Chapter 394 — The Price of Unknown

CHAPTER 394

The Price of Unknown

The cry that Shi Feng was a liar rang out across the street.

The shout came from the teahouse across from the stall. Shi Feng was setting out the morning's bottles when it rang over the street, and he heard it only because the speaker wanted the whole street to hear it.

A young scholar in a good blue robe stood on a bench, waving a copy of the Register. The teahouse behind him was full. Men sat on the floor, on the stairs, and on each other's feet.

The scholar brandished the line about the unknown foundation grade. He accused the Pavilion of shielding a fraud: anyone worth grading would have submitted to it, he insisted. He stamped on the bench to drive home his claim that the title was an empty boast.

“Now he's a boast,” Sima Lan said, arranging labels. “Yesterday he was a miracle. By lunch, I expect he'll be a fraud.”

“And after lunch?” Shi Feng asked.

“A saint,” Sima Lan said. “That is always the last stage.”

In the teahouse, somebody else stood up. It was a man with a thin white beard and an ink-stained cuff, and he walked to the bench with great dignity and stood beside the scholar, so close that the scholar leaned away.

Shi Feng recognized Master Ruan.

“I have refined for fifty years, and I have eaten more salt than you have eaten rice,” Master Ruan said. His voice was slow and dry. “I sat in the Duanyang tower hall, and I watched the boy refine five clouds at the final. I went home and I did not sleep. Young man, ‘unknown’ is not a hiding place. It is what the Pavilion's jade writes when it does not know a word.”

The scholar blurted out that this was absurd, then hesitated under Master Ruan's stare.

“I thought so too,” Master Ruan said. “For about forty years. About everything.”

The room laughed, then thought about it, then fell quiet.

At the stall, Zhu Liu looked up from his receipts.

“Senior Brother Shi,” Zhu Liu said. “The old man is defending you.”

“Master Ruan was in the hall,” Shi Feng said. “He's saying what he saw.”

“It's still a very good defence,” Zhu Liu said, craning past the queue to listen.

“It's free,” Sima Lan said. “I'd have charged.”

A queue had already formed. It had formed before dawn, when Shi Feng was still washing, and it now wound along the pavement and around the corner, past the tower steps and back again. Merchants stood in it, and mercenaries, and a few small officials in plain robes. A cook's apprentice held a jar of copper coins in both arms. Behind him stood a tall man in a hunter's coat with a scar through his eyebrow.

“Bo Ge,” Shi Feng said.

“Brother Shi!” Bo Ge called, beaming. “I told everyone. I told them all! Twelve years the bone was stuck, and one pill, and look at me. I climbed a tree this morning. For no reason! I just wanted to.”

“Clear Marrow Pill,” Shi Feng said. “Ninety-six stones.”

Bo Ge's smile froze.

“Ninety-six?” Bo Ge said. “It was twenty-four!”

“Yesterday it was twenty-four,” Sima Lan said, without looking up. “Last night he said triple. That is seventy-two. I considered it, consulted the market, and raised it.”

“I said triple,” Shi Feng said.

“You said triple,” Sima Lan agreed. “I said the market. They are different words.”

“What did the market say?” Shi Feng asked, reaching for the next bottle.

“It said, ‘We saw him on the Register. We'd pay more,’” Sima Lan replied, tapping her slate. “Ninety-six. There's a second line: a name fee for the second-ranked, fifteen. Total one hundred and eleven.”

“A name fee?” Shi Feng said.

“Fifteen,” Sima Lan said. “I rounded down from twenty, for friends.”

Bo Ge's face passed through three expressions. Then, to Shi Feng's surprise, he started laughing, loudly, and dug into his purse.

“Brother Shi! For a hundred and eleven, I'd climb the tree twice!” Bo Ge declared. He counted out the stones one by one. “I'd have paid a hundred and twenty!”

Sima Lan's chalk moved.

“Noted,” Sima Lan said. “Next time, a hundred and twenty.”

“Next time?” Bo Ge said.

“Next time,” Sima Lan said, with a perfectly straight face.

By midday the stall had sold thirty pills. The queue only grew longer. People who could not afford the price came anyway, simply to stand near the pavement where the second name on the list was selling medicine. A few asked him to sign their pill jars. A girl asked if she could touch the grey Sword.

“Don't touch the Sword,” Shi Feng said.

The girl hastily drew her hand back and praised the Sword, her eyes fixed on the dull edge.

“It bites,” Shi Feng said. “I'm told.”

She withdrew her hand at once.

Zhu Liu counted the stones as they came in, and by the afternoon his hands had begun to shake. The pile on the table no longer looked like pocket money. It looked like a small wall.

“Three thousand three hundred and thirty stones,” Zhu Liu whispered. “In half a day. That's nearly five times what the Gathering lost us.”

“Mm,” Sima Lan said.

“And the teahouse across the road has opened a book,” Zhu Liu added. “I heard it from the apprentice. It's not about the list.”

Sima Lan looked up.

“What is it about?” Shi Feng asked.

“Whether Martial Palace declares war before the autumn,” Zhu Liu said. “They're offering three to one.”

Sima Lan's chalk stopped.

“Which side?” Sima Lan asked.

“That they do,” Zhu Liu said.