Chapter 485 — Round Five

CHAPTER 485

Round Five

The second night bell rang over Thousand Forge Peak, and Sima Lan turned down the bed.

She did it the way she'd done it every night since the contract. The quilt was folded across the foot in three exact thirds. The pillow stood square against the wall. She had aired both on the line behind the hut that afternoon, and the sheets still held the warmth of the day.

Shi Feng sat at the table with the Valley's stamped copy in front of him, signed at last, and watched her tuck the final corner.

He had decided at dinner not to ask tonight.

Ling Qingzhu was jealous when she said it. But she'd also dared him to consider a different answer, and he couldn't stop thinking about that. He had turned it over all evening, between the furnace hall and the sacks, and had reached a sensible decision. He would leave the question alone for a month.

“Tea is on the table,” Sima Lan said, straightening. She brushed her sleeves. “Tomorrow's herbs are weighed. The ledger is balanced, minus sack nine's moss. Is there anything else?”

It was the sentence she always ended on.

Shi Feng thought about his sensible decision. Then he thought about Lin Langtian's rule, that a man should ask the question he already knew the answer to, because it was the only way to learn anything about the other person.

“Will you warm my bed?” Shi Feng asked.

The lamp ticked.

Sima Lan stood by the bed with the pillow cover in her hand. He watched her ears. They were the usual colour. He looked at them a second time to be sure, and they stayed the usual colour.

She didn't go red.

He expected her to fumble with the pillow or struggle to answer. Instead she waited for two slow breaths, looking straight at him. Shi Feng began to feel uneasy.

Then she put the pillow cover down on the table, beside the ledger, with extreme care.

Shi Feng waited for her to take the chalk.

She didn't take the chalk.

Sima Lan turned, walked around the foot of the bed and sat down on its edge. She sat with her back straight and her knees together, as calmly as if she'd only been asked to sit down. She folded her hands in her lap.

She looked at him.

She didn't smile or speak. She simply waited. Shi Feng realised that she'd expected him to ask again and decided her answer in advance. The calm expression wasn't an accident.

Shi Feng sat very still.

He had asked this question four times. Each time the same thing had happened. The colour, the silence, the quiet exit and Lin Langtian's voice from the rafters. He'd grown too confident that she would always leave. It was a small, safe, shameless joke, and the joke had one rule. The other person left.

Sima Lan understood his little trick. Now she was making him deal with the question he'd asked so casually.

She isn't embarrassed, Shi Feng thought. She isn't leaving either. His usual teasing had failed, and he hadn't prepared anything beyond it.

Shi Feng became painfully aware of the bed and its turned-down quilt. He couldn't pretend she hadn't understood him. The lamp threw her shadow long across the floor. Outside, in the lane, somebody coughed and thought better of it. From the stove room came a single belch, as if Old Soot had heard the silence and wished to comment.

Shi Feng picked up his tea.

He found that the cup was empty. He put it down again and looked at the lamp.

Sima Lan did not look at the lamp. She looked at him.

“You asked,” Sima Lan said quietly.

That was all she said. It wasn't an accusation, and it wasn't a question. She was calmly reminding him who'd started this.

“I asked,” Shi Feng said.

“I heard,” Sima Lan said.

She went back to waiting.

The lamp burned down a finger's width. He could have said, It's a joke, in the flat tone he used for creditors, and she would have let him. She would also have written it down. Somewhere in her ledger, under a column he'd never be allowed to read, there would be a new line in small upright hand: Employer withdrew.

He could have laughed. That was worse. A laugh was only a withdrawal with a smile on it.

He could have stood up, crossed the three paces between them and finished the sentence he'd started. He considered it seriously, then realised he wasn't ready to do that. He'd meant to tease her, and now she was waiting for him to make a real choice.

Her hands stayed folded. They weren't trembling. The only sign that she had not chosen this lightly was the small pulse at her throat, which he wasn't supposed to be able to see and could.

Shi Feng thought, She has prepared for this. For how long?

Ling Qingzhu's voice came back to him, light and sulking in the doorway. I wonder what you'd do if she didn't.

Ling Qingzhu's teasing had given Sima Lan an idea. Neither woman meant to push the matter this far at first. But Sima Lan was proud enough to make him face his own invitation. She sat across from him, hands folded, and showed no sign of changing her answer.

Beyond the paper window, in the dark above the sect, a bell began to count the hour toward midnight.

Shi Feng said nothing.

Neither did she.