Chapter 547 — Ten Percent

CHAPTER 547

Ten Percent

“And so the cripple champion walked into the arena!” Old Mao cried, snapping open his fan. “Nine feet tall, ghost-faced, with a sword as long as a cart shaft!”

The Cloud Mist Tea House was packed to the rafters. It stood across the square from the Sky Pavilion tower, as it always had, and the same cracked cups were still on the same shelf. Shi Feng had noticed that when the attendant Luo Ping poured. He had drunk from one of them once, on the day a veiled woman offered him a marriage.

He drank from it now, in a corner seat, and nobody looked at him twice.

His face had healed. In the capital, that made him a stranger. Sima Lan sat across the table in a plain hat with a gauze fringe, her ledger case in her lap. She'd wanted to hear what the city said. Her profession was information, and she took it seriously.

“Lord of the arena, they called him!” Old Mao went on. He was a small man with a large fan, and everyone in the tea house knew him as Old Mao. “And what did the Crown Prince do? The Crown Prince, who swallowed a forbidden pill in Round Two!”

“Shame!” someone shouted.

“He wept!” Old Mao said, flapping the fan. “He wept on the arena floor, and his sister, the Princess, seeing her brother's disgrace, left the palace with only one bag. And who took her in? The cripple champion! And did he ask for anything in return?”

“Nothing!” the crowd roared.

“Nothing! Not one copper! Not one!” Old Mao declared, sweeping his fan over the cheering tables.

“What a man! A hero rescues the beauty!”

“I heard he gave away pills to beggars.”

“I heard he beat a Golden Core with a bench.”

“I heard he's seven feet tall and eats iron.”

At the back, a man in a stiff grey-green robe set down his cup so hard the lid rattled. He sat with two companions who looked like clerks, and who sat the way soldiers sit. His face was grey. He had been listening to the Crown Prince weeping on the arena floor for some time.

Sima Lan did not turn her head.

“Third table from the pillar,” Sima Lan said, very low. “Grey-green robe. Don't look.”

“I'm drinking tea,” Shi Feng said.

“He has a consort's household tassel on his belt. He tucked it under his sleeve when he sat down,” Sima Lan said.

“Noted,” Shi Feng said.

“And when the Princess asked what she owed him, the champion only said...” Old Mao began, raising his voice for the answer.

“Mostly,” Shi Feng said.

He hadn't raised his voice. He didn't need to. Old Mao had paused for effect, and the nearby tables heard Shi Feng clearly. They turned toward his corner, surprised that a listener had interrupted the best part.

Old Mao lowered his fan.

“Mostly what, young sir?” Old Mao asked.

“Mostly accurate,” Shi Feng said. “A few corrections. There's a ten percent fee.”

The crowd turned to look at him. Someone laughed, and was hushed.

“A fee?” Old Mao said. “For what?”

“For the corrections. Ten percent of today's takings,” Shi Feng said, folding his hands. “Or you can go on with the nine-foot version. It's your tea house.”

Old Mao looked at his tip bowl. It held forty-two coppers.

“Forty-two,” Sima Lan said quietly. “Four coppers, two fen. I'll round it to five.”

“You're his counting woman?” Old Mao asked her.

“Accounts,” Sima Lan said.

“Fine,” Old Mao said, and shoved five coppers across the table with a resentful glance at his emptied tip bowl. “Corrections, young sir. Go on.”

Shi Feng thought, Lin Langtian would be proud. Never correct a rumour for free.

“First,” Shi Feng said. “He wasn't nine feet tall. He fit through the arena gate. He checked.”

Somebody coughed into his sleeve.

“Second, he wasn't a cripple. His meridians were dormant. That's different. They woke up,” Shi Feng said.

A fat merchant nodded at the distinction, repeating the word dormant to his neighbour.

“Third. The Crown Prince didn't weep after the pill. He wept before. It was a long cry, and mostly about the prize,” Shi Feng said.

The grey-green man stood up. His companions rose with him.

“Fourth,” Shi Feng said, as if he hadn't noticed. “The Princess wasn't taken in. She walked in with a contract.”

A silence.

“A contract?” Old Mao said faintly.

“She wrote it. He only signed. She set the terms,” Shi Feng said.

A young woman in the stalls loudly complained that the contract ruined the romance.

“No,” Shi Feng said. “It's accurate.”

“Fifth,” Sima Lan said, lifting her fringe an inch so only the nearby tables could hear. “He did ask for something in return. He always asks. He asked for payment in advance.”

Half the room burst out laughing. The other half was still counting on its fingers.

By the pillar, the grey-green man pushed through the crowd without waiting for his tea to be settled. His companions followed, and the door banged behind them.

Shi Feng watched it swing.

“The consort's household,” Sima Lan said, as the noise rose again. “They'll tell someone the Crown Prince wept.”

“He did weep,” Shi Feng said.

“It will be reported as an insult,” Sima Lan said, writing a line in her ledger. Correction fee, received, 5 coppers. “You enjoyed that.”

“Slightly,” Shi Feng said.

“Don't. You gave the consort's people a reason,” Sima Lan said.

“They needed one?” Shi Feng asked.

Sima Lan did not answer. She capped her brush and looked toward the door, where the street was bright and the tassel had already vanished.