Chapter 1036 — The Fourteen

CHAPTER 1036

The Fourteen

“You’ll catch cold standing out here,” Shi Feng said from the doorway. “Come inside, all of you. I’m not going to talk across a courtyard.”

The fourteen came in and stood in the furnace room in a line. Nobody sat until Tong Xian pointed at the benches, and even then they sat very straight, with their hands on their knees. At the Cold Kiln, a man who sat comfortably was a man who wasn’t working.

Shi Feng sat on the edge of the furnace platform with his arm in its splints. He’d been putting this off for a week, first for the plateau and then for the fever. It wasn’t going to wait any longer.

“Her Highness signed your passes before she left,” Shi Feng said. “Long household passes, south, sealed. They get you through every gate between here and Tianjing, and the Long household’s relay feeds you on the road. Anyone who wants to go home can leave tomorrow.”

Nobody moved.

“Anyone who doesn’t want to go home,” Shi Feng continued, “can stay here. Steward Tong needs alchemists in this furnace room. It’s paid work, by the month, and you can leave whenever you like.”

“Paid?” a grey-haired man near the end of the bench asked. His voice shook. “Paid in what?”

“Silver, Master Fu,” Tong Xian said, before Shi Feng could answer. “Twelve taels a month, board and coal included. Her Highness set the rate herself. This house pays on the first day of every month and has never once been late.”

Master Fu stared at her.

“When bitterness ends, sweetness comes,” Master Fu whispered, and put his face in his hands.

Shi Feng spent the morning speaking to each of them by the furnace. He asked about their homes and families, then let them choose.

Nine chose the passes. Two of them had wives in the south. One had a daughter he hadn’t seen in eleven years, and he didn’t know if she’d married. The youngest, the boy who’d counted his way out of a mirror on Mirror Ice Lake, had a mother in a river town near Wanhe.

“She’ll think I’m a ghost,” the boy said, holding the pass with both hands.

“Call her name first,” Shi Feng said gently. “She’ll know your voice.”

Five chose to stay. Mei Shuo was the first to say so, and he said it before Shi Feng had finished asking.

“Where would I go?” Mei Shuo asked simply. “My sister always said a man should stay where the work is. Here there’s a furnace and a drawer of herbs I’ve already counted.”

“Then I’ll give you something better to do than count it,” Shi Feng said.

That afternoon he wrote fourteen recipes.

Tong Xian ground ink while Shi Feng slowly wrote at the long table with his good hand. Each recipe taught a different pill. He’d watched these fourteen work for a week, and he knew what each of them was good at. Master Fu’s fire was very steady and very slow. The boy’s hands were fast. Mei Shuo could judge the water in a herb by its weight.

So each of them got a pill that needed exactly what they had.

None of the recipes were Pavilion recipes, and none came from the Cold Kiln. They were his own, worked out over the last three years and never written down until today. At the bottom of each sheet he wrote the same line.

Refine this at your own pace. Nobody is listening.

“Why that line?” Tong Xian asked quietly, reading over his shoulder.

“At the kiln, they all refined to a count,” Shi Feng said, not stopping his brush. “The deacon set the rhythm, and if anyone broke it, he came. They’re still keeping it. Mei Shuo counted your drawers for three days. A man who’s out of the kiln shouldn’t still be working to its beat.”

Tong Xian said nothing more. She ground the ink a little harder.

He handed the sheets out at dusk. The nine going south put theirs away inside their coats, next to the passes. The five who were staying went straight to the furnaces.

Mei Shuo took his to the third furnace and read it through twice. Then he lit the fire, laid out his herbs and began.

“Red Frost Root, one,” Mei Shuo said. “Ice Lotus Seed, two.”

He stopped.

He looked down at the sheet for a long moment, at the last line. Then he put the next herb into the cauldron without saying its name, and the one after that, and the one after that.

The furnace room went quiet. One by one, the other four alchemists looked over at the third furnace. Nobody said anything. Master Fu wiped his eyes on his sleeve and went back to his own fire.

Shi Feng was pleased, but kept quiet. Mei Shuo needed to finish without anyone directing him.

The pill took Mei Shuo four hours. When the lid came off, there were three clouds over the third furnace, small and pale, and a single grey-green pill in the cauldron. It was a 1 Mark pill of Common quality. It was the first pill Mei Shuo had made in four years without anyone counting.

“It’s not very good,” Mei Shuo said, looking at it.

“It’s yours,” Shi Feng said. “Make another one tomorrow.”

Mei Shuo nodded slowly and put the pill in his sleeve instead of the tray.

Late that night, as Shi Feng sat by the brazier with his arm on a cushion, the noise from the teahouse across the street got so loud that Tong Xian went to the window to look.

“A new issue of the Tianji list came in on the evening caravan,” Tong Xian said. “They’re reading it aloud. Someone seems to be very upset about the seventh name.”