Chapter 426 — The Storeroom

CHAPTER 426

The Storeroom

“Junior Brother,” Lin Langtian said, “the Valley needs you.”

He had said it three times that afternoon, each time in a different corridor. Now he had Shi Feng by the good elbow, and he was steering him along the back path toward the rare-herb storeroom with the cheerful speed of a man who had planned something.

“I'm told it's an inventory,” Shi Feng said.

“A vital one! The south shelf is a disaster! The labels are all wrong! Elder Yun asked for an alchemist and a herb-reader, and who else is there? You, and—” Lin Langtian paused, looked at the sky as if the thought had just arrived, and exclaimed, “Oh! Look! Ling Qingzhu is here too! What an accident!”

Ling Qingzhu stood at the storeroom door with a lantern. She wore her veil. Her face behind it said clearly that she had not been told about any accident.

“You asked me to come,” Ling Qingzhu said, “for a herb count.”

“Yes!” Lin Langtian answered brightly.

“With him,” Ling Qingzhu repeated, looking at Shi Feng.

“Yes!” Lin Langtian answered brightly.

“Why isn't the keeper here?” Ling Qingzhu asked suspiciously.

“She's resting!” Lin Langtian said. “Overworked! Poor woman! She gave me the key herself!”

He held up an iron key, pushed them both through the open door and closed it behind them. The lock clicked. Lin Langtian hurried down the path, plainly eager to leave before they could stop him.

Silence.

Shi Feng looked at the shelves. They went up to the ceiling, four hundred jars at least, in the thin gold of Ling Qingzhu's lantern.

“That was the clumsiest thing I've seen him do,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“He did warn me,” Shi Feng replied. “He said he wanted to teach me something. I should've asked what he was planning.”

“By locking us in a storeroom?” Ling Qingzhu asked, annoyed by the obvious trick.

“This is a stupid lock,” Shi Feng said. He looked at it. It was a Foundation Establishment-grade latch, and it was held by an iron bar he could have cut with his left hand.

“I could open it with a hairpin,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“I know,” Shi Feng replied, making no move toward the latch.

“It's a good hairpin,” Ling Qingzhu added, touching her hair.

“I know,” Shi Feng replied, making no move toward the latch.

“I wouldn't want to scratch it,” Ling Qingzhu said, lowering her hand.

“No,” Shi Feng said.

They did not move toward the door. The lantern burned on the floor between them. Neither one mentioned that.

“Well,” Ling Qingzhu said, after a moment. “We're locked in with four hundred jars. We might as well count them.”

They counted them.

She read the labels aloud. He lifted each jar, smelled it, held it up to the lantern and told her what it was. It was not fast work. He had one working arm, and she kept stopping him when he reached for a high jar.

“Don't taste anything,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“I wasn't going to,” Shi Feng replied, setting the jar back.

“You were thinking about it,” Ling Qingzhu accused him.

“I was thinking about the stomachache,” Shi Feng corrected her.

“Which one?” Ling Qingzhu asked, remembering how often he'd eaten something he shouldn't.

“The next one,” Shi Feng said.

She laughed. It slipped out of her before she could catch it, and she turned toward the shelf to hide it. Her shoulders were shaking. He pretended to check a jar.

By the middle of the night they had found five. By the fourth watch there were eleven.

“Moonbell, labelled grey moss,” Ling Qingzhu said, writing. “Frost orchid root, labelled snow silkvine. This one's marked 'red ginseng,' and it's dyed bark. Eleven in all.” She sat back on her heels. Her hair was coming loose at the back of her neck. “They copied the labels in the dark during the worst of the Withering. I told you.”

“Some of these would've killed someone,” Shi Feng said, checking the jars again.

“Three of them,” Ling Qingzhu said. “If anyone had made a tonic from the wrong jar.”

The lantern was low. Neither of them mentioned that either. Ling Qingzhu leaned against the shelf. Her head tipped back against the wood.

“I used to count these with my mother,” Ling Qingzhu murmured, her eyes half closed.

Shi Feng said nothing. He sat across from her and kept his hands on the ledger.

“She said you could tell a person by how they handled a jar,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Whether they hurried, or whether they asked it first.”

“Did I ask?” Shi Feng asked softly.

“You smelled it. That's asking,” Ling Qingzhu answered, too sleepy to tease him.

She did not say anything else. In a little while her breathing slowed. He watched the lantern, and wrote the eleventh correction in the book with his left hand. He did not close it until the oil ran out.

Dawn came through the paper window in a thin grey line. The lock clicked.

Lin Langtian stood at the door with a hopeful face and a stack of pastries. Behind him stood Su Wanning, who had come to watch, and behind her Mu Shuyun, in the green robe, with two elders and the keeper of the storeroom.

“Well?” Lin Langtian whispered. “Anything happen?”

Ling Qingzhu held up the inventory list.

“Eleven mislabelled herbs,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Three poisonous. The south shelf has been wrong since winter.”

“Also,” Shi Feng said, and held up a second sheet with his left hand. “A bill.”

“A bill,” Lin Langtian said.

“Unlawful confinement of two Golden Core cultivators, one night,” Shi Feng read. “One lantern, oil. One professional inventory, two persons, Artificer Hall rate. Total: nine hundred stones.” Shi Feng handed it over. “Addressed to you.”

The elders took it from Lin Langtian's shaking fingers. They read it. Then Elder Yun read it aloud, from the top, to the whole path.

“The Valley will see that this is paid,” Mu Shuyun said.

“It was ROMANTIC!” Lin Langtian cried. “It was supposed to be romantic! I was killing two birds with one stone! I'm a matchmaker! You didn't even—”

“Nine hundred,” Mu Shuyun said, and the elders closed around him.

Su Wanning had her hands over her mouth. Ling Qingzhu walked past all of them with the list, her head high, and her ears bright red.