Chapter 245 — The Maid Is a Princess

CHAPTER 245

The Maid Is a Princess

“Have you heard? The champion's maid is a princess!”

Shi Feng had heard it three times since breakfast: first in the dining hall, then from a guard speaking to a courier. Now two boys were repeating it beside the water buckets. Every version seemed to have a different explanation for Sima Lan’s contract.

Shi Feng walked past with his tray.

“Great Liang's princess,” the boy went on. “The one who took tenth place in the tournament!”

“She ran away from the palace!”

“Not ran away. She was thrown out. A beauty is a calamity to the nation, as they say.”

“No, no. She left because the king wanted to marry her to a prince of Great Song, and she said she'd rather scrub a champion's floors!”

“She scrubs his back too. Wu Qiang saw it through the window.”

“He said he did,” the second boy said doubtfully. “He also said he saw a ghost in the toilets.”

“That was real.”

Shi Feng thought, Elder Pang’s retainers must have started this. Their elder fled in public. A tale about a princess was an easy way to make everyone discuss something else.

By noon the story had crossed the northern pass and reached the other two sects.

The rumour kept growing. By sundown, in the version going around the tea houses of the three sects, the princess had crossed three kingdoms on foot, fought off a gang of bandits with her hair pin and sworn a vow of service to the champion over a cup of well water.

“It was a cup of tea,” Sima Lan said flatly.

She was standing at the door of Shi Feng's hut with the ledger under her arm and a face like a locked box.

“I heard a pot of wine,” Zhu Liu said. “With a rope round your wrist.”

“A rope?” Sima Lan said.

“I told the boy it was only a rumour!” Zhu Liu said, and wrote something down. “I gave him a receipt.”

“You gave him a receipt for a rumour?” Sima Lan said, closing her eyes. “Wonderful. Attendant, Zhu Liu. I signed a contract, and ‘Attendant’ is on every page.”

“Eleven times,” Shi Feng said.

“Do not help,” Sima Lan said.

A cough sounded from the lane. Cui Hong was standing there with a letter held in both hands like a plate of burning coals, and a pair of Martial Palace couriers waited at the gate behind him, looking bored.

“Senior Brother Shi,” Cui Hong said. “This came for the Hall. By the Palace's own men. The sect master asked that you come.”

Li Changyuan's hut stood at the back of the peak, behind the kitchens, with a leaning roof and a broom propped against the door. Inside there was a table, two benches and a cold charcoal pot. The old man sat on the bench farther from the door. Elder Qian Mo of the Treasury sat across from him with his abacus in his lap, thin and tight-lipped.

Lin Langtian was standing in the middle of the floor with the letter unrolled, and he was enjoying himself.

“From the Hall of Outer Affairs of Martial Palace!” Lin Langtian read, in a deep, stately voice. “To the esteemed sect of Artificer Hall, in the spirit of friendship between neighbours.”

“Get to the money,” Elder Qian Mo said.

“It doesn't start with the money. It starts with friendship!” Lin Langtian said.

“Then it ends with the money,” Qian Mo said.

“Let him read,” Li Changyuan said. He was peeling a cabbage leaf.

“In the spirit of friendship,” Lin Langtian said, and cleared his throat, “Martial Palace invites the juniors of both sects to hold friendly spars at Three-Road Border Market. Three exchanges a day, between disciples of equal standing. The Palace will provide the rope and the warden.”

“They'll bill us for the rope,” Sima Lan said from the door. She had followed Shi Feng without being asked.

“Further,” Lin Langtian went on, “in view of recent bandit disturbances in the hills, the Wujin Mines will from this day be placed under the protection of Martial Palace. No further inspection fees will be charged on ore that bears the Palace's mark.”

Elder Qian Mo stopped fiddling with his abacus.

“No fees?” Elder Qian Mo asked.

“On ore that bears the Palace's mark,” Lin Langtian said. “Which would be all of it. Because they'd be the ones marking it.”

Silence fell in the small hut.

“So they keep the ore and put their mark on it,” Li Changyuan said, laying down the cabbage leaf. “No inspection fee sounds generous until you ask who controls every wagon leaving the mines.”

“Sect Master, the mines are ours by contract,” Elder Qian Mo said.

“So is the road. The contract doesn't say who guards it.” Li Changyuan sighed. “A knife hidden behind a smile, as they say. Friendly. I hate it when they're friendly.”

Shi Feng understood the threat. The inspection charge had been a first squeeze. Now Martial Palace wanted control of the supply itself. Artificer Hall could dispute the mine contract and still receive no iron.

“What do they want, in the end?” Shi Feng asked.

“A fight, of course,” Lin Langtian said, folding the letter with a flourish. “The kind where the other side starts it. Tomorrow, one of our juniors will have a very friendly accident, and it will be recorded as friendship.”

“How do you know?” Sima Lan asked.

“Because it's what I would do,” Lin Langtian said happily. “Junior Brother, sleep early. Find your best brush, and don't forget the ink.”

“Why the brush?” Shi Feng asked.

Lin Langtian only smiled, and bit into his potato.