Chapter 323 — Protection, Priced Upward

CHAPTER 323

Protection, Priced Upward

The queue at Jinsha Ferry was a full li long, and none of it was moving.

Shi Feng counted from the back of the ox cart. Salt wagons. Silk wagons. Tea mules with their ears flat. A man selling steamed buns worked his way down the line with a tray and looked like the only happy person on the river.

Ahead, the Jinsha River spread out wide and yellow. Two flat ferry barges sat tied to the south dock, and neither had crossed in two days. At the roadside lay the burned frame of a wagon. A black flag hung from a stick pushed through the ashes, with three white characters painted on it: BLACK WATER.

“They don't even hide it,” Sima Lan said.

“They don’t think anyone will stop them,” Lin Langtian said from the driving board. “Banner up, Zhu Liu. Let the poor people see hope.”

Zhu Liu raised the red INSPECTOR banner. Gray Ear lowered its head and kept walking, like an ox that had decided not to be seen.

The merchants along the road turned and stared at the gold thread.

“An inspector!”

“From where?”

“Artificer Hall.”

“The weakest sect?”

“The one with the lightning, you fool! That's the champion who drew thirty bolts!”

“Nine.”

“Thirty!”

“…”

A stout man in a ferry steward's cap came running down the dock with his hat in his hands. There was ink on both his cuffs. He bowed so low that his stomach touched his knees.

“Honoured Inspector!” Pu Gen cried. “This lowly Pu Gen, steward of Jinsha Ferry, has waited for you for a month!”

“Eleven days,” Zhu Liu said, checking his receipt book. “The letter went out eleven days ago.”

“It feels like a month,” Ferry Steward Pu Gen said miserably.

Lin Langtian climbed down and steadied the anxious steward by the shoulder. “Steward Pu, start at the beginning,” Lin Langtian said. “Who’s stopping the barges, and how much have they taken?”

Pu Gen told him. Three caravans had been robbed in a month. The Black Water gang held the middle of the river with a fleet of low reed boats, and every barge that wanted to cross paid five stones a cart at midstream. Anyone who refused lost the whole cargo. The merchants had stopped crossing, so the ferry had stopped earning, and the ferry still owed the sect its monthly tribute.

“Who's the boss?” Shi Feng asked.

“Tang Hai,” Pu Gen said, lowering his voice. “Peak Foundation Establishment. He has eighty men and a fort in the reeds. Nobody's seen it and come back dry. Even a mighty dragon can't crush the local snake, Inspector.”

“What happened to the ferry guards?” Shi Feng asked.

“Six. Old men,” Pu Gen admitted, looking at his boots. “Two of them have gone to visit relatives. Permanently, I think.”

Sima Lan hadn't said a word since the banner went up. She had been looking at the ink on the steward's cuffs.

“Steward Pu,” Sima Lan said. “Your account books.”

“They aren’t… very tidy,” Pu Gen admitted.

“That is why I'm asking for them,” Sima Lan said.

Pu Gen went pale and then, strangely, hopeful. He led her into the counting house at a trot, and the door closed behind them.

“She’ll find what he’s hiding,” Shi Feng said, watching the counting-house door close.

“Then we’d better give her the afternoon,” Lin Langtian replied cheerfully. “Look behind you, Junior Brother. Those people have been waiting longer than we have.”

He dragged an empty salt barrel to the middle of the dock and climbed onto it. The red banner cracked overhead. Four hundred merchants, drovers and boatmen turned toward him with the look of people who had run out of other ideas.

“Friends!” Lin Langtian roared. “Travellers! Victims of the river! Artificer Hall has heard your suffering!”

“Finally!” somebody shouted.

“Artificer Hall will protect you!” Lin Langtian declared.

“How much?” somebody else shouted.

Lin Langtian put a hand to his chest. “Can’t you let me finish offering hope?” Lin Langtian protested. “Artificer Hall protection plaques! One plaque per cart! Hang it on the front, and no cart that carries it will be touched!”

A salt merchant called out, demanding to know whether he was making a promise.

“It's a sect's honour,” Lin Langtian said. “Twenty stones a plaque, prices negotiable upward.”

“Upward?” Shi Feng asked, startled despite himself.

“A man who pays twenty feels cheated, Junior Brother,” Lin Langtian whispered. “A man who pays sixty feels protected. I'd hate for them to feel cheated.”

The crowd had already begun to push forward. Somebody was waving a purse. A silk dealer offered thirty before he'd even been asked.

By the time Sima Lan came out of the counting house, the sun was low, and the first twelve names were written on Zhu Liu's list. She stopped beside Shi Feng with the ledger under her arm. Her sleeves had ink to the elbows.

“Well?” Shi Feng asked.

“The steward has paid the Black Water gang for fourteen months,” Sima Lan said. “Out of the ferry's own repair fund.”

“Fourteen months of repairs?” Shi Feng asked, looking back at the idle barges.

“They don't look good,” Sima Lan said. “They look exactly the same as last year. The repairs were very expensive. They never happened.” She turned a page. “I've closed the account. Pu Gen cried. I charged him a stone for the handkerchief.”

“And the plaques?” Shi Feng asked.

“What plaques?” Sima Lan asked, suddenly suspicious.

Shi Feng looked at Lin Langtian, who was shaking hands with a tea merchant on the salt barrel.

“We don't have any plaques,” Shi Feng said.

Lin Langtian heard him from ten paces away and turned with a smile that took up half his face.

“Of course we don't, Junior Brother,” Lin Langtian said. “That's why you're making them.”