Chapter 1063 — Kept Whole

CHAPTER 1063

Kept Whole

“I ate in Snowpine Court this morning,” Shi Feng said. “Rice porridge and pickled radish. It was warm.”

“Good,” Nangong Xiuyi said.

That was all. She didn’t say anything else for a while, and she didn’t seem to feel any need to. The quiet in the room wasn’t awkward. It was simply quiet.

Shi Feng found that he could breathe again.

He set his cup down, put both hands on his knees, the bound one and the good one, and bowed from where he sat, low, until his forehead was a hand’s width from the table.

“Miss Nangong,” Shi Feng said. “In the rain, you stopped your carriage for a man in a ditch. You gave him water and a pill that rebuilt his bones and meridians, and you took him to a village and left him where he’d be found. I’ve wanted to thank you for that properly for a long time. Thank you.”

He stayed bowed until he’d finished. Then he straightened.

Behind the screen, the gauze didn’t move.

“You thanked me at Willow Ford,” Nangong Xiuyi said.

“I bowed to a closed door,” Shi Feng said. “That’s not the same.”

There was a small pause.

“No,” Nangong Xiuyi said. “I suppose it isn’t.”

Matron Yue, standing by the screen, shifted her weight a little. Shi Feng knew what she was waiting for. Any other man who’d climbed this far, after a debt like that, would offer to repay it now. A chest of spirit stones. A pill of his own, worth ten of hers. A favour, named in front of witnesses.

He’d refused the pouch of silver at Willow Ford for a reason. A debt paid off in silver was smaller than the debt. He’d said so then, and he hadn’t changed his mind.

“I haven’t brought a gift,” Shi Feng said plainly. “That’s on purpose. I could pay for the pill today, ten times over. But you saved my life. Giving you silver and calling the debt settled would be too easy. When you need my help, I want to be able to give it.”

Matron Yue’s eyes narrowed.

“That’s very convenient for a guest who came empty-handed,” Matron Yue said.

“It is,” Shi Feng agreed. “It’s also true.”

“Empty words are only wind,” Matron Yue said.

“Matron,” Nangong Xiuyi said gently.

Matron Yue said nothing more. But she no longer looked as if she meant to throw him off the mountain.

“I didn’t ask for payment,” Nangong Xiuyi said.

“I know,” Shi Feng said. “That’s why I still owe it.”

Behind the gauze there was silence again. Then Shi Feng heard something very faint, a breath let out through the nose, and he didn’t know her well enough to be sure, but he thought it might have been a laugh.

Lanxin came back round the screen with the kettle and filled his cup. She was trying very hard not to smile. She failed, and went back round the screen quickly.

Matron Yue cleared her throat.

“Young miss,” Matron Yue said, and drew herself up. “This old servant hasn’t announced the guest properly. The guest is Shi Feng, 6 Mark of the Sky Pavilion, guest elder of its Ninefold Tower, alchemist of the Mansion’s Fate-Settling Pill, ranked on the Hundred Famed Tianxing at—”

“Sixth,” Nangong Xiuyi said.

Matron Yue stopped with her mouth still open.

Shi Feng didn’t move.

Nobody in this room had told her. He was sure of it. Matron Yue had clearly been about to. The issue that put him at sixth had come off the frames at Star-Reckoning Mountain only nine days ago, on the afternoon he left. It could only just have reached the teahouses at the foot of the Lotus Gate, and nobody carried teahouse papers up a peak with no path.

Unless somebody up here had sent down for it.

Behind the screen, Nangong Xiuyi didn’t explain. She didn’t add anything. Her voice had been as soft and unhurried as ever, and she let the one word sit in the room.

Behind the gauze, someone set a cup down a little too carefully. That was Lanxin. Shi Feng was almost sure of it.

Matron Yue closed her mouth.

“Sixth,” Matron Yue said at last, dryly. “As the young miss says.”

Shi Feng picked up his tea to hide his pleased surprise. She’d remembered his name and followed his place on the list. It was the first thing all week that had made him want to laugh, and he didn’t think laughing would be safe with Matron Yue standing three paces away.

He didn’t say anything about it.

“Matron Yue says you came up with a claim,” Nangong Xiuyi said, after a while. “A claim of treatment, made to the house. She says the Tianji Mansion read my fate before it read your mother’s.”

“It did,” Shi Feng said.

“Then I’d like to hear what it read,” Nangong Xiuyi said. “From you. Not from the paper.”

Matron Yue looked sharply at the screen.

“Young miss,” Matron Yue said. “The house head—”

“Has the paper,” Nangong Xiuyi said. “I’d like to hear it from the one who wrote it.”

Matron Yue was silent.

Shi Feng set down his cup. He looked at the white gauze behind the green jade beads for the first time since he’d sat down, and then, because the rules said so, he looked back at the table.

“Then I’ll tell you plainly,” Shi Feng said. “All of it.”