Chapter 391 — The Relics

CHAPTER 391

The Relics

Black cloth hung over the sect gate, and a sign beside it said OFFERINGS AT THE TREASURY WINDOW.

Shi Feng read it from the road, standing in the dust with a borrowed ride behind him and a clean sky in front. He had slept in a cart for a day and a night. His hair still had glass in it.

Inside the main court, nobody was looking at the gate. Two hundred outer-court disciples sat in rows on benches borrowed from the dining hall, and every one of them wore a white band. At the front stood a black-draped dais, a bare wooden coffin and a very small amount of incense.

By the coffin, Li Changyuan was arguing with the carpenter.

“It's empty,” Li Changyuan said. He was in his night sweeper's robe, with the broom over his shoulder. “You're charging me for the air.”

The carpenter patiently pointed out the pine boards, the brass handles and the two coats of finish. An empty box still took work to make.

“Then I'll rent it,” Li Changyuan said.

The carpenter stared at him. Renting a coffin had plainly not occurred to him.

“By the day. Half price. He'll want it back,” Li Changyuan said, tapping the lid. “Nobody buys a good coffin for a boy who isn't in it.”

The carpenter looked at the sect master he did not know was the sect master and decided not to ask what that meant.

Shi Feng walked on, slowly, along the wall.

On the left side of the court a table had been set up under an awning. Behind it sat Zhu Liu, as pale as chalk, with his receipt book open and an abacus beside it. In front of him, a line of juniors waited with their purses out and their eyes red. Many of them were sniffling. Several were reaching for the goods.

A small card stood on the cloth.

RELICS OF THE CHAMPION

Failed pill, batch forty-one (display only, not for consumption): 30 stones

Chalk stub from the Tally Wall: 8

The stool he sat on: 60

Signed receipt: 12

“Take two,” Zhu Liu whispered, wiping his face. “He would have wanted you to. Receipts will be given.”

Wu Qiang was at the front of the line. He was weeping loudly, and he had both hands full of failed pills.

“I owe him my life,” Wu Qiang sobbed. “I'll take all twenty!”

“That's six hundred,” Zhu Liu said.

“Six hundred?” Wu Qiang repeated, looking down at the pills filling both hands.

“It's a limited run,” Zhu Liu said, trembling. “There won't be any more.”

On the dais, Elder Tian Luo had begun the eulogy. He stood with the register in both hands and a voice that carried across the court.

“...a champion of the tournament. A recruit of this sect. Heaven is jealous of talent,” Tian Luo said. “Eleven days ago, he held the exit of the Ashen Lake Realm until the last of his team was out.”

Many of the juniors on the benches began to cry. Qiu Bao, who had mocked the champion for three months before swearing an oath, wept quietly into a sleeve and clutched a stool.

Gongsun Ce stood up in the front row. A white band lay over his grey robe, and one of his puppets sat on the bench beside him wearing a black ribbon.

“I have a statement,” Gongsun Ce said. His voice was rough. “For the record. Whatever the departed owed me, in stones, in wagers or in the usual currency, I write it off. All of it. In public.”

A murmur ran through the court. Gongsun Ce did not sit down.

“Let nobody say I collected from a dead man,” Gongsun Ce said.

Sima Lan was seated beside the table, with a slate on her knee and a piece of chalk in her hand. She had not wept. She had not spoken since the eulogy started. Her face was perfectly composed, exactly like the princess everyone said she had once been.

Shi Feng stopped at the end of the aisle.

For a moment, nobody noticed. Then a laundry girl at the end of the bench looked up, saw the grey figure with glass in its hair, and stopped breathing.

The laundry girl tried to speak and could not get past the first sound.

“Ghost,” someone whispered.

“It's the champion!”

“Shi Feng?”

“It's a ghost, I tell you, it's his ghost!”

“Then why is it carrying a sword?”

“...”

Elder Tian Luo stopped in the middle of a word. The register slid out of his hand, and Zhu Liu's abacus hit the floor with a clatter that rolled all the way across the court. It was a bolt from a clear sky.

Sima Lan's chalk snapped in two.

She looked up. For one breath, her composure was simply gone. Her eyes were fixed on him and her mouth was open, and she sat motionless with the broken chalk in her hand. She looked stunned; even her usual sharp answer failed her.

“You're alive,” Sima Lan said.

Her voice wasn't quite steady. She didn't pretend it was.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

She stood. The slate fell from her knee, and she ignored it. Her gaze moved to the table, to the card, and the stool in Qiu Bao's arms, and she pressed her lips together. When she looked back at Shi Feng, she had managed to straighten her shoulders, though the broken chalk still lay at her feet.

He looked at the card as well.

“The relics,” Shi Feng said. “Who set the prices?”

“I did,” Sima Lan said.

“The stool is sixty,” Shi Feng said, reading the card again.

“It was sixty-five,” Sima Lan said. “I rounded down. You were worth more dead.”

The court was silent. In the quiet, Zhu Liu's voice came out very small.

“Senior Attendant Sima,” Zhu Liu said. “Do I refund them?”