Chapter 27 — Twelve Stones for a Broken Kiln

CHAPTER 27

Twelve Stones for a Broken Kiln

The mirror shook when it found the guardian's open mouth. Zheng Bao pulled the pole back so quickly that it struck the doorpost. A sharp crack came from the glass.

“My mirror!” Zheng Bao cried.

“The beast didn't touch it,” Shi Feng said.

The potter peered around the doorway. He was a round man with dust in his eyebrows and a yellow talisman tied around his neck. It hung upside down.

His eyes moved from the two corpses to the bloody cloth at Shi Feng's shoulder.

“You're still alive?” Zheng Bao blurted.

Shi Feng looked at him.

Zheng Bao hurriedly waved one hand.

“I meant it’s good that you’re alive!” Zheng Bao said.

He crept past the dead jaw and picked up a small blue bowl. One side was crushed. His excitement faded.

“My best glaze,” Zheng Bao muttered.

Shi Feng waited while the potter rubbed the unbroken edge with his thumb. For three breaths, Zheng Bao forgot even the spirit stones. Then he looked at the cracked roof and remembered them all at once.

“Who’s paying for my kiln?” Zheng Bao demanded.

There was no room left in him for terror when money needed discussing. Shi Feng lifted his water flask. It was almost empty.

“Is the well still clear?” Shi Feng asked.

“You brought monsters into my yard!” Zheng Bao said.

“They climbed over your wall,” Shi Feng said.

“Because you came inside!” Zheng Bao said.

“So bill them,” Shi Feng said.

Zheng Bao looked at the corpses. He could imagine charging a person. He couldn't quite imagine where a spirit beast kept its stones.

The potter wasn't a cultivator. All his life, he'd relied on thick walls and louder complaints than his neighbors. Today the first had failed him, and the second hadn't improved matters.

He poked the nearer guardian with his pole.

Nothing moved.

He poked harder, found a patch of shell weakened by Shi Feng's devouring, and broke a piece free. Pale dust spilled onto the floor.

Zheng Bao's face fell.

“It's ruined!” Zheng Bao said. “I thought the plates would pay for the roof!”

“Some of them might,” Shi Feng said.

He didn't offer to explain which parts he'd drained. The physique was his own secret, and the potter's disappointment didn't require an answer.

Zheng Bao looked at Shi Feng again. The familiar face finally gave him something easier to understand.

“You're the Shi clan's cripple,” Zheng Bao said.

“That's what people call me,” Shi Feng said.

“Then how did you survive?” Zheng Bao asked.

“I didn't wait for them to chew me,” Shi Feng said.

The potter stared. He glanced at the broken sword on the floor, then at the knife beside Shi Feng's knee.

There was clearly a story here. He wanted to hear it, but he wanted compensation more.

“Fine,” Zheng Bao said. “If you're staying, twelve spirit stones.”

“For what?” Shi Feng asked.

“Hiding in my kiln,” Zheng Bao said. “And sleeping here. And the mess.”

Shi Feng looked through the missing roof.

“Three days,” Shi Feng said. “Water included.”

Zheng Bao opened his mouth to object, then saw the knife and closed it. The youth was injured, but both beasts were dead. Trying to drag him outside would be foolish.

“Three days,” Zheng Bao agreed.

Shi Feng paid twelve stones.

That settled the matter. He'd buy a little shelter and let the potter tell himself it counted as compensation.

Zheng Bao fetched clean water from a covered well in the rear yard. He also brought a stool without being asked, then demanded to know whether it counted as another day's rent.

“No,” Shi Feng said.

The stool remained anyway.

“Eight spirit stones,” Sun Cheng said, setting his medicine box beside the bed. “I clean the shoulder, change the dressing, and fix that splint. You keep both arms.”

Shi Feng pushed eight stones across the plank.

“Go ahead,” Shi Feng said.

