Chapter 46 — The First Feast

CHAPTER 46

The First Feast

The carriage rolled into Qingliu Lane long after the lamps should have been put out, and nobody in the lane had gone to bed. Granny Qin’s brazier still glowed opposite the gate. She stood beside it with a sesame cake in each hand, and her nephew Qin Bao stared over her shoulder.

“They’re back! And the husband walked home on his own two feet!”

“Look at his wrist. Did the crown prince bite him?”

“Mosquitoes, you fool! The pond was full of them!”

“Fairy Ling is holding a pot of balm! Fairy Ling!”

“…”

Shi Feng helped Ling Qingzhu down from the carriage. Her fingers left his sleeve at once, and he noticed she did it a little too fast.

“It’s late,” Ling Qingzhu said, a little too briskly. “Shouldn’t all of you be asleep?”

“Late? Young wife, a good cake is never late!” Granny Qin cried, pressing both cakes into Shi Feng’s hands. “A man who comes home from a rich feast with an empty stomach needs two! Burned a bit, but the burn is free!”

“How did you know I didn’t eat?” Shi Feng asked.

“The coachman’s cousin says there were six kinds of pastry and nobody dared touch them,” Granny Qin said proudly. “Bao, close your mouth. You’re letting the night in.”

Qin Bao closed his mouth. He kept staring. With the gate shut, Ling Qingzhu untied her veil and looked at the two black-edged cakes.

“You’ve been here five days,” Shi Feng said, “and we’ve eaten nothing but noodles from the corner stall.”

“The noodles were fine!” Ling Qingzhu said. “They were hot. Hot is the main thing.”

“Tomorrow I’ll cook,” Shi Feng said.

Ling Qingzhu turned her head. “You? Cook?”

“Badly,” Shi Feng said. “Eat first. Then judge.”

She took a cake and walked inside, too straight-backed. Shi Feng spared her another tease.

That night he spread his bedding on the floor in his corner while she changed behind the folding screen. The room was so small he could hear every rustle, so he stared hard at the ceiling beams.

The next morning, the silver spirit carp cost fifty-eight spirit stones. Shi Feng watched it flap against its basket. At that price, he thought, it should at least be able to perform a small miracle.

“Seventy was my price!” Peng Tao the fishmonger shouted. “Fifty-eight is robbery!”

“The left gill is bruised,” Shi Feng said. “Fifty-eight is generous.”

“A cripple who haggles like that…” a woman muttered behind him.

“…”

Peng Tao was stunned. His expression turned bitter, but he wrapped the fish. Shi Feng added lotus shoots, ginger, dried mushrooms, a parcel of sweet bean paste, and one duck, plucked and ridiculously expensive. He didn’t look at the total. Today he didn’t want to.

Ling Qingzhu came out of the room, drawn by the smell, just as he dropped everything on the kitchen table.

“Is someone visiting?” Ling Qingzhu asked. “That’s half the market on your table.”

“You moved in,” Shi Feng said. “This is the first meal.”

She looked at the ingredients. There was enough for a banquet, and the courtyard had one good table and a stool that tilted to the left. Her gaze finally settled on the lotus shoots. She wanted a job to do.

“Should I wash these?” Ling Qingzhu asked. “I can wash things. Probably.”

Shi Feng pointed to the basin. She rolled up her sleeves, showing pale wrists, and attacked the first shoot with the face she used for a difficult sword form. The shoot shot out of her hands, hit the bottom of the basin, and splashed water all over his robe.

Both of them looked down.

“It was slippery!” Ling Qingzhu said. “It jumped. You saw it jump.”

“It’s been here longer than you,” Shi Feng said. “It knows the house.”

Her expression stiffened. Her ears went pink. Shi Feng handed her a cloth and moved the basin further from the table.

She tucked a black strand behind her ear. Shi Feng forgot the carp in his hand.

“The fish is down there,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“I know,” Shi Feng replied, still looking at her.

“Then why are you scaling the air?” Ling Qingzhu asked.

