Chapter 421 — The Itemised Invoice

CHAPTER 421

The Itemised Invoice

“Item one,” Sima Lan read. “Alchemist's fee, as agreed by contract. Four thousand stones.”

The Hall of Fragrant Light was full. For the honours ceremony, the Valley had cut the first flowers from the Heart Garden in two months, and peonies stood in jars along every wall. Valley Master Mu Shuyun sat at the head of the hall in a pale green robe. She sat very straight, and a month of sickbed was still in her face. Her six elders flanked her. Two hundred disciples stood in rows below.

One chair at the end of the left row was empty. Nobody looked at it, but everybody knew whose it was.

Shi Feng stood in the middle of the floor with his right arm in a grey sling, burned from the wrist to the elbow. Sima Lan stood one pace behind him, holding a scroll almost as long as her forearm.

“An invoice?” someone whispered in the back rows. “At the honours ceremony?”

“Hush! The Master asked for it!”

That was true. Mu Shuyun had said it herself that morning: Artificer Hall would name what it was owed, and the Valley would not be shamed twice.

“Item two,” Sima Lan read. “Heart Garden soil and sap, tasted for the diagnosis. Sixty stones.”

An elder interrupted, alarmed by the mention of tasting poisoned soil.

“Shi Feng ate the soil,” Sima Lan said. “It was necessary. Item three. Herbs and furnace fire, three days. Two thousand one hundred.”

The elders nodded slowly. That was fair.

“Item four. Two failed batches,” Sima Lan continued. “Materials, one thousand nine hundred. Consumed on site by the alchemist, in front of the Valley's elders.” She paused. “No charge for the horror.”

Several elders turned red. Everyone remembered the first morning, when Shi Feng had picked up a scorched waste pill and swallowed it while they watched. The disciples who'd only heard the story turned to stare at him.

“Item five,” Sima Lan read. “Array holding, and one Nascent Soul sect master, held at the hills. Chief Disciple Lin Langtian. Five hundred.”

“Barely!” Lin Langtian shouted from a guest bench, one leg stretched across the seat. “Put 'barely'! I want it in writing that I barely held him! It was terrifying!”

One elder pointed out that Lin Langtian hadn't suffered a single injury.

“That is how terrifying it was!” Lin Langtian said. “I was too scared to bleed!”

Mu Shuyun pressed two fingers to her forehead. Sima Lan wrote one word beside item five and went on.

“Item six. Defence of the Heart Garden gate against four Golden Core lieutenants,” Sima Lan read. “One thousand five hundred. Item seven. One sword arm, burned. Repair, five hundred and forty.”

The hall went quiet. Many disciples looked at the grey sling. Some of them had stood behind that gate and seen the flames.

Near the front, in the first row, Ling Qingzhu stood with her white veil tied. She had not moved all morning. At item seven her thumb pressed hard against her sleeve.

Shi Feng saw it. He looked at the floor.

“Total,” Sima Lan said. “Ten thousand six hundred stones.”

“Ten thousand six hundred,” the Valley's treasurer repeated faintly. He was a thin elder with an abacus tucked in his belt, and his face had gone grey.

“That's the contract price and the costs,” Shi Feng said, speaking for the first time. “The Valley doesn't owe anything beyond it.”

“The Valley owes a great deal more than that,” Mu Shuyun said.

Her voice was thin, but the hall heard every word. She stood, and the elders stood with her, and then the disciples. Two hundred people bowed to a man with one working arm.

“Twice the sum,” Mu Shuyun said. “The Valley will pay twice the sum.”

The treasurer nearly dropped his abacus. He protested that, as the saying goes, even a clever housewife can't cook without rice, and that after the Withering only fifteen thousand nine hundred stones remained in the vault. Paying twenty-one thousand two hundred meant finding money the Valley didn't have.

“Then pay what we've got,” Mu Shuyun said, “and the rest by the end of the week.”

“The Master is generous!” the disciples whispered. “A true Valley Master!” “The champion saved the Garden...” “He ate the soil...” “We had eyes and failed to see Mount Tai...”

That evening a Valley steward and two porters counted stones in the guest court. The first fifteen thousand nine hundred came in green Valley bags. Sima Lan checked every bag against her slate and made the porters count twice. They didn't enjoy it.

The remainder came late, after the lamps were lit.

It was one soft pouch, and it hadn't come with the others. Sima Lan carried it into the room herself and set it on the low table. It was made of violet silk and tied with white thread.

“Five thousand three hundred,” Sima Lan said. “The treasurer's note says it arrived by the Valley's own hand.”

“The Valley's bags are green,” Shi Feng said.

“Yes,” Sima Lan said.

He looked at the pouch. Violet silk. He had seen that colour on a violet inner robe, kneeling in glass-fused rubble at Ashen Lake.

His left thumb found the violet purse string at his belt and pressed it flat.

She paid it herself, Shi Feng thought. And she told nobody.

“I can record who paid the balance,” Sima Lan offered, watching his hand at the purse string. “You know where it came from.”

“Don't,” Shi Feng said.

Sima Lan understood that he wanted to keep Ling Qingzhu's payment private. Then she wrote on her slate: Received. Source unrecorded.

“Then the entry ends there,” Sima Lan said, leaving the source blank. She didn't tease him about the pouch.

She left. Shi Feng sat for a long time looking at the pouch before he put it in his ring, beside the blue cloak.