Zheng Bao looked disappointed. He'd brought a surgeon and expected a lively argument about the price. Instead, Sun Cheng already had the cloth unfolded and a basin between his feet.

Zheng Bao put the bed in a covered corner of the damaged kiln. Dust covered the high shelf, and a reed screen kept the morning glare out. Outside, someone kept shouting for workers to move broken tiles.

Sun Cheng cut away the dirty dressing. His expression changed when he saw the shoulder.

“A beast did this?” Sun Cheng asked.

He set a carved wooden fish beside the medicine box. Its tail opened to reveal his needles.

“My granddaughter made it,” Sun Cheng said before Shi Feng asked. “Don’t put your bloody sleeve on it.”

Shi Feng moved his arm. Sun Cheng grunted approval and went back to prodding the wound. He treated the wooden fish more gently than the patient.

“It hit harder than the wall,” Shi Feng said.

“You hit a wall too?” Sun Cheng asked.

“It was behind me,” Shi Feng replied.

Sun Cheng grunted and began cleaning the wound. He was an ordinary surgeon, not a cultivator. His hands were steady, and he didn't waste time asking how a cripple survived something that could break a kiln.

Shi Feng bit a folded cloth when the medicine entered the torn flesh. He could bear pain. That didn't mean pain felt pleasant.

The surgeon loosened the right wrist splint, checked the swelling, and bound it again with straighter supports. This time the wood didn't press against the most tender part.

“Better?” Sun Cheng asked.

“Much better,” Shi Feng said.

“Then don't ruin my work before tomorrow,” Sun Cheng said.

Zheng Bao leaned over his shoulder. The potter's face turned pale at the bloody water.

“Is he going to need another room?” Zheng Bao asked.

“He needs this one,” Sun Cheng said.

“But what if there's fever?” Zheng Bao asked.

“Then he still needs this one,” Sun Cheng replied.

Shi Feng looked at the potter.

“You aren't charging by the illness, are you?” Shi Feng asked.

“No! Of course not!” Zheng Bao said, taking a step back.

Sun Cheng left two packets of swelling powder and a small pot of salve. He explained when to change the dressing, collected his empty cloth, and stood.

“Can I walk tomorrow?” Shi Feng asked.

“If you walk instead of wrestling beasts,” Sun Cheng said. “I won't promise anything if you choose the second.”

“Walking will do,” Shi Feng said.

The surgeon nodded and went out. A woman in the yard immediately caught his sleeve and dragged him toward another patient. Sun Cheng didn't look surprised.

Shi Feng slept after the treatment. When he woke, the shoulder no longer burned, and the wrist could rest without a sharp ache. He circulated the guardian's stored vitality until the pressure inside his chest eased, then ate the bread in his pack.

Outside, Zheng Bao was charging neighbours two coppers apiece to peer at the dead guardians through the broken doorway and trading gossip about the eastern street: the Split-Maw mother had followed the stolen eggs straight into the Wei family’s eastern storehouse and smashed all three buildings flat before returning to the marsh.

Shi Feng listened from behind the reed screen until a more familiar voice joined the gawkers.

“Did that Shi boy come through the tide with his pack?” Tang Jiu asked near the gate. “Still carrying that short hill-knife at his belt?”

“What’s it worth to you?” Zheng Bao asked cautiously.

“Two stones if you tell me when he goes to the customs shed for his travel seal,” Tang Jiu muttered. “The Wei stewards lost their storehouse and their young master in the same week, and Wen Ruxiu at the customs desk is paying for word of anyone who took the western hill road.”

Footsteps hurried back toward the street. A moment later, Zheng Bao edged around the screen with a bowl of porridge and an uneasy expression.

“You heard him?” Zheng Bao asked in a small voice.

“Every word,” Shi Feng said, taking the bowl. “Come with me to the customs shed when I fetch my seal. You can carry the water jar back.”

Zheng Bao looked at the knife beside the bowl and nodded very quickly.