Chapter 427 — Captain Xue Mang, Indentured

CHAPTER 427

Captain Xue Mang, Indentured

“Pick it up,” Shi Feng said.

Captain Xue Mang looked at the cauldron. It was a bronze monster, four hundred catties of Valley craftsmanship, with three legs as thick as a man's thigh and a rim wide enough to bathe in. It had been used to boil the antidote, and it still stood where the great furnace had left it, black with soot.

“Pick it up,” Xue Mang repeated.

“Carry it to the south court. Eight cauldrons today, nine tomorrow,” Shi Feng instructed, standing in the furnace-house door with his right arm in a sling and the paper in his left. “It's in clause four.”

Xue Mang was a big man with a scarred jaw and a red lotus tattooed on his neck. A week ago he had been a Golden Core captain of the Blood Lotus Sect, and the sort of man who said “Do you know who I am?” in a loud voice. Now he wore a grey Valley servant's apron over his armour, with a number pinned to the back.

He bent his knees and lifted the cauldron.

It left the floor. Xue Mang's face went purple. Valley disciples crowded the courtyard wall, whispering, but not one of them offered to help.

“A Golden Core captain,” a disciple whispered, “carrying a pot!”

“That's the one who burned the terraces!”

“Look at him sweat!”

“A week ago he was going to kill us all...”

“And now he's wearing a number!” “A tiger fallen onto the plain is bullied by dogs!”

Xue Mang did not hear them. He staggered across the yard with the cauldron held against his chest. At the gate of the south court he set it down gently, so gently that it didn't make a sound, and stood panting.

Sima Lan, who had followed with the ledger, ticked a line.

“One,” Sima Lan said. “Seven to go.”

It had taken two hours to arrange. When Hong Jue withdrew over the hills, he took his people and left his captain on the field. Xue Mang had been taken again at the Heart Garden gate, and this time nobody had come to pay the ransom.

“The ransom is still owed,” Shi Feng had told him. “The first was paid. The second and the third are on your note, and the Lotus won't pay them.”

“Then ask them for the rest!” Xue Mang had said.

“I did,” Shi Feng replied. “Sect Master Hong Jue left you here and retreated.”

Xue Mang had gone very quiet. Then he said what he'd been thinking: that the Blood Lotus did not forgive failure, and that when the river was crossed, the bridge was torn down. That a captain who lost his ring and gave away a map to the enemy did not go home to a banquet.

“Then you've got two choices,” Shi Feng said. “The Valley's law says a raider hangs.”

“And the other?” Xue Mang asked, desperate for an alternative.

“Indenture,” Shi Feng offered. “Seven stones a day against the debt. Meals included. You'll carry cauldrons.”

“Cauldrons?” Xue Mang repeated, scarcely believing him.

“The Valley's alchemists have thirty-one,” Shi Feng explained. “Somebody needs to move them.”

The silence had lasted a long time. And then Xue Mang had gone down on one knee in the courtyard of the furnace house, with his scarred jaw trembling, and bowed his head.

“I'll carry them. Thank you,” Xue Mang said clearly.

Ling Qingzhu watched it from the gallery above the courtyard.

She had come to find Shi Feng about item three. Instead she'd found a Golden Core captain hauling a bronze pot across the Valley, and Shi Feng standing in the doorway below, calmly supervising the work he'd arranged.

The cauldron went by again. Xue Mang's chest heaved.

“Thank you, young master,” Xue Mang gasped, as he passed. “Lunch was very good.”

“Rice and pork,” Shi Feng said. “Eat the greens.”

“I will!” Xue Mang promised breathlessly.

“And put the pot down gently. It's the Valley's,” Shi Feng warned.

“Yes, young master!” Xue Mang replied, slowing his steps.

Ling Qingzhu's veil hid her mouth, but not her eyes.

She came down the stairs. Shi Feng did not turn his head, but he straightened when he heard her steps.

“He thanked you,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“He did,” Shi Feng confirmed, watching Xue Mang cross the yard.

“He burned the east terraces. His sect fed poison to my mother's garden,” Ling Qingzhu said, stopping a pace from him. “And he's thanking you for carrying a pot.” She looked toward the courtyard. “Why?”

“The Blood Lotus will kill him,” Shi Feng said. “The Valley would hang him. This is a third road. It has meals.”

“It has cauldrons,” Ling Qingzhu pointed out.

“It has meals,” Shi Feng said again.

“And a ledger,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Of every day he owes. In your own hand.”

“Sima Lan's hand,” Shi Feng corrected her.

“Mm,” Ling Qingzhu murmured, pausing to think. “Do you know what you did? A year ago you'd have taken the ring and let him go. Or left him in the dirt. Instead you've turned your enemy into a debtor, and your debtor into someone who is grateful. Do you realise how few people can do that?”

“It was only an invoice,” Shi Feng said, amused by how seriously she was considering it.

“You're so serious about it,” Ling Qingzhu replied, turning toward him. For the first time in months, she was smiling, a little, behind the veil. “You've become your own man, Shi Feng.”

He waited.

“I'm just not sure,” Ling Qingzhu said slowly, “whose.”

He did not answer.

The answer was a long list. It had Lin Langtian in it, and Sima Lan, and Li Changyuan with a broom, and a rude voice in a ring, and a few things of his own. He wouldn't explain all those influences while Xue Mang struggled past them with another cauldron.

“Sir,” Xue Mang wheezed, setting down the sixth pot at the gate. “Is the next one the last?”

“Two more,” Shi Feng said, and went on watching Ling Qingzhu's ears.