Chapter 553 — The Terms of the Day

CHAPTER 553

The Terms of the Day

“Clause one,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Is it unclear?”

“It's redundant,” Shi Feng said. “I've answered to it since the capital.”

“You answered with a question mark,” Ling Qingzhu said. “‘Yes?’ Every time, as if I might be talking to someone behind you.”

They were walking up the road to Luoxia's south gate, with the river on their left and a line of cart drivers on their right. She read the second clause over his shoulder without being asked. Her veil moved with every word.

“Clause two. The second party pays all expenses of the day. Clause three. No ledgers, no Marks, no herbs, no sects, and no mention of the word ‘fee’,” Ling Qingzhu read aloud.

“Clause three has a fee,” Shi Feng said.

“Everything of yours has a fee,” Ling Qingzhu said.

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

“Husband,” Ling Qingzhu said, “you're not answering. Without the question mark.”

He kept walking.

The gate guards wore Artificer Hall's faded red armband, the mark of a tributary city. When Shi Feng showed his badge, both men straightened so fast one of them hit his helmet on the gatepost. The older guard bowed deeply, staring at the veil. The younger recognised Shi Feng's healed face and whispered that he was the champion who'd refined a Soul Formation pill. The whole queue heard him. His companion wanted to know who the lady was.

“His wife,” somebody in the queue said. “The first fairy of Great Liang. Everyone knows. A match made by heaven and earth!”

“Husband,” Ling Qingzhu said, in a clear carrying voice. “They're talking about us.”

Shi Feng walked through the gate.

Luoxia's main street was wide enough for two carts and paved with river stone. Shopfronts leaned over it on both sides, with pennants hanging from their eaves. Smoke from a dozen frying stalls drifted over the roofs. At noon the lanterns were still unlit, but the street seemed to be waiting for them.

“Husband,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“…” Shi Feng kept walking without answering her.

“Husband, that stall has candied walnuts,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“…” Shi Feng looked at the walnuts instead of her.

A woman selling dumplings leaned out of her stall. She was round and sixty and had clearly seen everything.

“Young man,” the dumpling woman said, “your wife is calling you.”

“I heard,” Shi Feng said.

“Then answer her properly,” the dumpling woman said. “In my day, a man who didn't answer slept outside.”

“He sleeps on the floor,” Ling Qingzhu said sweetly. “It's in the contract.”

The dumpling woman's eyebrows went up. Two customers behind her turned around. A boy carrying eggs stopped to stare at Shi Feng too.

“The floor,” the dumpling woman said. “Hmph. Good. Keep him there.”

“Thank you, auntie,” Ling Qingzhu said, and bowed.

Shi Feng had survived a Golden Core tribulation and a legendary cultivator's ruin. He had never faced a street full of strangers who agreed with his wife.

“Clause zero,” Shi Feng said. “You declared that anyone who said ‘husband’ would carry ash for a month.”

“Anyone else,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Clause zero. I'm the exception.”

“It's not on the paper,” Shi Feng said.

“Clause zero is never on the paper,” Ling Qingzhu said, looking ahead to hide her embarrassment. “Husband.”

Shi Feng stopped. A cart rolled past. Somewhere behind them, the dumpling woman said loudly to her next customer, “Look at him. Look at his face. He's thinking about it.”

He was.

It wasn't hard to say. He had answered to it since the capital. The question mark had let him pretend she might mean someone else. She wanted him to stop doing that, here in front of the whole street.

In three years he had answered to “cripple,” “champion,” “Teacher Shi,” “Master Shi,” “brat,” “Junior Brother,” and “you, there.” Most of those names had been a rank or an insult. This one was neither.

“Here,” Shi Feng said.

“What?” Ling Qingzhu asked, turning toward him.

“There's no question mark,” Shi Feng said.

“That's not an answer. That's attendance,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“It's what the second party has,” Shi Feng said. “Clause one says he answers without a question mark. It doesn't say what with.”

For two breaths she said nothing. Then her shoulders began to shake, and the laugh she had been holding all morning came out all at once. Her veil fluttered. The dumpling woman clapped. A passing porter grinned without knowing why.

“Fine,” Ling Qingzhu said, wiping her eye with a knuckle. “Fine! Clause one, closed. Under protest.”

“Noted,” Shi Feng said.

“Don't write it down,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“I'm not writing anything,” Shi Feng said. “Clause three.”

She took his arm.

It was the right arm, the one that had burned black to the elbow in the Valley. The skin had healed pink and was now just skin. She held it lightly above the wrist, checking the healed skin with her fingers. Then she began walking again, and he walked with her.

Neither of them said anything about the arm.

The afternoon went quickly. They crossed two bridges, lost an hour in a bookstall, and drank tea that Ling Qingzhu declared was too weak and then finished. When they came back to the main street, the shopkeepers were lowering their awnings and lighting the first of the lanterns. A boy on a ladder hung a red carp over the corner. A girl hung a gold one beneath it. Down the length of the street, the light began to spread from the gate tower to the river, one lantern at a time.

“Item nine,” Ling Qingzhu said, softly. “The lantern streets.”

Shi Feng looked at the paper in his other hand. Item nine said exactly that. Under it, in small neat characters, she had written: Second party looks up.