Chapter 1051 — A Letter with Two Drafts

CHAPTER 1051

A Letter with Two Drafts

The courier came up the mountain at noon, in the plain grey of the princess’s pavilions, and asked for Master Shi by name.

“From Her Highness,” the courier said, bowing at the guest hall door, and held out a letter in both hands. “She said I’m to wait for a receipt.”

“She would,” Shi Feng said, and took it.

It was the answer to the note he’d sent from the waystation north of Beiling. That note had been three lines long. Destination: the Tianji Mansion. Reason: a family matter. Return: uncertain. He’d kept it brief because the road wasn’t safe for private details.

Her answer was four lines long, in a small, sharp hand.

The inquiry is quiet. The Censorate has nothing left to file and has stopped pretending it might.

The northern business is well. Tong Xian reports the furnace room has not been idle one day.

Ji Yuanhe is counting pills. He reached one thousand three hundred and asked me to tell you.

Do not let them read your fortune. They talk.

There was no greeting and no name, only her small seal at the bottom.

Shi Feng read it twice. The last line he read three times. Long Caili didn’t write a word she didn’t mean, and she hadn’t written who the Mansion talked to. Either she didn’t know, or she knew and wouldn’t put it on paper.

He turned the letter toward the window to fold it, and stopped.

The light ran across the page at a low angle, and in it he could see faint grooves pressed into the paper. They weren’t her four lines. They were other lines, many more of them, pressed through from a sheet that had lain on top of this one while someone wrote on it hard. There were nine or ten lines of grooves, maybe more. Then nothing, because the other sheet had been taken away.

She’d written a longer letter first. Then she’d thrown it away and written four lines on the page underneath.

Shi Feng felt warmth in his chest as he studied the grooves. She’d wanted to say more. He didn’t try to read what she’d chosen to keep private. He folded the letter inside his robe, on the left.

“Here’s my reply,” Shi Feng said, writing one line for the courier. Received, four lines. Fortune unread. Tell Ji Yuanhe fourteen hundred.

The courier bowed and went back down the mountain.

In the afternoon Taishi Xu came to the guest hall himself, with his teapot.

“Master Shi,” Taishi Xu said cheerfully, pouring for both of them without being asked. “You’ve given my Mansion a broken sword, a new list and a frozen bowl, and the young geniuses of the Empire have filled your ledger. It doesn’t sit right with me. Let me give you something back. A reading of your own fate. On the house.”

“No, thank you,” Shi Feng said.

“No?” Taishi Xu asked in surprise, his teapot paused above the cup. “People cross the Empire for one.”

“I came to ask about two people,” Shi Feng said. “I’m not the third. And I was asked not to.”

Taishi Xu’s smile stayed exactly where it was. He drank his tea and didn’t ask who’d asked.

“As you like,” Taishi Xu said. “A gift refused is still a gift given. The Fate-Settling Pill, then. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Tomorrow,” Shi Feng said. “Your store doesn’t have the herbs. I’ll use mine.”

Taishi Xu bowed and left. In the corridor outside, his footsteps paused, and then went on.

Shi Feng went out a little later to look at the highest terrace, where he meant to set up his furnace. He was halfway along the ninth-terrace corridor when Elder Sang came the other way, one hand trailing along the wall, the yarrow bundle in her sleeve.

She stopped in front of him without being told he was there.

“Master Shi,” Elder Sang Lingyue said flatly. “You turned down the Master’s reading.”

“I did,” Shi Feng said, stopping.

“Good,” Elder Sang Lingyue said. “Then this isn’t a reading, because you didn’t ask for it. And a reading nobody asked for can’t be billed.” She tilted her head slightly. “So listen. A death knot within the season. An old debt unties it.”

Shi Feng felt wary. He’d refused a reading, yet Sang Lingyue was warning him of death. He needed to know which old debt she meant.

“Whose debt?” Shi Feng asked.

“I said I’d tell you,” Elder Sang Lingyue said. “I didn’t say I’d explain it.”

She walked on past him, her fingers still on the wall, and turned the corner without hurrying.

Behind him, someone cleared his throat.

Yun Zhiwei was standing in the doorway of the next guest room, his left arm strapped across his chest in a white sling. His face was pale from blood loss. He’d clearly heard every word.

“Master Shi,” Yun Zhiwei said quietly. “I don’t know what she read. But I’ve lived on this mountain since I was nine.”

“And?” Shi Feng asked, turning toward him.

“She’s never been wrong about knots,” Yun Zhiwei said.