Chapter 363 — The Hair in the Iron

CHAPTER 363

The Hair in the Iron

The clerk called lot nine, furnace nine, and told candidate number thirty-two to step forward.

Shi Feng stepped forward.

The Furnace Hall was a long room with a stone floor and nine iron furnaces standing on a rack against the wall. Each was waist high, black and round-bellied, with a lid and three short legs. Eight finalists had already drawn their lots from the bamboo jar and gone to inspect their own. Master Ruan was contentedly patting the side of his chosen furnace.

Examiner Tao Heng stood by the rack.

“Allow me,” Examiner Tao Heng said. “The furnaces are heavy. The tower would not like a finalist to strain his back before the final.”

He lifted furnace nine down himself, with both hands, and set it on the floor in front of Shi Feng. The iron rang on the stone. He smiled.

The clerk unrolled the rules. A drawn furnace couldn’t be exchanged. Finalists could light it for one practice night in the candidates’ quarters. Any defect that developed after the draw was their responsibility.

A finalist asked what counted as a defect. The clerk gave an unhelpfully broad answer: anything that showed afterward.

Shi Feng crouched and put his palm on the iron.

It was cold and smooth. There was no flaw on the surface. He rapped the lid with one knuckle, three times, the way he always did, and listened. It rang clean.

He lifted the whole furnace by its legs. It was heavy. It was a hair heavier on the left than the right.

Tao Heng was watching his hands. He wasn't smiling now. He was waiting.

“A good furnace,” Shi Feng said.

“The tower's best,” Examiner Tao Heng said.

“Then thank you,” Shi Feng replied, lifting it into the cloth.

Shi Feng wrapped it in the cloth Sima Lan had brought and carried it out of the hall on his shoulder.

The candidates' quarters were on the third floor, a row of narrow rooms with a shared corridor. Each finalist had a small stone hearth, and wardens stood at the stair.

Shi Feng set furnace nine on the hearth and lit a little charcoal under it.

Sima Lan stood by the door with her arms folded. She had been allowed up on the condition that she touched nothing.

“Nothing's wrong with it,” Sima Lan said.

“Not yet,” Shi Feng replied, watching the left wall as the iron warmed.

The charcoal glowed. The iron warmed. Shi Feng pulled up a stool and watched for any change in the furnace’s surface.

The first quarter of an hour, nothing.

The second, nothing.

In the third, a hair of red appeared on the left wall of the furnace. It ran from the rim down about two fingers' width, thinner than a thread, and it glowed brighter than the rest of the iron. It breathed. When the fire went up, it opened a little. When the fire sank, it closed.

“There,” Shi Feng said.

Sima Lan crossed the room in three steps and knelt beside it. She looked at the line for a long moment.

“A hairline crack,” Sima Lan said. “Cold, you couldn't see it. Cold, you couldn't hear it.”

“No,” Shi Feng confirmed.

“It was selected,” Sima Lan said. “Out of the rack, by hand. When the weasel pays the chickens a New Year visit, it means no good.”

“Yes,” Shi Feng replied.

“We can protest,” Sima Lan said. “It's in the rules. A defect that was there before the draw is the tower's. I'll write the claim tonight.”

“The rules say anything that shows after the draw is mine,” Shi Feng said. “And Tao Heng will say the crack came from my fire. He'll say I overheated it. A finalist who damages his own furnace on practice night gets nothing.”

“Then we get another furnace,” Sima Lan said, reluctant to leave him with the damaged one.

“Which will be worse,” Shi Feng replied. “And this proof will go back in the rack.”

Sima Lan looked at him. Her eyes were very clear.

“You want to let it break,” Sima Lan said.

“It's going to break either way,” Shi Feng said. “I'd rather it broke where Assessor Wen Lu can see. In front of three hundred people.”

“That’s a very bad plan,” Sima Lan said, worried by where it would leave his hand.

“It’s the only one with a witness,” Shi Feng replied.

Sima Lan said nothing for a moment. Then she stood, brushed off her knees, and took out her chalk.

“Furnace, one,” Sima Lan said, writing in the ledger. “Defective. Provided by the tower. Estimated loss to the finalist, one pill, a possible Mark, and a hand. I'll leave the number blank.”

She chalked a first stroke on the plaster by the door as well: a second tally wall, copied from the one outside hut nine.

“Why a hand?” Shi Feng asked, looking at the unfinished charge.

“Because you're going to put it in the fire,” Sima Lan said.

When she'd gone to her room, Shi Feng sat alone with the furnace.

He didn't try to mend the crack with ordinary fire. Ordinary fire would only worry it. He closed his eyes and called up the Thousand Forge Flame Art, which Li Changyuan had once called twenty years in his sleeve.

It was a refining art. It was made to join iron, not just to burn it. He had held it at Entry for a month.

He fed the flame into the left wall slowly, a thread at a time. He laid it along the crack the way a smith lays a stitch. The red line brightened, then dimmed. The iron groaned. For an hour he felt the heat settle into the fault, finding its edges, learning where it ended.

Near midnight, the thread of flame bent.

It didn't break. It lay down along the crack by itself, like water finding a groove, and held there with no more effort than breath. The furnace's wall stopped ticking.

He could hold the joined edges without forcing the flame back each breath. The Thousand Forge Flame Art had reached Minor Success.

He opened his eyes. The crack was still there, but it had changed. For now, the flame held its edges together.

He could close it for an hour, perhaps two. After that, it would open anyway.

“That'll do,” Shi Feng said, to the dark.