Chapter 1103 — The Black Jade Token

CHAPTER 1103

The Black Jade Token

They entered Pinefall Town past the granary. Two streets met at its market square. The magistrate was said to sleep through most of the year.

It sat in a fold of the hills thirty li south of the hidden valley, the last town before the mountains. Its houses were grey stone with pine-shingle roofs, and smoke went up from every chimney. Hunters sold furs in the square. Herb-gatherers sold roots. There were three herb houses, and the plainest of them stood at the end of the second street with no sign over the door at all.

It had taken them a day and a half to walk there. Lin had opened the array with his word and closed it behind them, and complained the whole way about the price of sweet potatoes in a town he’d never visited.

The herb house was dim and smelled of dried roots. The manager behind the counter was a thin, middle-aged man with ink on his cuffs. He looked at the three of them, a pale young man on a staff, a guardian with one arm bound, and a cheerful idiot asking about sweet potatoes, and his face said he wasn’t expecting much business.

Shi Feng took the two halves of the black jade token out of his sleeve and laid them on the counter.

The manager looked down at them, and the colour went out of his face.

He bowed, very low, and went into the back room without a word. Shi Feng heard a chest being opened, then a second one. When the manager came back, he was holding a folded paper with both hands. It was sealed with the Long household’s mark.

“This house has held this for nearly twenty days,” the manager said, still bowing. “Please, honoured guest.”

Shi Feng broke the seal.

It was a standing order, written in a hand he knew. Long Caili wrote the way she spoke: short, cold and exact.

To every house of mine north of Hanyuan. Whatever the bearer of this token asks for, at cost. Write down every item.

Under it was the place and the date. Written at Hongshui waystation, on the south road.

Shi Feng looked at the date for a while.

She’d written it the day their jade cracked. While Shi Feng lay with broken ribs in the herb-gatherer’s cave, the Sixth Elder searched the basin with Spirit Sense. Long Caili was on the south road. Before turning back, she arranged this help.

She hadn’t mentioned it at the Wanyan estate. She’d talked about counting houses and censors and Situ cousins’ banks, and left before dark.

He folded the order and put it into his inner sleeve, beside the two halves of jade.

“What does the bearer ask for?” the manager asked carefully.

“Profound Heaven-grade herbs,” Shi Feng said. “As many as you have that are good. I’ll read the list.”

The manager’s house had more than its plain door suggested. It took him an hour to bring them all out: frost lotus in sealed ice, mirror moss in jade, three roots of thousand-year ginseng, and a dozen boxes more. Shi Feng opened every one and rejected four. The rest came to about one million four hundred thousand, at cost.

He paid with a Pavilion note. The manager wrote down every item in his ledger and read each one aloud, and then he took out a second paper.

“Her Highness’s letter,” the manager said. “It came by courier four days ago, to be given with the herbs.”

This one was shorter.

A Situ censor has moved before the Censorate that a Pavilion guest elder missing in the northern wilds has broken the terms of his contract. I have answered with Senior Qin’s report under the Pavilion’s seal. Nothing more is needed from you. Long Caili.

That was all of it.

Lin Langtian had been reading over his shoulder. He reached the end, turned the paper over to look at the back, and turned it over again.

“That’s it?” Lin Langtian said, outraged. “That’s the whole letter? Not one word about court? Who’s feuding with whom, which minister fell into a fishpond, which prince got slapped? A princess sits in the middle of Tianjing and writes four lines of business? What a waste of paper!”

“She’s dealt with the censor,” Shi Feng said, relieved. “She wants me to recover without worrying about court.”

“There’s no gossip in it,” Lin Langtian said, and gave it back as if it had personally offended him.

Qin Wuyan said nothing. He’d read his own name in it, and that was all he needed.

Shi Feng asked the manager for a brush and a sheet of paper. He wrote his answer standing at the counter, in four lines, the same as hers.

Herbs received, at cost. Every item written down.

Alive.

Account open.

Shi Feng.

He sealed it and gave it to the manager.

“By your fastest courier,” Shi Feng said.

“At once,” the manager said, and bowed again. “This house is far from the capital. Up here, the mountains are high and the emperor is far away. But Her Highness’s couriers have never been late.”

He went into the back to begin weighing and sealing the herbs. It would take until noon tomorrow, he said, to seal Profound Heaven-grade herbs properly for travel.

Shi Feng sat on the wall bench. His ribs hurt, but he felt reassured by Long Caili’s preparations. Lin went off down the street to argue with someone about sweet potatoes.

The manager came back out a short while later. He didn’t have any herbs with him. He stood at the end of the counter for a moment, wiping his hands on his apron, and he looked like a man trying to decide whether to speak.

“Honoured guest,” the manager said in a low voice. “There’s something else this house should tell you.”