Chapter 1129 — The Account Stays Open

CHAPTER 1129

The Account Stays Open

The sledge was waiting where the valley path met the Pinefall road, with the horses already in their traces and the outriders mounted.

It was barely light, and only the sledge runners had marked the snow. Long Caili stood beside the sledge door with her hands folded in her sleeves, and the maid stood three steps behind her.

Shi Feng came down the valley path with Qin Wuyan a step behind. He stopped in front of her and bowed.

“Your Highness,” Shi Feng said.

“Guest elder,” Long Caili said. “You’re leaving for Hanyuan today as well.”

“At noon,” Shi Feng said. “Senior Brother is packing. He’s packed the same three jars of wine four times.”

Long Caili didn’t smile, though she was pleased he had come down himself. She took one hand out of her sleeve and held it out, palm up.

“The token,” Long Caili said. “Both halves. They’re Long household property. They go back to the treasury.”

Shi Feng took the two halves of black jade out of his inner sleeve. They had stayed there since they broke in the herb-gatherer’s cave, the night the Sixth Elder hunted him across the basin. The crack ran through them cleanly. Shi Feng was reluctant to part with them. He put them together once, so the break closed, and laid them in her palm.

Long Caili closed her hand over them and put them in her own sleeve without looking at them.

Then she took her hand out again. There was something else in it.

It was the other half of the pair. Her half. It had cracked on the same night as his, on the south road, and it was still bound with the same red silk thread he had seen at the Wanyan estate, wound neatly around and around, the end tucked under so it wouldn’t come loose.

She held it out to him.

“This stays with you,” Long Caili said.

Shi Feng hesitated, surprised.

“Your Highness said Long household property must be accounted for,” Shi Feng said.

“It will be,” Long Caili said. “It stays with you until the account is settled.”

Shi Feng looked at the bound jade in her hand, and then at her veil.

“Which account?” Shi Feng asked.

Long Caili didn’t answer. She was too proud to explain, and she went on holding it out, perfectly still, until he took it.

The jade was cold. Shi Feng tied it at his belt by its red thread, where her first token had hung, and left it in plain sight. He was moved, and he didn’t trust himself to say so.

Neither of them spoke of the account again.

“Three more things,” Long Caili said in her usual businesslike voice. “Business.”

“Go on,” Shi Feng said.

“One. Ji Yuanhe has written,” Long Caili said. “He wants his furnace account spent on a Quiet Soul Lotus. All of it, if that’s what it costs. He says he’s been counting the money for months and he’s tired of it.”

“Tell him yes,” Shi Feng said at once. “If a Lotus comes onto any market in the Empire, buy it. If it costs more than the account, I’ll make up the rest.”

“I’ve already told my houses to look,” Long Caili said. “Two. Shen Yaoqing wrote to me. The Lotus Gate will receive a Profound Heaven 6 Mark by the front stair.”

Shi Feng was stunned. At the Serene Jade, guests of standing came up the side stairs. The front stair was for sect masters and their equals. He had never once been asked up it.

“She wrote that herself?” Shi Feng asked.

“In her own hand,” Long Caili said.

“Then I’ll use it,” Shi Feng said. “Please tell her I’m grateful.”

“Three,” Long Caili said. “My Fifth Brother has chosen the date for your rematch.”

“He asked me?” Shi Feng said.

“He didn’t ask anyone,” Long Caili said. “He didn’t ask you, or the Emperor, or our sister, or me. He wrote it on the training hall wall in thunder, so that nobody could paint over it, and then he went to the Thunder Abyss Valley to train for it. The whole palace knows the date. The Emperor says nothing.”

“What date?” Shi Feng asked.

“I’ll send you a copy of the wall,” Long Caili said.

Long Caili turned to the sledge. The maid opened the door for her.

She got into the sledge. The maid closed the door. The driver called to the horses, and the sledge started down the Pinefall road with ten outriders in dark blue around it.

Shi Feng stood at the end of the valley path and watched it go, reluctant to leave before it was out of sight. He didn’t move until the road turned behind the first stand of pines. Then he went back up toward the abode, because Lin Langtian would be packing the wine a fifth time.

Qin Wuyan didn’t go with him at once.

The old guardian stayed at the end of the valley path with his hands at his sides, looking down the Pinefall road. He went on watching it after the sledge had gone, until the sound of the runners had faded and only the wind moved the snow.

Then he turned and followed Shi Feng up the valley. He didn’t say a single word about it, then or later.