Chapter 405 — Received With Thanks

CHAPTER 405

Received With Thanks

The Blood Lotus paid on the third morning, a full hour before the deadline.

Shi Feng stood at the Valley's outer gate with Sima Lan on his left and Bai Chenxi on his right. Two dozen Valley disciples crowded behind them. Nobody believed the ransom would be paid. A few had bet against it.

The envoy came up the road alone. He wore a plain brown coat and no mask. His hands shook on the reins of a mule. Three heavy sacks hung across its back.

“Three thousand stones,” the envoy said, without getting down. “From the, ah, the Third Banner's friends. Where is the captain?”

“Count first,” Sima Lan said.

The envoy stared at her.

“Put them here and count,” Sima Lan said, offering the tray. “We’ll settle the stones before anyone opens the woodshed.”

He counted. It took a long time because his fingers were wet. Sima Lan watched every stone, and when he finished, she looked at the tray for a moment and then at him.

“Light by eleven,” Sima Lan said.

“What?” the envoy said.

“Eleven missing,” Sima Lan said. “This sack’s been opened. Decide whether you blame a thief or the mule after you make up the shortage.”

The envoy went white and paid the eleven from his own purse.

“The captain,” Shi Feng said, “is in the woodshed.”

Xue Mang limped from the woodshed with his knee still bandaged. Three days on the kindling had left his red robe stained pink and brown. He squinted into the sunlight, then straightened as if his retreat could still be made impressive.

“Hear me, Hundred Flower Valley!” Xue Mang shouted. “You have humiliated a Captain of the Blood Lotus! Three days I ate your cold rice! Three days I slept on your wood! A gentleman's revenge is not too late even after ten years! I swear on my blade, I will return, and I will burn every flower in your garden, and I will—”

“Receipt,” Sima Lan said, and handed it to him.

Xue Mang looked down.

“Received with thanks,” the paper said, in neat black characters. “One captain, returned in serviceable condition. Meals: nine, at four stones each. Lodging: three nights, woodshed. Bandage, two. The Valley regrets that the knee was not covered under the ransom.”

“Meals?” Xue Mang said hoarsely. “You charged me for the rice?”

“It was already in the ransom,” Shi Feng said. “Sima Lan is correcting the paperwork. Mind the knee. It's an old injury now.”

“It's three days old!” Xue Mang cried.

“Then it's very old,” Shi Feng said.

A small sound came from behind him. One of the Valley disciples had started to laugh and been elbowed by another. Bai Chenxi did not look back, but her mouth moved a little at one corner.

Xue Mang tore the receipt in half, threw it on the ground, and left with the envoy at a limp so furious that the mule shied. His voice drifted back down the road for half a li. Most of it was about skulls.

“Very tidy,” Hua Rong said softly from beside Shi Feng. “When many gather firewood, the flame rises high. The Valley is fortunate to have such efficient guests.”

Shi Feng turned. A plump elder in a robe with gold-rimmed sleeves had come up quietly behind the crowd. He had a kind face, a gardener's thick fingers and the warm manner of a man who had never raised his voice in his life. This was Elder Hua Rong, who ran the outer terraces and, according to everyone, had been so very helpful to the Valley this winter.

“Alchemist Shi, you've done the Valley a favour,” Elder Hua Rong said. “May this old man take the stones to the treasury for safekeeping? A heavy burden for a guest.”

“The Valley's repair fund gets all of it,” Shi Feng said. “Less a handling charge of a hundred and forty.”

“A hundred and forty,” Elder Hua Rong said, smiling.

“The Hall's share,” Sima Lan said. “It's in the contract.”

“It's on the receipt,” Bai Chenxi said. “I read it.”

Elder Hua Rong laughed softly and bowed. The sacks went to the repair fund, in front of everyone. He walked back up the path, still smiling.

By afternoon the east terraces were quiet. Shi Feng and Sima Lan walked the burned beds with a flour sieve borrowed from the Valley kitchen and a basket of empty jars the raiders had dropped. Valley herb girls followed at a distance, pretending not to watch.

“Forty-one beds,” Sima Lan said. “Thirty-eight of them are already wilting. The powder was in the soil before the fire reached it.”

“They didn't burn it to hide it,” Shi Feng said. “They burned it to make the Valley look the wrong way.”

He crouched beside the last bed and shook the sieve over a clay jar. Grey dust fell away. Something small and hard stayed in the mesh.

It was a lump of red wax, no bigger than a thumbnail. The edge had been broken from the lip of a jar. One face was flat, and a pattern was pressed into it.

Shi Feng held it up to the sun.

Half a clenched fist. Two thin vertical bars beside it, like the tops of pillars.

Sima Lan went still behind him.

“I've seen this wax,” Sima Lan said, very quietly. “Red, with a gold flake in it. Thirty-one jars, in the Outer Affairs office, behind a gift basket from the Qiao house.”

“Mao Jun's jars,” Shi Feng said.

“Qiao house wax,” Sima Lan said. “Martial Palace's own purse.”

Shi Feng remembered Hua Rong’s offer at the gate and Su Wanning’s account of his sudden helpfulness. The suspicion was stronger now, but still unproven. He thought, A matching seal is evidence of the supply. It doesn’t yet prove who ordered it used.

He wrapped the wax in his handkerchief and slid it into his sleeve.

“We don't say this aloud,” Shi Feng said.

“Obviously,” Sima Lan said. “To whom would we say it?”