Chapter 569 — Damp Ricestraw

CHAPTER 569

Damp Ricestraw

“Again,” Mei Han said, and set a second ember root on his bench.

It was the next lamp-cycle. Mei Han stood at his station with her ink-stained cuffs rolled up, holding the scorched jade slip too tightly. She clearly hadn’t slept.

“Yesterday the clouds reached two and sank,” Mei Han said. “I want to know why before I write a single word.”

Shi Feng turned the root over. It was warm all the way through, like its scorched twin. The Pit grew its herbs in hot ground beside the furnace halls, and three fingers of ash would cook a root like this alive.

The recipe was written for a colder root, Shi Feng thought. The old man’s directions weren’t useless; they needed to account for where this herb grew.

None of that reached his face.

“Appraiser Mei,” Shi Feng said, in the small careful voice he’d used for two weeks, “can I try something stupid?”

“How stupid?” Mei Han asked.

“The ricestraw from the herb crates is still damp,” Shi Feng said, pointing at the pile by the door. “If the root sits on straw instead of ash, maybe it won’t burn so fast.”

“Ash is in the formula,” Mei Han said.

“Yes, Appraiser Mei,” Shi Feng said. “And the formula burned.”

Mei Han breathed out through her nose. “Do it,” Mei Han said. “If it fails, it’s your waste.”

Shi Feng bowed. It’s always my waste, he thought happily. That’s the best part of this job.

He laid two handfuls of ricestraw in the furnace bed and set the root on top. This time it didn’t scorch. The damp straw drank the extra heat, and the root gave up its fire evenly.

One cloud rose over the lid. Then two. Then three.

He could have raised six clouds by pushing harder. Instead, Shi Feng let his wrist sag and the fourth cloud fade before it formed. Three clouds would prove that the straw worked. Anything more would make this look less like a lucky suggestion from a nervous prisoner.

Mei Han opened the furnace herself and held the dull red pill to the lamp.

“Common,” Mei Han said. “Three clouds. It held.”

“It lived?” Kong Ba boomed from the arch, grinning so widely his beard split. “Ha! A horse is known by the distance it runs! Shu, write down that I was right about the boy!”

“That isn’t a ledger entry,” Clerk Shu said, still counting.

Mei Han opened the Pit’s black-bound book.

“The paper says ash,” Mei Han said.

“The paper is old,” Shi Feng said.

She wrote while he watched upside down. Soil fault. Hall beds raised too hot. Damp ricestraw in place of ash. Yesterday’s instruction had become today’s correction, with no name beside it. Mei Han folded his handwritten formula twice and put it into her sleeve.

“The Pit will use this,” Mei Han said.

They’d paid him nothing for the recipe or the correction. Shi Feng accepted that for now. Each useful answer gave him another chance to be brought out of his cell. He needed those chances more than a ration bonus.

Then he saw where she was looking. It was past the arch, toward Hall One, where a chain clinked once against stone. Her hand stayed flat on the closed book a breath too long. She said nothing about it, and Shi Feng didn’t ask.

Her brother won’t be punished tonight, Shi Feng thought. That mattered even if she never thanked him. He knew what it meant to have someone else decide whether a failed furnace deserved punishment.

That night he ate his three lumps of quota slag in the dark and held the Nascent Soul down while the herbs’ worth filled him.

[Reservoir: 20% | Note: Mo was wrong, politely.]

“Water’s up at the second bend again,” Bao Liang said the next cycle, scowling. “When the roof leaks, it rains all night. I’m not wading in that in these boots. We go round by the old rooms, and don’t look at the doors.”

The old rooms were black with a hundred years of smoke. None of the iron doors had a bowl slot. Each had a slit one hand wide, at the height of a sitting man’s mouth.

At the ninth door, Shi Feng heard it. Tap, tap, tap. Nine slow beats, a pause, then nine again.

“Stop a moment,” Bao Liang groaned, sitting on the cart’s edge and pulling off his left boot. “This blister’s going to kill me.”

Shi Feng rested a knuckle on the cart’s rim and tapped Ji Yuanhe’s four-beat lid rhythm. He tapped it one beat off, on purpose, so it couldn’t be taken for an echo.

The knocking stopped. Then three taps came back, very slow.

“You are the one who sings quiet,” a voice said through the slit.

The voice was hoarse but carefully formal. Shi Feng heard the effort behind that courtesy. Whoever was inside had spent years speaking through iron and still chose to welcome an unexpected answer.

“Sings, Senior?” Shi Feng asked, bending over the axle.

“A ladle in Hall Two answers Master Ji’s lid, one beat early in each bar,” the voice said. “His batches have not blown since. Sound travels in this house, young friend, and I have had nothing to do except listen.”

Shi Feng was startled. He’d thought nobody heard that but Ji.

“May I know your name, Senior?” Shi Feng asked.

“Pei Wuyan. Three Mark,” Pei Wuyan answered. “Here I’m written down as uncooperative. Three thousand three hundred marks on my wall, one whenever the lamp brightens for the long meal. It’s the only calendar they leave us.”

Nine years, Shi Feng thought. And he still talks like he’s receiving guests.

“What does refusing cost you, Master Pei?” Shi Feng asked.

“The herbs first,” Pei Wuyan said calmly. “Then the furnace. Then the window. Then half the rations.” He paused. “The roots in your cart smell of the thaw beds. They turn those over when the river starts to rise. Spring is eleven days off, then, or twelve. My wall runs slow.”

The man had read the season off a waste cart.

“Your guard is putting his boot on,” Pei Wuyan added. “Twenty breaths.”

Behind Shi Feng, Bao Liang grunted and stamped his foot down.

“Up,” Bao Liang said. “I told you not to look at the doors.”

“I was checking the wheel, Guard Bao,” Shi Feng said meekly.

Just before the bend, one last whisper followed the cart.

“Forgive me,” Pei Wuyan whispered. “It has been four hundred days since anyone answered.”

In his sleeve, Shi Feng’s fingers closed around the steamed bun he’d been saving from the midday ration.