Chapter 259 — The Stipend Table

CHAPTER 259

The Stipend Table

The abacus was bigger than Zhu Liu's back.

Forty rods filled its black walnut frame. Lin Langtian had taken it from the Treasury without asking. Zhu Liu struggled up the slope with both arms through the straps, bent nearly double. Each step made the beads rattle against his back.

“It's heavy,” Zhu Liu panted. “Senior Brother Lin, why do we need it?”

“Look at the guards when they see it,” Lin Langtian said cheerfully. “A small book can be ignored. That thing makes them think you’ve come to count everything they own.”

They had walked two days. The hills here were black, not green. Black dust lay along the road and on the roofs of the miners' huts, and the streams ran dark where they came out of the tunnels. The Wujin Mines had been named for the metal they gave up, a heavy black ore that Artificer Hall's furnaces needed more than rice.

Shi Feng walked a step behind Lin Langtian with his everyday bag on his shoulder. His plain knife was at his belt. He had a quiet feeling about this road, and the feeling grew as they passed the first bend.

There were guards on both sides.

They stood in two long lines along the road, fifty or sixty men in Martial Palace's crimson jackets, with spears grounded and faces carved from wood. Their spearheads shone. Behind them, miners stood in clumps outside the huts, silent and curious, with soot on their faces.

“Welcome,” a man in the first line said in a flat voice. “Guest inspectors will walk straight ahead. Please do not touch anything.”

“Of course, of course,” Lin Langtian said. “Wonderful guards. Such shiny spears.”

He strolled up to the first man in the line and looked him up and down with warm interest.

“Four hundred and ten a quarter,” Lin Langtian said.

The guard blinked.

“Pardon?”

“Your stipend,” Lin Langtian said. “Four hundred and ten spirit stones a quarter, with a bonus at the festival if your captain likes you. He doesn't like you, so, no bonus. Your wife still thinks you earn six hundred.”

The guard's spear shook.

“How—” the guard began.

“Next!” Lin Langtian said, stopping before the man with the scarred ear. “Five hundred and fifty. A captain. Don’t look so worried; everyone borrows.” He strolled on through the ranks. “Three hundred and eighty. Four hundred and ten again. Four hundred and thirty—congratulations on the promotion. Three hundred and sixty. Yours wasn’t as generous.”

Up and down the line, the wooden faces cracked. A man at the back dropped his spear. Another one went red from his collar to his ears. Somebody laughed nervously, and somebody else shushed him.

“He knows my number,” a young guard whispered.

“Don't talk! Disaster comes from the mouth! He knows yours too.”

“Is he a spirit?”

“He's a loan shark!”

“…”

Shi Feng watched this, and for a moment he forgot to walk.

Zhu Liu came up beside him, trembling under the abacus.

“How does he know all that?” Zhu Liu whispered. “Does he have Spirit Sense? Can he read their minds?”

“He’s early Nascent Soul, if the reports are right,” Shi Feng said. “Spirit Sense won’t tell him what those men have told their wives. He learned this somewhere else.”

“Then how?” Zhu Liu said.

“Junior Brother!” Lin Langtian called over his shoulder. “Lesson three! Come here and listen, this one's free!”

Shi Feng went. Lin Langtian reached into his sleeve and took out a creased scroll, which he opened one-handed. It was a printed table of names and numbers, and across the top, in neat clerk's writing, ran the words Martial Palace Border Garrison, Quarterly Payroll.

“Where did you get that?” Shi Feng asked.

“A clerk in Duanyang City sold it to me,” Lin Langtian said. “For a sweet potato.”

“One sweet potato?” Shi Feng said.

“A good one,” Lin Langtian said. “Roasted. Do you know why he sold it?”

“Because you asked nicely?” Shi Feng said.

“Because I knew his number too,” Lin Langtian said, grinning. “Lesson three, Junior Brother. Strike the snake at its seven inches. Before you walk into any room, find out what everybody in it earns. They'll tell you the rest themselves.”

Shi Feng looked at the scroll for a moment, then at the guards, who were avoiding each other's eyes.

Shi Feng thought, He found out what they earn, then watched what frightened them. The payroll alone didn’t tell him everything. Their reactions supplied the rest. He remembered the lesson.

“Zhu Liu,” Shi Feng said.

“Yes, Senior Brother Shi?” Zhu Liu said.

“Write down what that costs a sweet potato,” Shi Feng said.

“One sweet potato, roasted,” Zhu Liu wrote, panting. “Received from Lin Langtian, paid to a clerk. Shall I charge it to the sect or to you?”

“To him,” Shi Feng said.

“To the sect!” Lin Langtian said at once. “It's a business expense!”

They reached the top of the slope. A broad yard opened out before them, paved with black slag, ringed with ore carts and stone sheds. A great iron gate stood open in the hillside, where the main tunnel went down. Two hundred miners had gathered in a ring.

In the middle of the yard stood a young man in a crimson robe with gold pillars down both sleeves. He had his arms folded and his chin lifted.

Behind him stood a big, heavy-shouldered man with a pickaxe the size of a door over one shoulder.

“Lin Langtian,” Tuoba Hong said. “You came early. I like that in a loser.”