Chapter 350 — The Coal Bill

CHAPTER 350

The Coal Bill

On the fifth night, the broom came into the furnace hall before the sweeper did.

It scraped across the doorstep, stopped, and tapped twice on the frame. Shi Feng didn't look up. He was on his knees beside the main furnace with a herb in each hand and the fire at exactly the colour the recipe wanted.

“Hm,” Li Changyuan said.

“Sect Master,” Shi Feng said.

“Forty catties,” Li Changyuan said. He leaned on the broom in the dark doorway, a stooped shape in a patched brown robe. “That's what you burned last night. Forty catties of black coal, from the Fan Coal House, at sixty parts in a hundred above what the same coal costs in Duanyang.”

“I'll pay for it,” Shi Feng said.

“I know you will,” Li Changyuan replied.

“Then what’s wrong?” Shi Feng asked, keeping the herbs beside the flame.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Li Changyuan said, stepping in. The lamplight showed his long, stern, sorrowful face. “It's the principle of the coal. A man rents my inner-court rooms for nine hundred stones, then, like a lion opening its great mouth, sells me my own coal at an insult. Every time we light a furnace, he profits from us again.”

“I could buy from Duanyang,” Shi Feng offered.

“And walk it up twelve li on your back?” Li Changyuan asked, exasperated.

“Yes,” Shi Feng replied, meaning it.

Li Changyuan studied him, torn between approval and irritation. The boy really would carry the coal rather than leave the furnace cold.

“No,” Li Changyuan said at last. “You'd do it, too. Just burn less.”

“That's not how a furnace works,” Shi Feng said.

“Then burn it faster,” Li Changyuan said, and went out. The broom scraped away down the corridor. A moment later it scraped back, and his head came around the frame. “Don't burn it faster. And your toad is on the tray.”

Shi Feng turned.

Old Soot sat on top of the cooling tray with its gold-rimmed eyes fixed on the row of failed pills. It had followed him in, and nobody had noticed. It was looking at the third pill from the left with an expression of great and terrible hunger.

“Don't,” Shi Feng said.

Old Soot blinked slowly, and its tongue shot out.

The pill vanished. The toad swallowed, sat very still, and swelled like a drum. Its soot-grey skin turned pale grey, then white. A thin whistle came out of it, until Shi Feng leaned closer in alarm.

Then it fell over on its side with a thump and began to snore.

Shi Feng stared at it. A thin thread of flame rose from its mouth, curled once in the air and went out.

“Old Soot?” Shi Feng said.

It snored.

“Zhu Liu!” Shi Feng called.

Zhu Liu burst into the hall from the corridor, where he had been guarding the door with the receipt book. “It’s dead! Senior Brother Shi, the toad is dead!” Zhu Liu cried at the sight of the tray. “Do I write it as a loss?”

“It's asleep,” Shi Feng said.

“Are you sure?” Zhu Liu asked, hesitating over the page.

“It’s snoring,” Shi Feng pointed out.

“Oh,” Zhu Liu said, and wrote Old Soot: ate evidence, fainted (not dead).

A shadow filled the door.

“What happened?” Sima Lan said sharply.

She still wore her day robe, and her ledger was under one arm. Her eyes went from the tray to the toad, and every trace of colour left her face. She crossed the hall in four steps and knelt beside the creature.

“It's snoring,” Shi Feng said.

“I can hear it’s snoring,” Sima Lan said, laying two fingers against the toad’s pale belly. Her hand was not entirely steady. “What did it eat?”

“A waste pill. The cold-spring orchid one,” Shi Feng replied.

“You fed it poison,” Sima Lan accused him, frightened by its pale skin.

“It stole it,” Shi Feng replied.

“Then you left it where it could steal!” Sima Lan said. She slid both hands underneath the toad and lifted it into her arms. It was the size of a rice bowl, and it hung against her sleeve like a warm stone. “This animal owes me a bracelet and four hundred stones, and it can't die until it pays. That's the only reason.”

“Of course,” Shi Feng said.

“Don’t say it like that,” Sima Lan snapped.

“I didn’t say anything,” Shi Feng replied, failing to hide his amusement.

“Your face did,” Sima Lan said, carrying the toad to the doorway and then stopping without turning. “I'll put it in the stove room, back on the eggs. Its fire is low. They all need warmth.” Her voice dropped by a notch. “Don't make another orchid pill tonight.”

She left. Zhu Liu looked at the tray, then at Shi Feng.

“Shall I write 'Attendant carried the toad'?” Zhu Liu asked.

“Write 'The toad was moved,'” Shi Feng said.

“Yes, Senior Brother Shi,” Zhu Liu replied, carefully correcting the entry.

By the sixth night the wall outside hut nine read one thousand one hundred and seventy-one. Old Soot had woken at noon, let out a perfect smoke ring and gone back to eating iron. Sima Lan had said nothing about it, and nobody had asked.

Shi Feng sat alone beside the furnace with the cooling tray empty.

Twenty-two pots in two nights. Each had failed in a different place. Yet he had begun to notice something he couldn't explain, and the Ledger couldn't either. Every pot fell apart at the same moment, right at the end, when the last herb had gone in and the humming was clean. It was always the last breath.

Something was missing from the recipe. Not an herb. Something else.

He looked at the high shelf, where a jade box sat behind a sack of ginseng.