Chapter 1062 — Behind the Screen

CHAPTER 1062

Behind the Screen

The steps ended at a small pavilion, high on the eighth peak, with pines on three sides of it and a long drop on the fourth.

It wasn’t what Shi Feng had expected. He’d half imagined a palace, the kind of place the strongest man on the continent would build for the one person he cared about. Instead it was a low house of grey wood and white stone, one storey, with a tiled roof and a small yard swept clean. A wind chime of thin jade hung from the eaves and didn’t ring, because there was no wind up here at all.

It was very quiet. He could hear his own footsteps on the stone, and nothing else.

Matron Yue stopped at the door and turned round.

“The rules are the same as in the carriage,” Matron Yue said. “You sit where you’re told. You face where you’re told. You don’t look past the screen.”

“I remember,” Shi Feng said.

“You’d better,” Matron Yue said, and opened the door.

The room inside was long and plain. There was a low table near the door with one cushion beside it, a brazier with a kettle on it, and a window that looked out over the clouds. The walls were bare except for a single scroll of calligraphy he couldn’t read from where he stood.

At the far end of the room, a screen of green jade beads hung from the ceiling to the floor. Behind the beads hung a curtain of white gauze. The light came from behind it, from another window he couldn’t see, so the gauze glowed softly and showed nothing.

He used no Spirit Sense on it. He kept it folded tight inside his own skin, as the mountain’s rules required, and sat down on the cushion Matron Yue pointed to, facing the screen, with his eyes on the table.

Matron Yue took her place standing beside the screen, with her hands folded in her sleeves.

A door opened somewhere behind the gauze, and two girls came out round the side of the screen with a tea tray.

Shi Feng knew them both at once.

The first was round-faced and kind-eyed, and a little taller than he remembered. That was Lanxin, who had held the water to his mouth in the rain and given him the pill. She smiled at him openly as she set down the tray, and then she seemed to remember where she was and stopped smiling, though her eyes didn’t.

The second was Yuzhu.

She was about the same age as Lanxin, slim, in pale green and silver, with her hair pinned up neatly. In the carriage she’d sneered at him openly. She’d called him a worthless cripple, twice, loudly, and told him to keep his face turned away so he wouldn’t frighten the young miss.

Now she knelt at the low table with her eyes on the floor and poured his tea. Her hands were steady, but she poured very slowly.

“Master Shi,” Yuzhu said to the floor. “Please drink.”

“Thank you,” Shi Feng said.

She set the cup in front of him and stayed kneeling. He could see the colour coming up her neck.

“This servant,” Yuzhu began, and stopped. She tried again. “In the carriage, this servant said—”

“You said I was a worthless cripple,” Shi Feng said.

Yuzhu flinched. Lanxin, standing behind her with the empty tray, bit her lip.

“I couldn’t stand, let alone fight,” Shi Feng said, picking up the cup with his left hand. “My meridians were torn in forty places and half my face was burned off. I know what you saw.” He drank. “You also wrapped my face. You did it well. It didn’t come loose for four days.”

Yuzhu looked up at him for the first time. Her face was red to the ears.

“This servant had eyes but didn’t see Mount Tai,” Yuzhu said, and couldn’t find anything else to say.

“I kept the cloth,” Shi Feng said. “You helped me then. I haven’t forgotten that.”

“…” Yuzhu said nothing at all.

She bowed until her forehead nearly touched the floor, rose and went back round the screen very fast. Lanxin followed her, and Shi Feng heard a small, smothered sound from behind the gauze that might have been Lanxin laughing.

Matron Yue looked at him with her iron-coloured eyes.

“Still shameless,” Matron Yue said.

“I’ve had practice since the rain, Senior,” Shi Feng said.

Matron Yue’s mouth moved very slightly at one corner. Then it was still again.

The tea was good. It was a pale green leaf from somewhere high and cold, and it tasted faintly of snow. He drank half the cup and set it down. The room was so quiet he could hear the charcoal settle in the brazier.

Behind the jade beads, something moved.

It wasn’t a step. It was only the gauze, stirring a little. The light behind it didn’t change. He kept his eyes on his cup.

He’d heard this voice in the rain and at Willow Ford, years ago, and never since. He’d built his whole road north around it. He’d crossed the Empire, earned the 6 Mark and sat under a cracking plate to get this far. He had thought about what he’d say for a very long time.

He found he’d forgotten all of it.

Then the voice came, from behind the screen, soft and unhurried and very certain, exactly as he remembered it.

“You’re well,” Nangong Xiuyi said. “Did you eat something warm?”