Chapter 286 — Lent

CHAPTER 286

Lent

Li Changyuan stood in the doorway of the Treasury with his broom in one hand and Elder Qian Mo's sleeve in the other.

Li Changyuan checked the empty floor, Shi Feng’s ring, and the extinguished lantern in Sima Lan’s hand. Then a potato peel slipped through the hole above. He looked up, and his expression grew worse.

“Where's the shelf?” Li Changyuan asked.

“In my ring,” Shi Feng said.

“The whole shelf?” Li Changyuan said.

“You said one item, Sect Master,” Shi Feng said.

Li Changyuan nodded slowly. He put down the broom. He put a hand over his heart, and then, with great care, he lowered himself onto a spear rack and sat there like a man at his own funeral.

“Nine jars,” Li Changyuan said. “Sixty years. My master put them there with his own hands. He said, 'Changyuan, keep them for a rainy day.' And I kept them. Through the coal debt. Through the roof. Through the year the cook sold the ladles. And then a boy walks in with a jade slip I wrote myself, and a Treasury ledger I never read, and takes the shelf! I have led a wolf into my own house!”

“Sect Master,” Elder Qian Mo sobbed. “I tried to give him the lion.”

“I know you did,” Li Changyuan said. “I'm very proud of you.”

“Eighty stones, the lion,” Sima Lan said helpfully.

“Don't help!” Li Changyuan said.

A small crowd had gathered at the end of the lane. Cui Hong was there, and Zheng Yu, and a few outer-court disciples carrying brooms they weren't using. The whisper began at the back and passed forward.

“The sect master is crying.”

“He isn't crying. His eyes are wet.”

“What did the champion take?”

“A shelf. The Treasury's whole shelf! A lion opening his great mouth!”

“Is that allowed?”

“It was one item. The slip said one item.”

“…”

Shi Feng thought, He really is upset, but he’s making sure everyone sees it. His master’s herbs mattered to him. So did keeping control of the generosity he’d put in writing.

“Sixty years,” Li Changyuan said, rising and straightening his robe. “My master left those herbs. Through the coal debt, through every repair, we kept them. Did you really think I’d give away the sect’s last good shelf?”

He raised a finger to heaven.

“It's LENT!” Li Changyuan roared. “Not given! LENT! A loan! A temporary arrangement! You'll bring back every jar, every leaf, every spark! And the shelf! And the dust!”

The echo bounced around the Treasury walls. Cui Hong dropped his arrival board.

“Understood, Sect Master,” Shi Feng said. “It's lent.”

He turned his head.

“Zhu Liu. A receipt, please,” Shi Feng said.

Zhu Liu appeared at his elbow so fast that the crowd gasped. His brush was already wet. He knelt on the stone floor, laid the receipt book on his knee and wrote in careful, large characters, speaking each word aloud.

“Received, one shelf, number fourteen, with nine jars of Thunder-Calming herbs and all contents. Lent by Sect Master Li Changyuan. Borrowed by Shi Feng,” Zhu Liu said. His brush paused. “Return date, Senior Brother?”

“No return date,” Shi Feng said.

Li Changyuan stopped breathing.

“Borrowed,” Zhu Liu wrote, “no repayment date.” He blew on the ink and looked up, glowing. “That's all, Sect Master. Please sign.”

“No date?” Li Changyuan said.

“Then write the loan,” Shi Feng said. “You haven’t set a date, Sect Master. I can return it when I’m able. Unless you’d rather leave it as the gift you offered?”

Li Changyuan looked from the paper to the clean rectangle in the dust. Then he stared at Shi Feng, the personal disciple he’d accepted half a year ago. He was angry, and the boy was calmly waiting for his signature.

Then he took the brush, signed in a furious scrawl and threw it down.

“Funerals cost money,” Li Changyuan muttered. “So do thieves.”

He snatched up his broom and marched away down the lane. Two steps later he stopped, without turning round.

“If the tribulation kills you,” Li Changyuan said stiffly, “the jars are lost. So don't die. That's my interest.”

“Yes, Sect Master,” Shi Feng said.

The broom swept off, quicker than before. Behind him, Elder Qian Mo sank onto the Treasury step and began counting his remaining shelves aloud, then started again from the beginning.

“Two of three,” Sima Lan said that evening, closing her ledger. “Beast heart. Thunder-Calming herbs. Thunder-Marrow ore. You've collected two. The third isn't in the Treasury. It isn't in any treasury within a hundred li.”

“I know,” Shi Feng said.

“Then where?” Sima Lan said.

The answer came with a crunch of potato. Lin Langtian dropped from the eaves and landed in front of them, holding a square of paper he'd peeled off the wall of the gatehouse.

“Here,” Lin Langtian said happily.

He held it up. It was a Martial Palace road notice, printed in neat black. Shi Feng read the first lines. A convoy of Thunder-Marrow ore, bound for Martial Palace's southern forges, would cross the old Ironwood Bridge in three days, “as the treaty provides, free of all tolls.”

Lin Langtian's smile slowly grew wider.

“Tolls,” Lin Langtian said softly. “What a lovely word, Junior Brother. Such a small one, too.”