Chapter 322 — Smoke Over Qingtong

CHAPTER 322

Smoke Over Qingtong

By noon the next day, nineteen hundred and twenty bars of iron and bronze were lined up in the smiths' square.

Master Smith Kang walked down the rows with both fists clenched. Every few steps he laid a hand on a bar, too relieved to trust that it was really theirs to use. Behind him two hundred and twelve smiths and apprentices stood in silence.

Sima Lan sat at a folding table with the ledger. She still refused to look at Shi Feng after last night’s teasing. The ox and the ink bottle had received more attention than he had; even her morning greeting had been meant for Gray Ear.

“Terms,” Sima Lan said crisply, to the square in general. “Iron, two stones a bar. Bronze, five. The Hall's old price list, not the Qiao house's. Payment is one third in goods each month, in blanks the sect already orders. No interest.”

“No interest?”

The smiths exchanged stunned looks. They’d expected another set of promises that would leave them owing more.

“No notes,” Sima Lan said. “Nobody here signs a promise they can't read.”

A silence fell. Then Master Smith Kang turned on his heel and bellowed.

“Hear that, you lazy dogs?! Fair price! Fair!” Master Smith Kang bellowed. His voice cracked on the second word, and the hand over his face was suddenly shaking. “Ninety years we've bought iron in this town! Three months we've been robbed like beggars! And a boy comes from the Hall and—”

He stopped. The roar had turned into something else.

“I'll light the first one myself,” Master Smith Kang said hoarsely.

He walked to Qingtong’s oldest furnace, its chimney black since his grandfather’s time. Two apprentices hauled a sack of charcoal. Master Smith Kang struck flint with a hand the size of a pot lid.

The charcoal caught. A thread of grey smoke rose from the chimney.

“Smoke.”

“Smoke!”

“Look at that, it's going up!”

“Light the second!”

“Light them all!”

The square broke into a roar. Smiths ran in every direction with buckets and bellows and shovels. One after another, the town's thirty-eight chimneys began to breathe. By mid-afternoon a long black cloud lay over Qingtong, and the ring of hammers started up, uneven at first, then steady.

Shi Feng stood at the edge of the square and listened. It was a sound that belonged in the town. It had been missing for three months.

Master Smith Kang came back, wiping soot from his face and leaving a larger smear.

“Boy,” Master Smith Kang said. “Hear me. Qingtong forges one anvil in a generation. We make it from the best spirit iron in the vein, the stuff we don't sell. The last one went to a sect master before my grandfather was born.” He thumped his own chest. “I swear by my grandfather's furnace. In the next season, this town will forge you an anvil of our best spirit iron. For free!”

“I don't need an anvil,” Shi Feng said.

“You will get one!” Master Smith Kang insisted. “You gave us back our work. Let us make something worthy of it!”

“I have no forge,” Shi Feng pointed out.

“Then you will get a forge!” Master Smith Kang roared.

“Please don't,” Shi Feng said.

“Too late! Once words are spoken, even four horses can't pull them back! I've sworn!” Master Smith Kang roared, and walked off to shout at someone else.

“He means it,” Zhu Liu said, writing. “It's an oath. I wrote it in the book.”

“Cross it out,” Shi Feng told Zhu Liu. “He’s getting carried away.”

“I can’t. It has a date,” Zhu Liu replied, anxiously protecting the page. “He swore it in front of everyone.”

Shi Feng looked at the grey sky above the new smoke.

“Where is the Chief Disciple?” Sima Lan asked, without turning.

Nobody knew. They went to the Copper Kettle.

Madam Tan stood in the doorway with flour on her arms and a very long bill. Bones, cups and broken benches filled the common room beneath the INSPECTOR banner. Someone had slept on a table.

“Your senior brother,” Madam Tan said, “threw a feast. For the smiths' apprentices. Sixty-three of them. He left before the soup.”

“He did what?” Shi Feng demanded, taking the bill.

“Pork, wine, noodles and a roasted ox shoulder.” Madam Tan pushed the bill into his hand. “He said the Hall was grateful. And that you'd handle the rest.”

Zhu Liu made a small sound. Outside, Gray Ear turned its head away.

Shi Feng read the total. It was a large number. At the bottom, in the signature box, was a drawing of a sweet potato.

The potato was well drawn.

He thought, Twice now. And he'd paid both.

Sima Lan, passing, dropped a scrap of paper into his hand without breaking step. It said: Fool's tax, one.

“Next time,” Shi Feng said quietly, “I'll be earlier.”

The following dawn, they packed. The ox was as unwilling as ever. Zhu Liu counted receipts, Old Soot croaked in its basket, and half of Qingtong stood at the gate to see them off, waving hammers.

Lin Langtian climbed onto the cart in high spirits.

“Jinsha Ferry!” Lin Langtian cried. “Next town, Junior Brother! A river, a market, and, I'm told, excellent fish!”

Gray Ear took one step.

From the east road came the grind of a broken axle. A farm cart limped up the slope, its tarp burned to ribbons. The driver, a middle-aged carter with a bandaged arm, almost fell off the board. He stared at the red banner, then at the Hall's crest on Shi Feng's cart. A scorched black flag was tied to his whip, a wave stitched in white.

The carter hoarsely asked whether they were the inspectors from the Hall.

“We are,” Shi Feng said.

The carter held up the flag with a shaking hand. Black Water had burned his whole caravan at the Jinsha dock. Eleven wagons. He swallowed before passing on the warning meant for the Hall.

Black Water would be waiting for them.