Chapter 218 — Night Watch

CHAPTER 218

Night Watch

“Three spirit stones a night,” Qian Mo said reluctantly. “For one disciple. Not a troop of them. That’s all the Treasury will pay.”

The meeting hall was half empty. Elder He Zhen sat at the head of the table with his brush case closed and his eyes shut. Cui Hong stood by the wall holding the missing-bell form, which he had written and which nobody had asked for. Gongsun Ce paced in front of them, still wearing the fury of the morning.

“The patrol must be sect-wide,” Gongsun Ce said. “Every disciple, every night.”

“The sect has three hundred disciples,” He Zhen said, without opening his eyes. “Most of them are children carrying charcoal.”

“Then the reliable ones,” Gongsun Ce said.

“Reliable ones cost stones,” Elder Qian Mo said. “Who do you propose?”

Gongsun Ce stopped. He looked around the room. The outer disciples looked at their shoes. Zheng Yu coughed and began counting his brushes.

Shi Feng raised his hand.

“I'll do it,” Shi Feng said.

Every head turned.

“You?” Gongsun Ce said.

“I'm awake at night anyway,” Shi Feng said. “I have unfinished refining, and no iron to do it with. The three stones would help.”

“Chief Disciple Lin's junior brother,” Elder Qian Mo muttered, and wrote something that might have been a rate.

“Fine,” Gongsun Ce said after a long look. “You’re the champion, and your record’s clean. You’re also too poor to turn down honest pay. Money can make a ghost push the millstone, as they say. I’ll accept you.” Shi Feng met his suspicious gaze without flinching.

At the back, where he had been lying across two chairs with a potato, Lin Langtian only smiled.

He Zhen opened one eye and looked between them. He was suspicious, but Lin Langtian looked entirely at ease. The elder shut his eye again. He clearly didn’t want this meeting to grow any longer.

“Approved,” He Zhen said. “Three stones a night, paid as contribution points. If anything else goes missing, Shi Feng reports to me directly.”

“It'll be an honour,” Shi Feng said.

Gongsun Ce nodded sharply and left, and the outer court went back to its soup.

That night, Shi Feng walked the sect wall with a lantern and a stick.

The stick was Zhu Liu's idea. It looked official, and it came with a receipt. Zhu Liu walked half a pace behind him with the receipt book and a very pale face.

They circled the east wing, where fourteen doors lay peacefully in the weeds. They circled the bell tower, where the empty frame creaked. They circled the workshop row, where Gongsun Ce's door still lay under its little stone, and the puppets still watched the stars.

Nothing happened. Nobody stole anything. For the first time in three nights, the sect was entirely safe.

“This is the strangest job I've ever done,” Zhu Liu whispered.

“It's simple,” Shi Feng said. “The guard is the thief.”

“Isn't that worse?” Zhu Liu said.

“It's cheaper,” Shi Feng said.

Zhu Liu thought about it and decided that was one line he would not write down.

Back in the hut, a fire was already going. Lin Langtian had melted the bell without asking. The great bronze curve was gone, and in its place three thick, ugly, beautifully even legs stood on the floor, still glowing red at the edges. Shi Feng's cracked cauldron stood on top of them.

It didn't wobble.

“Look at that!” Lin Langtian said, sweeping his arm toward the cauldron. “A sect treasure, reborn! Do you know what a bell does, Junior Brother? It rings once in the morning. Do you know what cauldron legs do?”

“Stand,” Shi Feng said.

“All day!” Lin Langtian said triumphantly. “The bell rang once every morning. These will hold your cauldron every time you brew. Tell me we haven’t put the metal to better use!”

Shi Feng walked around the cauldron. The bronze was warm, and fine grained, and much too good for the job. When he put his palm against one leg, he could feel a faint hum, the last of two hundred years of ringing, sleeping inside the metal.

Shi Feng regretted the old bell for a moment. Then he tested the cauldron’s new balance. It was solid. Whatever the Treasury might say, Lin Langtian had solved a real problem.

“And the hinges?” Shi Feng asked.

“Forty-five,” Zhu Liu said at once, reading from the receipt book. “Forty-two from the wing, and three from the door.”

“You wrote it down?” Shi Feng said.

“I wrote it on a separate page and I'm going to burn the page. Right now,” Zhu Liu said.

“Don't burn it yet,” Lin Langtian said. “Keep it. Evidence is a form of savings.”

Shi Feng put the three spirit stones he'd earned on the table. They looked small next to the cauldron's legs. He didn't mention that Lin Langtian had also helped himself to a bowl of lamp oil.

A few paces away, on the other side of the thin wall, a piece of chalk scratched against stone.

It was a short scratch. Then a long one. Then three small ones, in a neat row.

Shi Feng went to the door and opened it a hand's width. Sima Lan's door was closed, and her lamp was out. No one stood in the corridor. On the wall beside his frame, in white chalk, a new line had appeared under the tally of failed lumps.

“Hinges, 45. Bell, 1. Door, 1. Patrol, 3 stones a night.”

There was no signature. There didn't need to be.

Shi Feng stood in the doorway for a long breath. From behind her door, he heard nothing at all. That was worse than a scolding.

“Chalk fee?” Zhu Liu whispered.

“Separate charge,” Shi Feng said, and closed the door.