Chapter 1028 — The Owner of Northwind House

CHAPTER 1028

The Owner of Northwind House

Three days after the letter, by noon, Salt Street was full from end to end.

At dawn, word spread of a Long household sledge approaching with twelve riders. Half of Beiling knew its passenger before it reached the gate. Porters stood on rice sacks. Shopkeepers stood in their doorways. Children sat on the teahouse roof, and nobody chased them down.

“It’s her! The Fourth Princess! First on the Tianxing!”

“First on the Tianxing and one of the Twin Stars, and she’s come to Beiling? For what?”

“For her grain house, stupid. Northwind House is hers.”

“I don’t care what she came for. I just want to see her face.”

The sledge stopped at Northwind House’s gate. A guard opened the door, and Long Caili stepped down onto the swept stones in a dark blue travelling cloak.

A veil of pale grey gauze hung from her brow to her chin. It didn’t move in the wind.

The street went very quiet. Then a long, disappointed sigh went down it from one end to the other.

“A veil.”

“Of course a veil. She’s always veiled. What did you think?”

“…I thought it might be windy,” someone said sadly.

Long Caili ignored the crowd. Shi Feng waited beside Tong Xian. She checked his bandaged left leg and seemed satisfied that he could stand.

“Master Shi,” Long Caili said.

“Your Highness,” Shi Feng said, and bowed. “Your house is in order. Your steward says so.”

“My steward says what’s true,” Long Caili said, and walked past him into the hall.

She went straight to the counting room. Tong Xian had the house ledger open on the desk before she reached it, and Long Caili turned the pages standing up, quickly, with one gloved finger. She stopped at the rice bill.

“Fourteen alchemists,” Long Caili said. “Twenty days. One thousand four hundred.”

“You billed me for it,” Shi Feng said, “and then you paid it.”

“You brought them into my house,” Long Caili said, turning the next page. “So the bill is yours. It’s my house, so the payment is mine. Both are entered.”

“They’re eating well,” Shi Feng said. “Thank you.”

“They’re staying in my house,” Long Caili replied, closing the ledger.

She closed the ledger, sat down behind the desk, and spoke to Tong Xian without looking up.

“Ask the assistant prefect to call on me,” Long Caili said. “Today. Tell him it’s about grain.”

Assistant Prefect Pan Ruhai came within the hour, in his green robe, and bowed to her twice on the threshold. Long Caili had him seated and served tea, and she waited until he’d taken his first sip.

“Assistant Prefect,” Long Caili said. “The Long household moves grain and salt through this province on a licence from the Ministry of Revenue. The licence gives the household the right to audit the routes its grain travels. I’d like the transit office’s copy books for this winter.”

Pan Ruhai’s cup stopped halfway to his mouth.

“Your Highness,” Pan Ruhai said, smiling. “The copy books are the office’s internal records. They’re only clerks' scribbles. Surely Your Highness doesn’t want to be bothered with—”

“A clerk of your office was found hanged this winter,” Long Caili said. “Zhou Wenshu. His copy books will be in his own hand. My elder brother’s censor will want to see where that hand stops. He’ll arrive in ten days to collect them. Until then, I’ll keep them safe in this house.”

The room went still.

Pan Ruhai set the cup down very carefully, plainly frightened now. His clean fingers had begun to shake a little.

“Of course. Of course, Your Highness,” Pan Ruhai said. “The office has nothing to hide. If you do nothing wrong, you don’t fear a knock on the door at midnight.”

“Tonight, please,” Long Caili said. “Two of my riders will go with your clerk.”

Pan Ruhai bowed himself out backwards. His face had gone grey.

Shi Feng had watched it all from the corner by the window. Nobody could prove who had hanged Zhou Wenshu, and nobody could punish the office for a dead clerk. But a princess’s grain licence could demand the books, and the First Prince’s censor would have to answer for what was in them. She’d turned a hanging into an audit, and an audit had to be finished by someone.

“That was quick,” Shi Feng said.

“It was overdue,” Long Caili said. “Bring me the freed alchemists. The ones who want to go home.”

They came in one at a time. Long Caili signed a Long household pass for each, a travel writ that no provincial guard would dare stop, and pressed her seal under each signature herself. Each of them left the counting room holding the paper in both hands and didn’t fold it.

She didn’t ask him about the lake. She didn’t ask about the letter, and he didn’t tell her. When the passes were done, she stood, said she would dine in her own rooms, and left without another word.

That night Shi Feng went up to the guest room.

Shi Feng stopped in the warm doorway. A copper brazier burned beside the bed, giving off a faint pine scent.

It was the same charcoal. In Tianjing his lodging had burned exactly this kind, mountain pine from the western hills. He’d never asked for it. It had simply been there.

“Tong Xian,” Shi Feng said. “This charcoal.”

Tong Xian was passing in the corridor with a lamp.

“Mountain pine,” Tong Xian said. “Western hills. It costs three times the ordinary kind.”

“Who ordered it?” Shi Feng asked.

“Her Highness specified it,” Tong Xian said. “In the letter that opened this house. The week you left Tianjing.”

She went on down the corridor.

Shi Feng felt touched by the care she’d never mentioned. He went inside and quietly closed the door.

On the table lay the folded letter with four lines on it. Four days were left.