Chapter 339 — His Sleeve

CHAPTER 339

His Sleeve

“Wait!” Su Wanning cried. “Shi Feng, wait!”

He stopped at the edge of the shelf and turned. The Valley team had caught up in a bunch, their sashes untied and their eyes red. Su Wanning's were the reddest.

“Taking a mother's eggs,” Su Wanning said in a wobbling voice. “While she was still alive! I never thought, I mean, I thought Martial Palace were only greedy, but this is, this is, I don't have a word!”

“Martial Palace is truly shameless to the extreme!” another girl cried.

“They deserved that serpent.”

“Look at his arm. He went in alone, for her.”

“…”

“Let me see the arm,” Lin Yue said, and before Shi Feng could refuse she had caught his wrist and was winding a clean green bandage around it. Su Wanning handed over a flask of water and something that smelled of mint. A third girl offered a rice cake.

Shi Feng took the rice cake. He felt the knock in his left sleeve again, smaller this time, and he held the arm still against his side.

Bai Chenxi hadn't moved from the back.

Her frost sword hung at her hip. She stared at the sleeve that had knocked, plainly suspicious of his convenient account.

“Then what's in your sleeve?” Bai Chenxi said.

The girls went quiet. Lin Yue's hands stopped on the bandage.

Shi Feng looked at Bai Chenxi. He had an answer, but it was the wrong kind of answer. Another lie would give Bai Chenxi something else to question. She already had reason to doubt him, and she wasn’t inclined to let it pass.

“His sleeve,” Ling Qingzhu said.

Everyone turned.

She had not moved either. She stood in front of the Valley group, holding her sword firmly and looking toward the far road. Shi Feng realized she was deliberately avoiding his eyes.

“That's what's in it,” Ling Qingzhu said calmly. “His sleeve. What else a man carries in it isn't a Valley matter.”

“Senior Sister Ling,” Bai Chenxi began.

“He took an arm wound for a Valley lotus,” Ling Qingzhu said. “The Valley will ask him nothing else until it's paid.”

“It wasn't a Valley lotus,” Shi Feng said.

“Then it's Artificer Hall's lotus, and the Valley will ask him nothing,” Ling Qingzhu said, “because Artificer Hall isn't here to be asked.”

Bai Chenxi looked at Ling Qingzhu for a long moment. Then she looked at Shi Feng's sleeve, and then at the sky, and finally lowered her eyes.

“As Senior Sister says,” Bai Chenxi said, very stiffly.

Ling Qingzhu turned and walked toward the Valley horses. She did not look at Shi Feng, not once, and she didn't look back.

Shi Feng stood still with a half-eaten rice cake.

She knew, he thought. She had understood from the start, perhaps from the moment he said “eggs” and saw the token missing. She knew, and she'd said nothing, and she had chosen to carry his lie on her own back in front of her own people.

He didn't know what to do with that. So he finished the rice cake.

At the inn in Cuiping Town, he took the rooms upstairs and sent Zhu Liu for firewood and a basket.

Sima Lan entered without knocking. She stopped in the doorway and looked at the six pale green eggs lying in a nest of ash, each the size of a melon, shimmering faintly in the lamplight.

“There are eggs in my accounts,” Sima Lan said.

“They aren’t in your accounts,” Shi Feng replied.

“They’re in my room’s ash. I carried that ash from the town gate,” Sima Lan said, coming in and shutting the door and looking at him with her spine very straight. “Whose are they?”

“The serpent’s,” Shi Feng admitted, seeing no point in concealing it from her.

“And the story at the shelf?” Sima Lan asked, studying him.

“Was a story,” Shi Feng said.

“I see,” Sima Lan said. She stood very still for a moment. “I saw nothing. I heard a rumour that Martial Palace has a thieving habit. I'm recording it as a rumour.”

“Thank you,” Shi Feng said. Her decision not to question him further was a relief.

“It's included,” Sima Lan said, and her mouth twitched, just once. “Where will they go?”

“Warm,” Shi Feng said. “Until I know.”

“Then I know where,” Sima Lan said, glancing reluctantly toward the stove.

She opened the basket by the stove. Old Soot sat inside, round and smug, with a trail of smoke from its nostrils. Sima Lan looked at the toad with open dislike. Then she lifted it out in both hands, held it at arm's length and set it down on top of the eggs.

“Warm,” Sima Lan said. “It's the only thing it's good for.”

Old Soot croaked, settled itself and closed its eyes. The eggs glowed a little brighter.

The door banged open.

“JUNIOR BROTHER!” Lin Langtian shouted, leaping into the room with his arms spread. “THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL! The token! The mate! The timing! I wept in my tree!”

“You saw everything?” Shi Feng asked, turning toward his senior brother.

“I saw the whole show,” Lin Langtian said, and then his voice dropped into a sudden, comfortable murmur. “Don't worry. I won't say a word about the eggs. A man who tells that kind of secret deserves to lose it.”

Zhu Liu burst in next, white as flour, waving a sheet of red paper in one fist.

“Senior Brother Shi! Senior Brother Lin! There's a notice on the town board!” Zhu Liu gasped. “Martial Palace has filed a complaint with the inspector. They say Senior Brother Shi stole the kill, stole the lotus, and... and framed them with a token!”

“It says there'll be a hearing tonight,” Zhu Liu said. “In the Herb Hall. With all three sects.”

Lin Langtian’s grin faded while he considered the complaint. Then he smiled at Shi Feng with the cheerful confidence that usually meant trouble for somebody else.

“A hearing,” Lin Langtian said softly. “In front of an audience. Junior Brother, go and wash. This senior brother needs to prepare his speech.”