Chapter 471 — The Spoils

CHAPTER 471

The Spoils

“Ring one,” Shi Feng read aloud. “Four hundred and twelve stones. A tailor's receipt, unpaid, forty stones. Two bottles of Marrow-Forging Pills, Bone Refinement grade. A letter to someone called Little Peach.”

“Little Peach,” Zhu Liu repeated, and wrote it down.

“Don't write that,” Shi Feng said.

“It's in the inventory, Senior Brother Shi,” Zhu Liu said.

“Then write it in small characters,” Shi Feng said.

They sat on the step of hut nine with seven storage rings spread out on a blanket between them. Elder Qian Mo perched on an upturned water bucket, watching every ring anxiously, his abacus clutched to his chest.

“The Treasury's third is already counted,” Qian Mo said.

“You can't count a third before I finish,” Shi Feng reminded him. “There are more rings.”

Qian Mo sighed, plainly impatient to hear the rest.

Ring two held 1,100 stones and a spare crimson robe. Ring three held three restoration pills and sixty-one bundles of dried meat. Ring four held nothing but a very large amount of tea.

“Ring five,” Shi Feng said. “Two thousand stones. A letter of credit on the Qiao house, now worthless. And this.”

He held up a thin silver token, no larger than a coin, engraved with a clenched fist and eight small stars.

“Squad leader's badge,” Zhu Liu said. “It's the escort captain's.”

“It says he's allowed to requisition from the Shimen forward post,” Shi Feng said. “Which no longer has anything in it.”

“We took it all,” Zhu Liu said with great pride.

“We borrowed it,” Shi Feng said.

The last item lay apart on a square of white cloth. It was a black jade seal the size of a rice bowl, heavy and polished, with a crimson cord and a carved fist on the top. Under the base was the character for war.

Qian Mo went very still.

“That's the field seal,” Qian Mo said. “Elder Wei's war seal. He stamped the blockade orders with it. He stamped the vassals' tribute demands with it. Every captain on the Shimen line takes his orders from the impression of that fist.”

“Then it's a paperweight,” Shi Feng said.

“It's authority,” Qian Mo corrected him. “Without the seal, every order he's sent this month is just a letter from a cripple. A snake without a head cannot crawl. His men won't obey.”

“From a man with a cracked core,” Shi Feng said. “He can write letters. He can't stamp them.”

“Who'll carry a stamp for him?” Zhu Liu asked.

“Nobody,” Shi Feng said. “They'll have to carry it back themselves.”

Zhu Liu paused his brush. He suddenly understood: the Palace needed its seal back if it wanted to command those troops.

“Senior Brother Shi,” Zhu Liu said. “Are you going to give it back?”

“For a price,” Shi Feng said.

He wrapped the seal in the cloth and set it down in the middle of the blanket. Then he took a clean sheet and began to write.

One war seal, black jade. Received in a duel with thanks. Redeemable at arbitration. Storage fee: four stones a day.

“Four,” Qian Mo said.

“Five,” Shi Feng said. “It's heavy.”

The eighth ring was Wei Chengyuan's own. It had been knotted into the seal's crimson cord. Shi Feng opened it last. Inside was a small stack of Nascent Soul-grade pills in a jade box, lined up neatly, and a letter, unsealed, in the old man's heavy hand. He read the first sentence and stopped.

To the Sect Master. The brat will not be a problem for long. If he is, I will end it before you need to speak.

He folded it back.

“What does it say?” Zhu Liu asked.

“That he'll be in bed for a while,” Shi Feng said.

He put the pill box in his own sleeve, and entered a line in the Treasury ledger as the sect's property.

Core: 71%.

By the third hour of the afternoon, the news had left the mountain.

In a Duanyang teahouse, a man set down his cup and said Wei Chengyuan's core had cracked at the sight of a boy's sword. The man next to him said it was a lie. The man behind them said he had seen it, with his own eyes, from the stair, and the first two began placing bets.

At Qingyun City, Kang Liu heard it from a passing merchant and dropped a full tray of cups.

In the capital of Great Liang, Bao Shun climbed onto the lane's well-cover with a wet brush and began to repaint the rental notice a fourth time. Jiang Meilan stood beneath him with her arms crossed.

“Wei cracked by a junior,” Bao Shun announced. “By a boy who rented the courtyard!”

“Rented,” Jiang Meilan said. “Not owned.”

At the Shimen Pass forward camp, a lean man with newly healed eyebrows read the dispatch twice and put down his brush.

Hou Ping looked at the empty chair at the head of the table. He looked at Elder Qu Jiang's letter, which said only Await orders. Then he looked at the tent flap, as if somebody might walk through it and tell him what to do.

Nobody came. As the saying goes, when the tree falls the monkeys scatter, and Hou Ping was the last monkey left on the branch. He put his head in his hands.

Dusk fell slowly over Thousand Forge Peak.

Sima Lan had insisted on being helped out to the doorway of hut nine, where she sat on a stool in a grey blanket and called it supervision. Zhu Liu was still counting pills. Old Soot lay across the doorstep, chewing a ring hinge.

Shi Feng turned Wei Chengyuan's letter over in his fingers. To the Sect Master. A man who wrote that to his own sect master expected it to be read, and expected an answer. Nobody sent a letter like that without expecting the trouble to end.

“You're thinking loudly,” Sima Lan said from the doorway.

“I'm thinking about mail,” Shi Feng said.

“Then think faster,” Sima Lan warned, looking toward the darkening yard. “The sun's nearly down. If that letter brings trouble, I don't want us still counting pills when it arrives.”