Chapter 1029 — Witnesses

CHAPTER 1029

Witnesses

“No,” Shi Feng said.

Helian Ba filled the furnace-room doorway, snow melting in his beard. He’d brought ten axe-carrying warriors from Iron Glacier Hold. Shi Feng refused before he could finish offering their help.

“You haven’t even heard what I’m offering!” Helian Ba said.

“You’re offering to come to the plateau and stand beside me,” Shi Feng said, adding a pinch of root powder to the cauldron. “With your axe.”

“Well, yes,” Helian Ba admitted. “That’s what I’m offering.”

“Then no,” Shi Feng said.

Helian Ba threw up his hands and came in, filling half the room. The alchemists along the wall moved their rice sacks out of his way.

“Brother Shi, I held the gorge bridge for you!” Helian Ba said, thumping his chest. “I took two takers at the kiln! The Helian don’t let a friend walk to a duel by himself! Our ancestors would climb out of the ground and slap me!”

“Listen to me, Helian Ba,” Shi Feng said, setting down the root powder. “The man on that plateau folds space. That’s his whole art. If you’re standing beside me, he’ll fold you out of the fight first, put you somewhere I can see you, and use you against me. I’d be fighting him with one eye on you the whole time. I just spent a whole afternoon on a lake getting a boy out of a mirror. I don’t want to do it again with you.”

Helian Ba opened his mouth. Then he shut it.

“…He’d do that?” Helian Ba asked.

“The Sixteenth did it with a boy,” Shi Feng said. “The Fifteenth is better than the Sixteenth.”

Helian Ba stood there breathing hard through his nose. At last he put the axe head down on the floor with a heavy thunk and leaned on it.

“Fine,” Helian Ba said gloomily. “Then I’ll stand at the edge of the plateau and watch. And if he folds you somewhere, I’ll shout.”

“Shout loudly,” Shi Feng said.

“I always shout loudly,” Helian Ba said.

For the next two days Shi Feng refined.

The alchemists going south needed travel pills, a week’s worth each, against the cold of the passes. The ones staying needed something steadier. A year of counting in the dark had left most of them with a tremor in the hands, and a tremor in the hands was the end of an alchemist. He made a Still-Hand Pill for each of them, a small, plain 3 Mark pill that settled the nerves of the fingers. It wasn’t difficult. It was slow, because he made them one at a time and watched each one swallow it.

Mei Shuo took his last. He held his hand out flat over the tray afterwards and looked at it for a long time.

“It’s not shaking,” Mei Shuo said.

“Give it a month,” Shi Feng said. “Then it’ll stop wanting to.”

At night, he sat at the table in the guest room with the pine charcoal burning and wrote down what he knew about folds.

Shi Feng wasn’t satisfied with what he knew. Writing it down might help him find the missing connection.

Luoxia. From inside, only sky. No walls. Every direction the same.

The lake. Heaven folded the edges in first and the middle last. Each layer locked over the one before. At the top, where the walls leaned together, one thin gap stayed open. It didn’t close.

The cauldron. Nine clouds, nine folds. Every fold he had ever made in a cauldron had to leave the fire one way in, or the fold went cold and the pill died.

Shi Feng compared the three notes. He suspected the openings mattered, but couldn’t explain the connection yet. He underlined the gap above the lake fold twice.

On the sixth morning, Shen Yaoqing came.

She entered with one patrol disciple and stopped in the furnace-room doorway, where Helian Ba had stood two days before. Helian Ba was sitting on a rice sack eating dumplings. He waved one at her.

“The outer elder sent me,” Shen Yaoqing said to Shi Feng, ignoring the dumpling. “Bitter Sky Plateau lies outside the sect’s lands, but its southern edge borders our patrol. Tomorrow, the outer elder will post the patrol at the plateau’s edge to witness and keep the sect’s own record of what happens.”

“Why?” Shi Feng asked.

“Because the Ninth Beacon Fort will send scouts to write their record,” Shen Yaoqing said, “and the provincial office will send someone to write its own. The sect will not have its border described by other people.”

“That’s a good reason,” Shi Feng said.

“It’s the sect’s reason,” Shen Yaoqing said. “I’m only delivering it.”

Helian Ba swallowed his dumpling.

“Witnesses,” Helian Ba said. “Lady Shen. If we’re witnesses, are witnesses allowed to hit anyone?”

“No,” Shen Yaoqing said.

“Not even a little?” Helian Ba asked hopefully. “If someone deserves it?”

“No,” Shen Yaoqing said again. “Witnesses watch. The patrol will hold the edge and nothing else. Whatever happens on the plateau is the guest’s own affair, as the hall said.”

“Then I’ll watch very hard,” Helian Ba muttered, and took another dumpling.

Shen Yaoqing turned to go. At the door, Shen Yaoqing hesitated. Her next words came more quietly.

“The patrol will be in place by first light,” Shen Yaoqing said. “If you’re carried off the plateau, it’ll carry you to the sect’s border post. My master has left salve there.”

“That’s very thoughtful of the sect,” Shi Feng said.

“It’s thoughtful of my master,” Shen Yaoqing said. “The sect only lent the post.”

She left.

That evening the princess’s rooms stayed shut. Her clerks went in and out all night with stacks of the transit office’s copy books, and the lamp behind her screen didn’t go out until the fourth watch.

At dawn, a guard knocked on Shi Feng’s door.

“Master Shi,” the guard said. “Her Highness’s sledge is ready. She leaves south within the hour.”