Chapter 395 — The Postscript

CHAPTER 395

The Postscript

“Four thousand,” Li Changyuan said.

The old man sat on his cot with the broom across his knees and a cup of cold tea in his hand. His hut was the size of a tool closet, and today it held six people. Elder Tian Luo stood by the window. Elder Qian Mo had squeezed himself against the wall with his abacus, which he had not been asked to bring. Sima Lan sat on an upturned bucket with her slate. Shi Feng stood beside the door.

Across from Li Changyuan, a young woman in a blue Valley sash twisted her hands together.

“Four thousand?” Lin Yue said. “The Valley's offer is fifteen hundred!”

“For a 2 Mark alchemist,” Li Changyuan said. “Second on the Register. You'd pay four thousand to see him on a poster.”

“He's not a poster!” Lin Yue protested, almost rising from her seat.

“Then he costs more. A good horse needs a good saddle,” Li Changyuan said.

Elder Tian Luo cleared his throat. He held the Valley's formal letter, a square of thick cream paper under three seals, and read the middle of it aloud for the second time.

“‘Hundred Flower Valley requests an alchemist of Artificer Hall,’” Tian Luo read. “‘The Withering has reached the Heart Garden.’”

The room went quiet.

“What is the Heart Garden?” Sima Lan asked.

“The Valley's root garden,” Tian Luo said. “Every flower in the Valley grows from its seed beds. If the Withering is in the beds, the Valley has no spring.”

“And the Withering?” Sima Lan asked, her chalk still poised above the slate.

“A blight that has been going through the outer slopes since the winter,” Qian Mo said from the wall. He had read the reports. “The Valley said it was nothing. Now it's in the Heart Garden. That's not nothing. When the lips are gone, the teeth feel cold.”

“Who signed the letter?” Shi Feng asked.

Lin Yue jumped. She had not expected him to speak.

“Valley Master Mu Shuyun,” Lin Yue said. “With the elders' seals. We... I'm not allowed to say more. The Valley will explain everything when the alchemist arrives. Please, Senior Brother Shi. The letter is the official request.”

“I see,” Shi Feng said.

He glanced at Li Changyuan. The old man was not looking at him. He was looking at Qian Mo's abacus with open dislike.

“Four thousand for the alchemist,” Li Changyuan said. “And his meals.”

“Meals,” Qian Mo said. His beads were moving.

“And the ox,” Li Changyuan added, before Qian Mo could finish counting the meals.

“There's no ox,” Lin Yue said.

“There will be an ox,” Li Changyuan said, “and it will be a very expensive ox.”

Lin Yue's hand brushed Shi Feng's sleeve.

It was a quick, careless movement, as if she had stumbled. Something small and folded slid into his fingers. He closed his hand around it before the paper could crackle.

“I'm so sorry,” Lin Yue said, red to the ears. “It's crowded.”

“It is,” Shi Feng said.

He did not read it in the room. Sima Lan sat close enough to see the folded paper if he opened it. She glanced toward his hand before returning to her slate. He kept the paper closed in his fingers. Instead, he told Tian Luo he would wait outside, and stepped through the door into the evening.

The slip was the size of a pill label. It was written in tiny, tilted brush strokes, cramped along the folds. Su Wanning had squeezed the last words against the edge rather than begin a fresh sheet.

Shi Feng! This is NOT the official letter, the official letter is the boring one!!! Big Sis Qingzhu would never ask. You know how she is. She's sick. Don't tell her I wrote.

Su Wanning

(Burn this.)

He read it once. Then he read it a second time, and then a third, though the words didn't change.

The evening air was cool. A few outer-court juniors passed on the path, carrying buckets, and they bowed to the second name on the Register and went on. A sparrow hopped along the roof of Li Changyuan's hut.

Shi Feng thought about the lakeshore.

He thought about three torn nails and a slab that wouldn't move. He thought about a woman who sat down hard in the glass and held her hands against her chest, and who had told the only man who'd found her not to tell anyone. She had hidden it from the dead man. She would certainly hide it from a living one.

She's sick, he thought. And she wouldn't ask.

He folded the slip along its creases and put it in the sleeve beside the violet purse string. He did not burn it.

When he turned back to the door, Sima Lan was standing in it.

She looked at his sleeve, then at his face. He tucked his hand away from the folded paper. She asked nothing about it, only closed her slate with a snap.

“The Valley pays the road,” Sima Lan said. “Herb case, three changes of robes, the account book. The stall can't close, so I'll hold it.”

“I haven't agreed,” Shi Feng said. He still held the door open behind her.

“You are standing like a man who has agreed,” Sima Lan said. “I'll pack the herb case. You pack the rest.”

She went inside. He walked to hut nine.

Behind him, in the cramped little room, Li Changyuan was still working through the list.

“...and meals, and the ox, and a surcharge for dead ancestors, and a surcharge for the weather,” Li Changyuan said. “So that comes to, let me see, four thousand and... where's he going?”

“Hut nine,” Sima Lan said.

“He hasn't heard the fee!” Li Changyuan called after him, his cup halted halfway to his mouth.

“He hasn't asked,” Sima Lan said.

Qian Mo's abacus went still.

“Then we've been underpricing him,” Qian Mo said.

By the time Li Changyuan reached the final number, Shi Feng's bag was already packed.