Chapter 1038 — The Mansion's Invitation

CHAPTER 1038

The Mansion's Invitation

“Come in out of the snow, Daoist,” Shi Feng said. “Steward Tong will want to give you tea before you give me anything.”

Tong Xian did. She put Daoist Mingshu in the small guest room with the brazier, set a pot of red tea and a plate of walnut cakes in front of him, and stood by the door with her hands folded. Qin Wuyan took the other side of the door. The Daoist looked at the two of them, then at Shi Feng, and smiled a little nervously.

“This humble Daoist has delivered invitations to sect masters,” Daoist Mingshu said. “None of them had a guard like Senior Qin.”

“Senior Qin guards everyone the same way,” Shi Feng said. “He stands there. Please, drink.”

Daoist Mingshu drank. Then he set the red card on the table and turned it around with two fingers so the writing faced Shi Feng.

The card was heavy paper, dyed deep red and written in gold in a careful, old-fashioned hand. The Tianji Mansion, it said, invites Master Shi Feng, 6 Mark of the Sky Pavilion, to visit as an honoured guest at his convenience. There was a seal at the bottom of a star inside a circle, and no other signature.

“From the Mansion Master himself,” Daoist Mingshu said.

“Why?” Shi Feng asked.

Daoist Mingshu blinked. Most people, apparently, didn’t ask.

“Master Shi’s name has moved on the list many times since it first appeared at ninety-eighth,” Daoist Mingshu said. “Every time the printing hall moves a name, someone in the Mansion has to read why. This humble Daoist has read about Master Shi more often than about anyone else alive.” He smiled, more easily now. “The Mansion would like to meet the man whose rank it keeps moving. It’s that simple.”

“It’s never that simple,” Tong Xian said from the door. “The Mansion doesn’t send gold-ink cards to everybody who climbs the list.”

“No, Steward,” Daoist Mingshu agreed politely. “It doesn’t.”

Shi Feng picked up the card and read it again.

He knew some things about the Tianji Mansion. It kept the Hundred Famed Tianxing and the Twin Stars list and sold both in issues all over the Empire. It read fates, and it read them for great families and sects, at prices only great families and sects could pay. Its readers were said to be right more often than any other diviners under heaven, except perhaps the Great Compassion Temple’s.

A fortune-telling sect that read fates for a living was asking him to come and sit in its hall.

The three-crescent hairpin was still wrapped in his ring. His aunt hadn’t known his mother’s name. Nobody in Great Liang could even identify where her hairpin was made.

Jiang Xu had told him once to ask plainly, once, and wait for the answer.

“Daoist Mingshu,” Shi Feng said. “Before I answer, I’d like to ask one thing.”

“Please,” Daoist Mingshu said.

“Twenty-one years ago, a woman vanished from a small clan in Great Liang, on the frontier,” Shi Feng said evenly. “She’d married into it. Nobody there ever learned her name or where she came from. Could the Mansion tell me anything about her?”

The room was very quiet. Tong Xian’s hands stayed folded. Qin Wuyan didn’t move at all.

Daoist Mingshu looked at Shi Feng’s face for a moment. Then he lowered his eyes to the red card.

“The Mansion reads what is asked of it,” Daoist Mingshu said gently. “Ask at the Mansion.”

That was all. He didn’t promise anything and he didn’t refuse anything. He’d been sent to deliver a card, and a printing-hall steward couldn’t answer for his Master.

Shi Feng respected that honesty. An easy promise would’ve made him distrust the invitation.

“Then I accept,” Shi Feng said, and put the card in his sleeve. “When?”

“At Master Shi’s convenience,” Daoist Mingshu said, and glanced at the sling. “The Mansion is far to the north-west, past the gorges. The Mansion Master asked that this humble Daoist guide Master Shi there, when he’s fit to travel. This humble Daoist will wait at the first waystation on the north road, outside the city. They keep a good fire there, and this humble Daoist is in no hurry.”

“Ten days,” Shi Feng said. “The arm will hold by then.”

“Ten days,” Daoist Mingshu agreed, and stood, and bowed again very deeply.

At the door he hesitated and turned back.

“Master Shi,” Daoist Mingshu said. “May this humble Daoist ask a question too? Not for the Mansion. Only for myself.”

“Go ahead,” Shi Feng said.

“Is it true the bandit king folded you into the sky, and you set the sky on fire?” Daoist Mingshu asked.

“Who told you that?” Shi Feng asked.

“Everyone on the north road,” Daoist Mingshu said. “Some say you put it out with congee.”

“I set the fold on fire,” Shi Feng said. “The congee came afterward. I was hungry.”

Daoist Mingshu laughed out loud for the first time, bowed a fourth time and went out into the snow. Tong Xian saw him to the gate. Qin Wuyan stayed where he was.

“Senior Qin,” Shi Feng said. “The Tianji Mansion isn’t Pavilion business.”

“You are,” Qin Wuyan said.

“It’s a long way west,” Shi Feng said.

“This one walks,” Qin Wuyan said.

Shi Feng nodded. He took the red card out of his sleeve again and laid it on the table beside the cold teapot, and looked at it for a long time. For the first time in twenty-one years, Shi Feng might find someone who could tell him about his mother.

Ten days, and then he would ask.