Chapter 441 — One of a Kind

CHAPTER 441

One of a Kind

Zhu Liu coughed as if he meant to turn himself inside out.

Sima Lan struck him between the shoulders with her slate. Zhu Liu coughed harder. A warden started down the aisle, and Gongsun Ce, from the row behind, offered a cup of tea that Zhu Liu waved away with both hands.

“Candidate Shi Feng,” Hui Cang called. “Second on the Rising Dragon Register. A 2 Mark of the Sky Pavilion.” He spread his hands to the hall, and his smile was thin with hope. “In your professional opinion, what is this lot?”

Shi Feng stood up.

He stood slowly, using the pause to choose his answer. Lin Langtian had taught him not to rush just because a room was waiting. Rushing now would make it much easier to say something stupid.

Shi Feng thought, If I say slag, Hui Cang is finished. The Pavilion's catalogue becomes a lie in front of six hundred buyers, and Martial Palace saves sixty thousand. He didn't mind the second part. The first was only a stranger's trouble.

If I say ancient, that's a lie. He never lied about pills. Lin Langtian had taught him plenty of other lies, but not that one.

So he needed a true sentence.

He looked at the black lump on its grey silk. He remembered the outer-court forge, the dust in the crucible, the seventh stroke that landed without a pause. He remembered the Ledger drawing back from it.

“It's one of a kind,” Shi Feng said. “I've never seen anyone else make one.”

Nobody breathed.

Then the hall erupted.

“Never seen anyone else make one!”

“The champion said so!”

“He's a 2 Mark, he'd know!”

“So no one can make it now. It really is from the Lost Era!”

“I said so,” the merchant in the third row crowed. “I said ancient pills are different! Who laughed? Who laughed at me?”

Ji Xuan sat in the Martial Palace's section with his mouth open. His friend from the Iron Fist Gate nudged him. He did not answer.

Ji Xuan had no reply.

Beside Shi Feng, Lin Langtian had put his sweet potato down.

“Lesson twenty,” Lin Langtian said, very softly and with deep satisfaction. “The truth, delivered slowly, is the best lie there is. I'm so proud of you I might cry. Don't tell the potato.”

“It's the exact truth,” Shi Feng said quietly.

“Yes, and listen to what they've decided it means,” Lin Langtian replied, delighted. “You didn't have to add a word.”

Zhu Liu had finally stopped coughing. His eyes were streaming, and he clutched his receipt book to his chest with both arms.

Hui Cang had straightened. Colour was flowing back into his face.

“Then the Pavilion thanks you,” Hui Cang said, and bowed to Shi Feng from the dais. It was a deep, grateful bow. “The bidding stands at sixty thousand. Do I hear more?”

“Sixty-five,” Mu Shuyun said.

Wei Chengyuan did not even look at the lump now. He looked at Shi Feng.

It was a long look. The old man's face held nothing at all, and that was worse than any scowl. Shi Feng met it and said nothing.

“Seventy,” Wei Chengyuan said.

“Seventy-five,” Mu Shuyun said.

“Eighty!” Wei Chengyuan called.

“Eighty-five,” Mu Shuyun replied.

“A hundred,” Wei Chengyuan said, and a ripple of shocked laughter ran through the hall, since nobody had ever said it in this room. The merchants shouted. A warden had to stamp his staff three times.

“A hundred and ten,” said Mu Shuyun, in her calm sickroom voice.

“A hundred and twenty!” Wei Chengyuan shouted.

“A hundred and thirty,” Mu Shuyun said.

Shi Feng sat down slowly. He felt no triumph. The lump was still a lump.

They aren't buying a pill, he thought. They're buying the right to walk out of this hall last.

“A hundred and forty!” Wei Chengyuan called.

“A hundred and fifty,” Mu Shuyun replied.

“A hundred and sixty, a hundred and seventy!” Wei Chengyuan said, so fast it came out as one word. His stick shook in his hand.

Up in the red box, Peng Yan, the treasurer, had stopped moving his abacus. His mouth was open a little. The beads were slack between his fingers, and his face was the colour of old paper.

“Peng Yan is doing the sum,” Sima Lan whispered.

“How do you know?” Shi Feng asked.

“Look at his hands,” Sima Lan said. “He hasn't moved a bead since the last bid. He knows what this is going to do to their treasury.”

Mu Shuyun sat very still in the green box. She looked at Wei Chengyuan for a long moment. Her face held no malice, and no pity either. She lifted one finger.

“One hundred and seventy-five thousand,” Mu Shuyun said.

The hall made no sound at all.

Wei Chengyuan rose from his seat. For an instant Shi Feng thought the old man might break his stick across his knee. Then the grey figure drew a long breath, and Wei Chengyuan said, in an iron-flat voice, “One hundred and eighty thousand.”

Mu Shuyun lowered her hand. She inclined her head to the red box, a small, perfect bow of respect.

“The Valley yields,” Mu Shuyun said, “to the Martial Palace.”

“One hundred and eighty thousand,” Hui Cang said, trembling. “Going once. Twice.”

The hammer fell.

Then everybody started talking at once.

“A hundred and eighty thousand! For a lump!”

“Sixty times the first bid!”

“The war chest—”

“Quiet!”

Sima Lan had written the final number at the bottom of her slate and drawn two lines under it. Beside it, in her small neat hand, she had written another figure, and divided one by the other.

“Seventy-five,” Sima Lan said. “Seventy-five of the Hall's coal debts, and a little left over for tea.”

“Zhu Liu sold it for one copper,” Shi Feng said.

“I know,” Sima Lan said. “I've read his receipt book.” She regarded the slate with numb respect. “He has lifted a rock only to drop it on his own feet. Wei Chengyuan's treasury will remember this night as long as there is a war.”

Up in the red box, a pair of attendants were helping the treasurer to a chair. Wei Chengyuan had already sat down. He looked furious, and the attendants were careful not to meet his eyes. A warden carried the black lacquer tray up the steps to him, and Wei Chengyuan lifted the lump between thumb and finger and turned it to the light.

“Who made it?” Wei Chengyuan asked Hui Cang, down the length of the hall.

Hui Cang spread his hands.

“Unknown, Elder,” Hui Cang said. “It came without a name.”

Wei Chengyuan said nothing further. He closed his hand around the lump.

Down in the fourth row, a Pavilion runner pushed through the standing crowd and handed Shi Feng a slip of white paper. It was brief. The 1 Mark practical for the six students of Artificer Hall would begin at dawn.

He read it twice.

Six students were going to walk into a hall alone tomorrow. Shi Feng found, somewhat to his surprise, that this worried him more than the lump.