Chapter 56 — A Friend's Opinion

CHAPTER 56

A Friend's Opinion

Three-quarters of Shi Feng's ordinary bone refinement was finished by the time the next rain reached Qingliu Lane. He counted the remaining bones privately, checking each place where the qi still met resistance. Progress didn't make them vanish. He still had to refine every one.

A hunt supplied the last packet of medicine money for that week. He washed the mud off his boots before entering the room and tucked the cultivation notes beneath his rolled bedding.

“‘So?! What’s he really like?! Does he snore?! Does he talk in his sleep?! Tell me everything, everything, EVERYTHING!’” Ling Qingzhu read the letter aloud under the pear tree and frowned. “…This woman.”

Su Wanning’s letter had come with a box of scented cakes. Her friend wanted to know whether the “extraordinary marriage” was getting any less extraordinary. She wanted every little detail, and she’d underlined “everything” twice.

Ling Qingzhu looked around the little courtyard, at the repaired stove and the kitchen where Shi Feng was wrapping food for his trip. Details were annoyingly hard to come up with.

He was blunt. He was secretive about where he went. He could argue over the price of salt as seriously as another man studied a sword art. But he also kept the lamp turned low when she came home late. In their one small room, he always faced the wall when she changed behind the screen, and he never once peeked around it.

She began to write that he was useful company.

Then she crossed out “useful.” The correction left an ugly mark on the neat line. She turned the page, annoyed that picking one word was harder than facing a hall full of people waiting for her to regret the marriage.

In the kitchen, Shi Feng folded dry food into separate parcels, one for the trip out, one for emergencies. The cord he’d bought lay coiled beside his blade.

“So how much do you trust this expedition?” Ling Qingzhu asked from the doorway.

“I trust the route more than the broker,” Shi Feng said, testing his pack strap.

“That’s not very reassuring, you know,” Ling Qingzhu said, folding her arms.

“The broker isn’t going to reassure me for free,” Shi Feng said.

She wanted to tell him he didn’t have to chase every dangerous chance. The words got close, then stopped. He’d hear what was underneath: that a crippled future should be made small enough to fit other people’s pity. She hated it when others did that to her own choices.

Instead she set the cake box on the table.

“Who sent them?” Shi Feng asked.

“A friend,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Su Wanning.”

“Let me guess. She wants to know everything about me,” Shi Feng said.

Ling Qingzhu’s heart jumped. “How did you— how do you know that?” Ling Qingzhu demanded, hiding the letter behind her back.

“Friends who send cakes always want gossip,” Shi Feng said. “The cakes are the bribe.” He picked two broken pieces and left the whole ones where she could reach them.

Idiot, Ling Qingzhu thought, and she took a whole one.

At the market that afternoon, Shi Feng bought lamp wicks, clean cloth and enough sound cord for the descent. He checked the fibres, accepted the measured length and packed the coil where he could reach it without opening the whole bag.

He reached Ma Zheng’s meeting place before sunset. The broker looked over his pack with a practised eye, and Shi Feng saw the broker’s expression sour and thought: this one makes his living off other men’s mistakes. Badly equipped porters were a great source of emergency sales. Shi Feng’s preparations left no such opening.

“Ah, Brother Shi, please don’t bring bulky household things,” Ma Zheng said, bowing slightly. “The route is hard, very hard.”

“I wasn’t planning to carry the bed,” Shi Feng said.

Ma Zheng ignored that and repeated the common-chamber division. Shi Feng pointed to the written terms before the explanation could change. The broker repeated the entrance share twice and told him not to forget it at departure.

“I didn’t forget it the first time,” Shi Feng said.

A list of participants lay on the crate. Some men had sold their names dearly. Others gave them away so cheaply that Shi Feng suspected the names were fake. He read it all and didn’t ask Ma Zheng to make anybody more honest.

“We leave at dawn,” Ma Zheng said.

Supper was mushrooms with a little shredded meat, rice, and a warm bowl of broth. Shi Feng chose food that wouldn’t spoil while he was away. Ling Qingzhu looked at the table, then at the travel parcels stacked against the wall.

“We used to have four dishes,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Now it’s mushrooms and a bowl of broth.”

Shi Feng put down his chopsticks.

“You’ve mentioned that,” Shi Feng said.

“I paid you a fortune, and I get mushrooms,” Ling Qingzhu said.

His expression closed.

“The mushrooms are paid for,” Shi Feng said. “The fortune wasn’t.”

She hated what he was implying. She hated even more that it ruined the nice answer she’d almost written to Su Wanning. She was trying to describe the unexpected comfort of his company, and now the accounts crept back, stubborn and unwelcome, into the same old accusation.

Neither of them said more. He served himself more rice. She finished the broth, because the meal was too good to leave, and leaving it would look childish.

Later she added a line about his greed to the letter.

It was easier than explaining why a cheap supper could make her feel personally neglected. A bargain could be weighed. A feeling she never meant to have was harder to defend.

She folded the letter before changing anything else.

Shi Feng finished packing and never saw it. He left enough rice in the kitchen and told her which shop delivered water if the well rope caught. The spare key went where she could reach it. He checked the window latch and showed her how to lift the warped frame before it would close.

“I’m not a child. I can feed myself for three days,” Ling Qingzhu said. “I can even boil water. Usually.”

“Then surprise me,” Shi Feng said.

She almost smiled.

When he went out to bank the stove for the night, she knelt at the chest at the foot of her bed. She could send things that cost more than everything in his pack. But expensive medicine would only get another refusal or another account. Guards would make his private errand public and tell him she doubted he could manage it.

She took out clean wound cloth instead. If he’s hurt in that ruin, she thought, I don’t want to hear about it from a stranger.

It was plain, soft, and useful. She folded the lengths herself, small enough to fit inside his coat. Twice she retied the knot, because it seemed too tight to undo with one hand.

Then she shut the lid quickly, slid the chest back, and was lying very still behind the screen when he came in and quietly spread out his bedding. At the gate the next morning, she pressed the cloth into his palm.

“For the road,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Don’t make a face. It’s just cloth.”

Shi Feng looked down at the careful fold. There was no price on it. Nobody stood close enough to admire her concern.

“I’ll keep it dry,” Shi Feng said, and tucked it inside his robe instead of at the bottom of the pack.

He didn’t mistake the gesture for an apology, Shi Feng thought. He also didn’t pretend it meant nothing.

Behind him, Ling Qingzhu watched until the lane turned and took him out of sight.

On the table, the letter to Su Wanning still lay waiting, describing a man who was not quite the one she’d just watched leave.