Chapter 267 — Tea That Tasted of Iron

CHAPTER 267

Tea That Tasted of Iron

“Poison!” Fu Zhi croaked, and dropped his cup.

It was the evening of the third day. The inspectors had dragged their cots into the yard and slept there, or not slept, under a sky that never rained. Their faces had gone the grey of old candle wax. Two of them had stopped blinking.

Li Changyuan had come across the yard with a kettle in both hands. He wore his patched robe and wore the face of a man deeply sorry for his life. The tea in the kettle was black.

“A small welcome,” Li Changyuan said. “Honoured guests, drink. It will warm you.”

Hao Wen took a mouthful. He held it in his mouth for a long moment. Then he spat it onto the flagstones.

“It tastes of iron,” Hao Wen said.

“Does it?” Li Changyuan asked, peering into the kettle. “Eighty years old, this one. We boil it every day. Perhaps the iron’s become fond of our tea. It certainly won’t leave us.”

“There's something in it!” Fu Zhi said. His hand was shaking so badly that tea ran down his sleeve. “They've put something in it. It's a banquet with no good intent! We're all going to die.”

“Nobody is dying,” Shi Feng said.

He had been standing at the edge of the yard with Sima Lan and her ledger. Now he stepped forward and held out a hand. Hao Wen stared at it, then slowly gave him the cup.

Shi Feng looked into it, swirled it once, and sniffed. A dark powder lay in the bottom.

“Rust,” Shi Feng said. “Iron oxide, a little old tea leaf, and about forty nails.”

“Nails?” Hao Wen said.

“Old rust boiled off the nails,” Shi Feng said. “It’s harmless.” He drank down to the sediment. “Useful, even. Keep drinking it for a year and it’ll improve your blood.”

[Devoured: rust | Gain: none | Note: nails]

“A year,” Fu Zhi said hoarsely.

“The tea is one stone a cup,” Sima Lan said, writing. “Please stop shaking, Inspector. You're smudging my ledger.”

She said it in her usual flat voice. Hao Wen, whose nerves had been stretched for three nights, flinched as if she'd slapped him.

“Why would the host's champion drink that?” Hao Wen demanded. “Is it a trick? Is that why he isn't dead?”

“Because it's tea,” Shi Feng said.

“Because he has a stomach of iron,” someone whispered.

“Because it's a demon formation,” another said.

“It's a kettle,” Shi Feng said.

The inspectors looked more frightened. Shi Feng had told them what was in the cup and drunk it himself. They still expected a trick. He thought, Lin Langtian was right about this: once they’re afraid, even an honest answer sounds threatening.

Behind the gate wall, someone coughed in the exact tone of a man swallowing a laugh. Shi Feng did not turn around.

The inspectors did not sleep that night either.

At dawn Shi Feng crossed the yard with Zhu Liu behind him. The nine men were sitting in a ring on their cots, wrapped in blankets, eyes fixed on the storehouse door. One of them was humming a hymn to himself. Another's left eyelid twitched in a steady rhythm.

Hao Wen sat straight-backed on his cot. He was pale and exhausted, with none of his first day’s mocking smile left. He looked his age now, about thirty, and wanted nothing more than to leave.

Sima Lan walked up to him with a single sheet of paper.

“Courtesy statement,” Sima Lan said. “Lamps, seven. Blankets, nine. Hot water, three nights. Tea. Lodging under the Gathering's charter, reciprocal clause.” She paused. “Payable by Martial Palace on departure.”

Hao Wen looked at the paper. He did not take it.

Fu Zhi did, because his hand moved by itself. Zhu Liu bent over his book and wrote: Statement, received, by clerk. Not signed.

“We're leaving now,” Hao Wen said, standing. “We have inspected enough.”

“The charter holds advance inspectors until the first guest party signs in,” Shi Feng said politely. “Article six.”

Hao Wen started to object, then remembered article six. He’d read it on the road and thought nothing of it. Now it was keeping him beside the storehouse until the next guests arrived. As the saying goes, under another man's eaves, one must lower one's head.

“…Then we'll wait,” Hao Wen said.

A bell rang at the gate, one long clear peal. It wasn't the sharp three-stroke warning from before. This was the slow bell reserved for honoured guests, and Cui Hong's voice followed it across the court, rising almost to a squeak.

“Hundred Flower Valley! Hundred Flower Valley, at the lower gate!” Cui Hong said.

Zhu Liu pulled the arrival list from inside his sleeve and read it aloud, with perfect and terrible calm. “Elder Mu Shuyun, mid Golden Core. Twenty-two disciples. Among them, inner disciple Ling Qingzhu, first on the Valley's register.”

Shi Feng had not moved.

His left hand, however, was already at his belt. His thumb lay on the violet purse string and pressed once, hard.

Sima Lan looked at the thumb and wrote something in her ledger.

“What did you write?” Shi Feng asked.

“A cost,” Sima Lan said.