Chapter 577 — One Held Breath

CHAPTER 577

One Held Breath

Master Yan Boru came into Hall Two between two guards, and the whole hall went quiet.

He was a tall man gone thin, with a grey beard and a collar of dull bronze at his throat. A small stud sat in the collar’s front like a closed eye. He was Soul Formation, and he was the best alchemist the Pill Pit owned.

He looked at station nine and the boy sitting at it.

“This?” Yan Boru asked. “You pulled me off a Soul Formation-grade batch for this?”

“For a number, Master Yan,” Ning Zhe said, unfolding his chair between the two furnaces. “Same set, same hall, one furnace each. I’ve put a great many herbs into Alchemist Shi. I’d like to know what they bought.”

“They bought trash,” Yan Boru said, and sat down at station eight.

“The winner takes a month’s rations,” Ning Zhe said pleasantly. “Soul Formation-grade, from the board.”

Shi Feng raised his hand halfway.

“Receiver Ning,” Shi Feng said nervously. “I eat rations anyway. If I lose, I only go hungry for a month. That’s... it’s cheap, for Master Yan’s face.”

“Then what would you put on it, Alchemist Shi?” Ning Zhe asked.

“If I lose, put a collar on me,” Shi Feng said, his voice shaking. “The same as Master Yan’s. For a month.”

Kong Ba laughed so hard he had to hold the doorframe.

“The rabbit wants to bet its own neck!” Kong Ba shouted. “Receiver Ning, take it before he sobers up!”

“Accepted,” Ning Zhe said, smiling. “And if Master Yan loses, his collar goes listening for a month. That’s fair.”

Yan Boru’s hand tightened on his ladle.

Kong Ba was already at the rail. He hauled the other eleven stations off their stools and stood them along the iron, then chalked a slate on the rail itself: clouds at station eight, clouds at station nine, and a side pot on whose hand shook first. Clerk Shu copied the slate onto a tally sheet and filed it in the receiver’s folder.

Shi Feng lowered his head. Offering his own neck made him look stubborn rather than calculating, and whichever man lost, he’d see how a collar was set.

They lit together.

Yan Boru cooked like a man who’d done it ten thousand times and hated every one. His fire was hard and exact, and he counted his stirs aloud under his breath. Every man on a collar did. The Pit liked to hear its people working.

Shi Feng cooked like a boy trying not to cry. His hands trembled at the right moments. His fire went a little high and came back down.

Ning Zhe wants a number, Shi Feng thought. Four would match his public record. Six would place him above this Soul Formation master and draw too much attention.

Five, then. One cloud past Master Yan. Just enough to look like a lucky boy on a good day.

Yan Boru’s lid gave its first cloud, then a second and a third. The fourth rose slowly and hung there, clean and steady.

“Four,” Clerk Shu said. “Station eight.”

Yan Boru sat back. Under the Pit’s eye, four clouds was a master’s work, and he knew it.

Shi Feng’s clouds came up one by one, wobbling like a nervous boy’s.

One. Two. Three. Four.

The fifth came up thin, and behind it the sixth began to gather. The pill was happy and wanted to keep going.

Shi Feng held his breath and held the fire still, letting his fear-struck expression explain the pause. The sixth cloud thinned and sank. He followed it down, making sure five remained above the furnace.

Five clouds hung over station nine.

“Five,” Clerk Shu said, and paused for the first time since Shi Feng had known him. “Station nine.”

“The frontier boy beat Master Yan?”

“…”

Ning Zhe wrote in his folder a long time. Shi Feng watched the brush move and read the number upside down. Five.

Five is the number he’ll expect now, Shi Feng thought. He’d made the smallest advance he could plausibly show.

“Minor Success,” Mei Han said from the arch, turning the pill under the lamp. “Five. Lucky.”

“I’ll take lucky, Appraiser Mei,” Shi Feng said, and bowed.

A guard in grey crossed to station eight and put two fingers on the stud of Yan Boru’s collar. He turned it a quarter turn. It clicked.

Yan Boru picked up his ladle and began scraping out his furnace, counting under his breath as always.

“...thirty-one, thirty-two...” Yan Boru counted.

At thirty-three he stopped to wipe his face.

The collar chimed once, very softly. The bronze drew in. Yan Boru’s breath caught, and his hand flew to his throat.

“Thirty-three,” Yan Boru said hoarsely. “Thirty-four.”

The collar eased.

The rail took the count up. Kong Ba led it, the eleven stations carried it, and Yan Boru counted with them, because twelve voices will not let a man stop. Clerk Shu wrote the numbers on the slate beside the wagers, as if they were clouds.

Shi Feng felt cold. The collar heard its wearer’s count and tightened when it stopped, so Yan Boru had to keep speaking to breathe. No guard was watching; the punishment sat against his skin.

The guards led Yan Boru back to their line at the arch. He stood between them and looked at Shi Feng for a long time: no anger in his face, and no thanks.

“A man lives for his face, a tree for its bark,” Yan Boru said at last, still counting between the words. “Enjoy my rations, boy.”

Then the guards turned him away, and he went up the ramp still counting.

The month’s rations came that night in a covered basket, thirty portions of Soul Formation-grade herbs off the board’s right-hand column.

Shi Feng ate the portions in the dark, pleased by the gain. Then he remembered Yan Boru’s hand clawing at his throat.

A held breath was cheap, he thought. A month of rations wasn’t.

[Reservoir: 43% | Won: one month’s rations, by one cloud]

Somewhere above him, a collar was listening to a man count in his sleep. Shi Feng lay awake for a while.

In the morning, two guards came down the corridor dragging a cot, and set it down outside his door.