Chapter 443 — The Honest Pill

CHAPTER 443

The Honest Pill

“It's cracked!” Zhu Liu yelped. “It's open! There's smoke!”

Shi Feng was already on his feet. The guard's halberd came across the door again, and he stopped with the point an inch from his ribs.

The guard repeated the candidates-only rule without moving the halberd.

“I know,” Shi Feng said. “I'm standing very still.”

Inside the hall, a bell rang three times. A man shouted for the fire to be pulled, and a dozen voices answered at once. Then the noise dropped, and a long silence followed that made Zhu Liu's breathing sound very loud.

“What's happening?” Sima Lan asked.

“I can't see!” Zhu Liu said. “Ma Liang's standing up. He's, he's put his hands over the furnace. Is he allowed to do that?”

“He will burn his hands doing that,” Gongsun Ce muttered, straining to see through the gap.

Then the doors opened from the inside.

A Pavilion clerk announced the results session and admitted the spectators behind the marked line. He warned them to keep quiet. There would be no betting or weeping in the examination hall.

The six students stood in a row before the examiner's table, each with a white tray in front of him. Jiao Rong sat behind the table with a pale lamp at his elbow. The Pavilion's judging lamp turned a true pill's glow into a cloud above the tray. A pill with no glow was a pill with nothing in it.

Shi Feng stood behind the line, between Sima Lan and a very pale Zhu Liu. The crowd filled the hall behind them. Ji Xuan stood with his arms folded.

“Candidate Fan Dacheng,” Jiao Rong said. “Your pill.”

Fan Dacheng set a grey pill on the tray. Jiao Rong lit the lamp, and a thin cloud rose above it, ragged at the edges.

“One cloud,” Jiao Rong said. “State its quality.”

“One thin cloud, sir,” Fan Dacheng said. His voice cracked. “Ragged on the left. It's a low pass. I over-fed the fire at the sixth herb, and the edge is, um, burnt.”

Jiao Rong's brush stopped.

“You volunteer the fault?” Jiao Rong asked, looking up from the register.

“Senior Brother Shi said to report what it is,” Fan Dacheng said. “Sir.”

“Pass,” Jiao Rong said, a little sourly. “Next.”

Tao Shun passed with a cloud he described as “smaller than a steamed bun”. Geng Xiaoyu passed and apologised to her pill. Shen Pu passed, and Shen Pu's count turned out to be the number of herbs he'd checked, which was forty-one. Yu Tie passed with a cloud so even that people at the back said “Oh,” out loud. “It's fine,” Yu Tie said, then turned red again.

Four passes. Then five.

“Five out of six,” a voice whispered in the crowd.

“Everyone passes five of six. It's the sixth that matters.”

“Candidate Ma Liang,” Jiao Rong said.

Ma Liang stepped forward. His robe was scorched at the cuff and he'd lost an eyebrow. In both hands he held a tray, and on the tray lay something small and black that didn't look like a pill at all. The smell reached the third row. People pinched their noses.

Jiao Rong lit the lamp.

Nothing rose. The black lump sat in the light like a stone.

“No cloud,” Jiao Rong said. He did not hide his pleasure. “State its quality, candidate.”

“It's a failed pill,” Ma Liang said.

The hall went quiet.

“My furnace cracked at the lid in the last stage,” Ma Liang explained, frightened enough to rush the words. “The fire got out and the qi leaked, and I tried to hold it, but the herbs had already, um, turned. It has no cloud. It's a waste pill. I think it's poison. If someone ate it, they'd be sick, so please don't let anyone eat it. I'm very sorry. I'm sorry about the furnace, too. It's the Hall's. It was borrowed.”

“So you fail,” Jiao Rong said.

“Yes, sir,” Ma Liang said. “I know.”

He bowed to the examiner, bowed to the lamp, and began to lift his tray to take it away. Jiao Rong's brush hovered above the register. For a moment he looked as if he were enjoying himself very much.

Then he looked down at the scroll beside his elbow, and his mouth turned thin.

“Wait,” Jiao Rong said.

“Sir?” Ma Liang asked, stopping with the tray half lifted.

“Examiners' Rule Nine,” Jiao Rong said reluctantly. He unrolled the scroll with two fingers and read in a flat voice. “‘A candidate who names his own failed work, exactly and unprompted, shall be passed on character. An alchemist who cannot name his own failure cannot be trusted with another man's life.’”

“What?” Gongsun Ce whispered.

“It's a Pavilion rule,” Sima Lan said, very quietly. “It's never published. I looked it up this morning, in the tower library.” She paused. “It cost a stone.”

“Candidate Ma Liang,” Jiao Rong said, in the voice of a man swallowing a bitter herb, “passes the First Mark examination on character.”

Ma Liang stood perfectly still.

“Sorry?” Ma Liang said.

“You pass,” Jiao Rong repeated impatiently.

“But the pill failed,” Ma Liang said, bewildered. “I told you it failed.”

“I know it failed. I'm the examiner. Take your tray,” Jiao Rong snapped, stamping the register with an enormous thump. “Six candidates, six passes. Get out.”

“His furnace cracked and his pill failed, and he passed! A blessing in disguise!” someone cried from the crowd. Ma Liang burst into tears and bowed eleven times. Fan Dacheng picked him up by the back of the robe and carried him out.

On the tower steps afterwards, Ji Xuan cleared his throat.

“The coach feeds the students,” Ji Xuan said, very stiffly. “I mean, the Hall teaches them how to pass.” He stopped. “Slowly.”

His friend murmured agreement, looking almost as embarrassed as Ji Xuan.

“Yes. That's what I said,” Ji Xuan insisted.

“It isn't,” Sima Lan said, not looking up from her slate.

Ji Xuan left.

Gongsun Ce was sitting on the bottom step, holding an enormous purse. He clutched the purse miserably.

“Sima Lan,” Gongsun Ce said. “You staked thirty. At twelve to one.”

“Three hundred and sixty, plus the stake,” Sima Lan said. “Zhu Liu thirty, at the same odds.”

“I did allow for one failure,” Gongsun Ce admitted unhappily. “Ma Liang nearly provided it.”

“His pill failed. He passed,” Sima Lan replied, turning the written terms toward him. “You opened a pool on the candidates passing, not on six perfect pills.”

Gongsun Ce read his own clause three times, looking for a gap. Then he counted out seven hundred and eighty stones one at a time. His unhappiness grew with each little pile, but he paid the full amount.

“This does not count,” Gongsun Ce said.

“It's already counted,” Sima Lan said. She wrote it down.

Shi Feng took a bun from the packet and ate it. It had gone cold.

“Candidate Shi Feng,” Jiao Rong called.

Jiao Rong stood at the top of the steps with the scroll in his hand. He didn't look beaten, only like a man who had decided to be more careful next time.

“Tomorrow,” Jiao Rong said. “The Refiner's hall. First Mark. The same examiner.” He rolled the scroll tight. “I have read all of the rules.”