He cleaned the carp himself. The knife slid under the scales, short and sure. After many days of cold roads and corpses, a steady hand felt surprisingly good. He steamed the flesh with ginger, crisped the skin on the side, and set the bones to simmer for a clear broth.

Three of her lotus slices were cut too thick. He dropped them into the pot first, so the extra time would soften them and she wouldn’t have to start again.

Steam fogged the window. Ling Qingzhu lingered by the kitchen door.

“You’ve cooked before,” Ling Qingzhu said. “That was not ‘badly’.”

“Bad cooking is expensive when you have to eat it yourself,” Shi Feng said.

That wasn’t a real answer. She decided, to her own surprise, that she was fine with it. Outside the gate, footsteps slowed and slowed again.

“Young master!” Bao Shun’s voice drifted through the wood. “The smell has reached the whole lane! Surely a host this generous will share with this humble Bao Shun—”

Neither of them moved.

“Want me to get rid of him?” Ling Qingzhu asked. “I’m very good at it.”

“He’s never paid a fee in this house,” Shi Feng said. “He won’t eat in it either.”

The footsteps shuffled away, offended.

The dishes were far too many for two people. Shi Feng knew it. After too many meals beside corpses, he wanted one where nobody ran away halfway through.

Ling Qingzhu tasted the broth, paused, and tasted it again. Shi Feng waited until she lifted her bowl before he took his own.

“This is good,” Ling Qingzhu said, and tasted it a third time. “Why am I surprised? You said ‘badly’.”

“Because you expected the duck to be raw,” Shi Feng said.

“I didn’t think that!” Ling Qingzhu said, and looked away. “…Not the whole duck.”

The duck vanished faster than either of them expected. When she picked a strip of bitter green out of her broth and set it on the rim of her plate, Shi Feng noticed. The next bowl he served gave her none, and gave himself double.

“You don’t have to eat my greens,” Ling Qingzhu said quickly. “I can manage a bitter leaf.”

“I like them,” Shi Feng said.

She stared at his face and couldn’t tell whether he was lying. He was already picking the fine bones from a piece of fish, and he didn’t look up.

After supper she went to the chest at the foot of the bed and came back with a pale storage bag, its mouth sewn with fine white stitching.

“Your payment,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Ten thousand, like we wrote.”

Shi Feng took it. The drawstring was neatly knotted. It seemed a small, innocent thing to set against a crown prince’s anger.

“Count it. I won’t be offended,” Ling Qingzhu said. “I’d count it too.”

“After the dishes,” Shi Feng said.

He set the bag on the high kitchen shelf, away from water and grease, and went to the basin. Ling Qingzhu stayed at the table with her cup in both hands and watched his back. She almost offered to help, then remembered the lotus shoots.

“What was Yunze Town like?” Ling Qingzhu asked instead.

He gave her the version without the quarry or the dead Foundation Establishment cultivator. It had bad inns, greedy merchants, and a kiln owner who thought a room didn’t need a door.

“A room without a door?! How does anyone sleep?” Ling Qingzhu asked, leaning forward until a strand of black hair fell over her shoulder.

“They tell you the roof is included,” Shi Feng said.

She laughed. He found that he liked the sound.

Later he wrapped the last two sweet cakes and left them by her cup. She picked up the parcel and carried it behind the screen without a word. It felt more intimate than walking arm in arm before a garden full of nobles, because nobody was there to applaud.

Behind the screen, she stopped. Ten thousand spirit stones, she told herself, was a generous price. Of course he wanted the arrangement to go smoothly. Good service meant nothing more.

The explanation settled easily. She didn’t look at it too closely.

In the kitchen, Shi Feng counted what was left in his own purse and frowned at the fishmonger’s receipt. He had overspent. The Hengyun pass would help, and the payment would refill the reserve as soon as he opened the bag.

He checked the latch and lowered the lamp. In the room, her breathing was already slow and even, a few steps from his bedding.

On the high shelf, the pale bag sat unopened.