Chapter 1094 — The Chart

CHAPTER 1094

The Chart

Hong Lie had carried Shi Feng back to bed by the time Steward Wenren Shu was shown in. Wenren Shu bowed in the sickroom doorway, then again at the foot of the bed, lower than he had ever bowed at the Hanyuan tower.

Wenren Shu was a plump, neat man in Pavilion grey, with a jade inkstone at his belt. He had ridden through the night, and frost was still melting in his beard.

“Honoured guest elder,” Wenren Shu said, with his hands clasped and his head down. “This humble steward has come to answer for the Hanyuan tower. When this humble steward heard, he couldn’t eat for a day.”

“Sit down, Steward Wenren,” Shi Feng said from the bed. “Then tell me about the chart.”

Wenren Shu didn’t sit down. He was too ashamed. He stood very straight with his hands clasped while the frost dripped from his beard.

“The chart clerk who marked the basin road clear,” Wenren Shu said. “His name was Gou Ping. Eleven years at the chart desk without one mistake. On the morning the grey sky was seen from Hanyuan, he didn’t come to the tower. His rooms were empty. His wife and his two sons were gone. The neighbours say a covered cart came for them before dawn.”

“And nobody’s seen him since,” Shi Feng said.

“Not in Hanyuan, honoured guest elder,” Wenren Shu said. “Not on any road the tower watches.”

“What about the counting house on Felt Street?” Shi Feng asked.

Wenren Shu looked up in surprise. Then he bowed again quickly.

“The honoured guest elder already knows,” Wenren Shu said. “It closed its doors the day before the Cage rose. The day before, honoured guest elder. Its clerks were paid off and sent home. The building is rented, and the rent was paid a year in advance, in cash, by a man nobody remembers.”

Shi Feng lay still and thought it through.

Shi Feng understood how it had been arranged. The counting house had bought the son’s debts, and the son had sold the road. The clerk had closed the main road on paper and opened the basin. The Heavenly Sect had laid its Cage on the open road. And the day before the Cage went up, the counting house had shut its doors, because whoever owned it already knew what was coming.

“What does the Pavilion’s record say?” Shi Feng asked.

“Bandits, honoured guest elder,” Wenren Shu said unhappily. “Bandits in Weeping Pine Basin, who attacked a village and a Pavilion guest. The Hanyuan tower can’t write anything else without proof. Senior Qin’s report has gone to Tianjing under his own seal. What Tianjing writes is for Tianjing.”

In the corner, Lin Langtian put down his bowl.

“Bandits,” Lin Langtian said loudly. “Bandits with a hundred-li array and two Profound Heaven elders. Northern bandits must be doing very well this year.”

“…” Wenren Shu didn’t know who Lin Langtian was. Too nervous to ask, he bowed to him anyway.

In Hanyuan that evening, the teahouses had their own version.

In the biggest, on Lantern Street, a storyteller stood on a table swinging a teapot over his head. Two skies, he told them, one grey and one red as a furnace. Then a hammer the size of a house came down through the grey sky and broke it into a thousand pieces. The listeners banged their cups on the tables.

“Nonsense!” a thin scholar shouted from a corner. “It was a weather omen! Cold air from the waste meeting warm air from the south. It’s in the old almanacs. When heaven sends a sign, the wise man reads it!”

“Then what was the hammer?” someone yelled.

“Hail,” the scholar said firmly.

Three streets away, in a wine shop near the herb market, Tan Ershu sat with a cup and a crowd. His drying sheds were gone, so he’d come to Hanyuan to sell the season’s snow-ginseng early.

“Hail? Hail?” Tan Ershu said, slapping the table. “I was there! I was on the cliff! Fill this cup and I’ll tell you what really happened. The alchemist cut a masked devil’s hand open on the ice. With my own eyes! Then a man came down out of the sky eating a sweet potato!”

“A sweet potato?” the wine-seller said.

“Fill the cup,” Tan Ershu said, “and I’ll tell you what kind.”

They filled the cup.

Two days later Wenren Shu’s runner brought the new Tianji issue to the estate.

Shi Feng read it in bed, with Lin Langtian reading over his shoulder. It was a thick issue. A young master of the Gu had climbed four places. The Fifth Prince had fought someone in the east and won. A Cangming Sword Palace disciple had dropped out of the hundred.

There was nothing about Weeping Pine Basin. Not one line. There was nothing about two skies, or a Cage, or a hammer.

Sixth. Shi Feng. Unchanged.

“Still sixth!” Lin Langtian said, outraged, snatching the issue away. “Junior Brother cuts a Profound Heaven elder open on the ice, and they don’t even mention it! Not one line! What kind of fortune-tellers can’t see two skies?”

“The kind who only print what they’re sure of,” Shi Feng said. “Or the kind who were told to stay quiet. I don’t know which yet.”

Lin Langtian stopped talking and looked at him.

Shi Feng was uneasy. The Tianji Mansion learned everything that could be printed, so its silence about a hundred-li Cage had a reason. Still, he was content to stay sixth and unprinted for now.

Outside the window, a watchman on the estate wall shouted down to the yard.

“A sledge on the south road! Four horses! Long household colours!”