands outside provincial affairs. If the provincial guard rides with him, the office takes on the Pavilion’s business, and the office has enough of its own,” Shi Feng continued.

“Third, the bandits this winter have burned three villages and a ferry. This Shi asks, with respect, that the office’s forty men be sent to guard the villages instead. They need it more than he does,” Shi Feng read.

“With gratitude, Shi Feng, guest elder of the Sky Pavilion,” Shi Feng finished.

He folded it, sealed it with the Pavilion’s guest seal, and held it out with both hands.

Pan Ruhai took it with both hands. For a moment his smile looked a little stiff at the edges.

“Master Shi is very thorough,” Pan Ruhai said.

“The office was very generous,” Shi Feng said. “It deserved a thorough answer.”

“Ha! Yes. Of course,” Pan Ruhai said, rising to bow again, a little less low. “The office will send the men to the villages, naturally. Naturally.”

He left in his closed chair with his two clerks trotting behind. Tong Xian watched them out of the gate.

“He’ll send ten men to the villages,” Tong Xian said flatly, “and the other thirty will sit in a teahouse across the street and watch our door.”

“Let them watch the door,” Shi Feng said. “They won’t learn where I’m going.”

Tong Xian was relieved that he understood the danger.

That night it snowed again.

Shi Feng sat by the low lamp, Zhuang Yuhe’s kiln map open before him. His thoughts kept returning to the Fifteenth. Qin Wuyan sat on a stool outside the door, as he did every night. Through the thin paper of the door Shi Feng could see the outline of his shoulders, straight and unmoving.

The lamp flame bent.

Shi Feng looked up.

There was no draught. The window was shut and the door was shut. But the air above the table, about a foot over the map, had creased in one thin line, and the lamplight behind it bent. The crease opened. A folded paper slipped out of it and fell onto the map. Then the air smoothed over and was still.

The door slid open at once. Qin Wuyan stood in it. His eyes went straight to the paper.

“This one felt it,” Qin Wuyan said. “Too late.”

“It’s fine,” Shi Feng said. “He wanted me to read it. He didn’t want me to meet him yet.”

He unfolded it. There was no seal, no name and no number. There were four lines in a careful, upright hand.

Seven days.

Bitter Sky Plateau.

Bring the old man.

He will be busy.

The paper smelled faintly of burnt sugar.

Shi Feng read it twice and handed it to Qin Wuyan. The old man read it once.

“He will be busy,” Shi Feng said. “They’re sending someone from above your line again, to hold you while he and I talk.”

“Then this one will be busy,” Qin Wuyan said, and handed the paper back.