Chapter 1100 — You’re the Bill

CHAPTER 1100

You’re the Bill

“Senior Brother Lin’s Lesson thirty-one,” Shi Feng muttered, with his eyes shut. “Never let the other man name the price first.”

The ladle stopped scraping the pot.

“What,” Lin Langtian said slowly, “was that?”

Shi Feng was drowsy from the fire’s warmth. He’d spoken before realising Lin Langtian was listening. He opened one eye. Lin was staring at him across the hearth with the ladle raised.

“A lesson,” Shi Feng said.

“Lesson thirty-one,” Lin Langtian said. “Junior Brother, I taught you nine lessons. Nine! I remember every one of them, because they were brilliant. Where did thirty-one come from?”

There was no point lying to a man who had carried him forty li.

“I made up the rest,” Shi Feng said, and closed his eye again.

Lin Langtian put the ladle down very carefully.

“Since when?” Lin Langtian asked.

“Since Wanhe,” Shi Feng said.

“Who did you tell them to?” Lin Langtian asked, his voice going up.

“Stewards,” Shi Feng said. “A Pavilion appraiser. The Jiang. Two princes’ men. Half the sixth desk at the Tianjing tower. A salt driver on the north road.” He thought about it. “Some of them wrote them down.”

“Wrote them down!” Lin Langtian shot to his feet and nearly put his head into the smoke. “My name has been lending wisdom across the whole Empire for years, and Yours Truly hasn’t seen one copper for it? Not one? The princes’ men heard Lin Langtian’s lessons, and Lin Langtian was in the frontier eating bran cakes?”

“They weren’t bran cakes,” Shi Feng said. “You told me they were sesame cakes.”

“Don’t change the subject!” Lin Langtian shouted.

Qin Wuyan stopped eating and stared at the wall. He was embarrassed for them both and clearly wanted no part in the argument.

“Royalties,” Lin Langtian announced, and held up one shaking finger. “One part in ten of every deal one of my lessons closed. Backdated to Wanhe.”

“The lessons were free,” Shi Feng said. “One part in ten of free is nothing.”

“Then I’m adding new ones,” Lin Langtian said, and held up a second finger. “Lesson thirty-two. A junior brother who steals his senior’s name pays royalties. Lesson thirty-three. Royalties pay interest. Lesson thirty-four.” He paused to think. “If the junior brother argues, see lesson thirty-two.”

“That’s not a lesson,” Shi Feng said. “That’s a contract.”

“In the ways of the world,” Lin Langtian said grandly, “there’s no difference.”

He sat back down on his heels, very satisfied, and picked up the ladle again. For a while the only sound was the scrape of the ladle and the wind in the doorway. Shi Feng was nearly asleep again when Lin spoke, much more quietly.

“The old man said I could go when the bill came,” Lin Langtian said, looking into the pot.

Shi Feng opened his eyes.

“What bill?” Shi Feng asked.

“You’re the bill,” Lin Langtian said.

Then he laughed, loudly, and said the congee was burning, which it was.

Shi Feng felt grateful and didn’t press him. The old man meant Li Changyuan, Artificer Hall’s Sect Master. He had kept Lin in the frontier for years. He’d let him come north for one reason, and the reason was lying on this bed with three cracked ribs. Shi Feng added it to the back page in his head, under the forty li.

Qin Wuyan set his empty bowl down on the hearth.

“This one has another report,” Qin Wuyan said. “It came this morning, by the tower’s sparrow.”

“Say it,” Shi Feng said.

“Every road from these mountains to the nearest Pavilion tower is watched,” Qin Wuyan said. “Bandits, the villages say. Two or three to a crossing. They carry no loot. They stop no wagons. They ask about a young man.”

“Bandits who ask questions and don’t rob anybody,” Lin Langtian said with a snort, and stirred the pot. “The north’s bandits have gone soft. They used to at least take your boots.”

Shi Feng looked at the ceiling and laid it out plainly, for all three of them.

“If a Profound Heaven Elder finds us now, we can’t fight him,” Shi Feng said. “I can’t lift my left arm, and I’ve got barely enough qi to stay warm. Senior Qin has one arm. And you can’t hold a bowl of broth.”

“I can hold a bowl,” Lin Langtian protested, offended by the blunt assessment.

He didn’t pick one up to prove it.

“So we can’t go south, and we can’t be found,” Shi Feng said. “Is this place as hidden as you say?”

Lin Langtian looked out of the doorway at the snow falling on the pines, and for once he didn’t joke.

“Nobody has found this valley in many centuries,” Lin Langtian said. “Nobody will find it now.”

“How can you be sure?” Shi Feng asked.

Lin Langtian stood up, wiped his hands on his robe and grinned at him.

“Because tomorrow,” Lin Langtian said, “Senior Brother is going to shut the door.”