Chapter 585 — The Counting Machine

CHAPTER 585

The Counting Machine

Shi Feng sat cross-legged on his shelf, pleased with the map. He’d found his confiscated possessions and the river route. Knowing where they were wasn’t enough; he still needed to leave his cell without alerting the strongest guards.

He had the map. Now he needed the trick.

The Pit relied on sound because it couldn’t watch every prisoner. Furnaces, patrols, Clerk Shu’s count and Ji Yuanhe’s hammer gave the wardens a familiar rhythm to listen for. Shi Feng went over each sound, asking which one an escape would interrupt first.

An escape didn’t start with a broken door. It started the moment a rhythm stopped.

So the rhythm can’t stop, Shi Feng thought. Even after the man making it is gone.

He thought of Gongsun Ce, back on the frontier, setting his little wax-joint puppets ticking on the dice table to keep the count honest.

If the wardens wanted the same rhythm every night, he would supply it. The first problem was keeping it steady without a man holding the hammer.

Gathering the parts took eight days. Shi Feng forced himself to be patient. Stealing the wrong thing or being caught reaching into a bin would ruin the plan before he could test it.

A chisel came first. A furnace-bed chisel had snapped at its tip in Hall Two, and Kong Ba threw it in the scrap bin with a curse. Shi Feng wheeled the bin to the pit that night, and the chisel didn’t arrive.

Seal-candle wax came next. Clerk Shu sealed every quota tray with a stub of red wax, and the drips gathered on the table’s edge. Shi Feng scraped them into his sleeve while Shu counted.

On the fourth day, Mei Han’s brass scale jammed. She tapped it twice with her pen, frowned, and pulled out the coil.

“Bent,” Mei Han said. “Useless.”

She dropped the scale in the scrap bin beside Shi Feng’s furnace, and went back to her ledger. She didn’t watch it leave.

The last thing was cord. The black cord on Ji Yuanhe’s ankle was retied every ten days, and the guard who did it trimmed the ends with a knife and kicked them away. Shi Feng swept them up with the ash.

“Your floor is very clean, boy,” Kong Ba said, frowning.

“Receiver Ning likes things tidy, Overseer Kong,” Shi Feng said earnestly.

“Ha! He’s learning!” Kong Ba roared. “Shu, did you hear that?”

“Forty,” Clerk Shu said, which was not an answer.

He built it in the dead hour, by touch, with his Spirit Sense for eyes.

The scale’s coil drove a short arm carrying an iron chip from the chisel. Three wax joints controlled its swing, catching and releasing it at different intervals. Furnace warmth kept the wax soft. Shi Feng used Ji Yuanhe’s trimmed cord to bind the parts firmly together.

It was smaller than his fist, and it looked like a lump of dirty slag.

He wound the coil and let go.

Tap.

One clean beat in the dark. Then a pause, too long. Then a stutter.

Shi Feng shaved a hair of wax from the second joint and wound it again.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Four beats to a bar, exactly like an old man’s hammer.

Shi Feng lay back, delighted. It wasn’t elegant, but it could keep Ji Yuanhe’s rhythm without him. If the wardens accepted the sound, the old man could finally put down his hammer.

The test came on the next night shift.

Before he lit his furnace, he set the little lump of slag in the soot beside the furnace leg, where the heat was steady, and wound it. Then he picked up his ladle and cooked.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Across the arch, Ji Yuanhe’s hammer rang on the lid. Beside Shi Feng’s furnace, in the soot, the puppet answered it beat for beat. Two hammers in two places. To anyone listening, it was one rhythm, a little louder than usual.

“Seventy-one,” Clerk Shu said at the far table. “Seventy-two.”

The count never wavered. Half the night passed.

Then boots came down the ramp. A broad man in a grey guard’s coat stopped in the doorway. He had a jaw like a block of iron and a voice to match. Guard Captain Yu Tieshan almost never came down to the halls.

Shi Feng’s heart jumped, but his ladle didn’t.

Yu Tieshan stood there for ten breaths with his head tilted, listening.

“Your furnace sounds tired,” Yu Tieshan said.

“It’s the damp, Guard Captain Yu,” Shi Feng said meekly, without looking up. “The bed’s been wet all week.”

Yu Tieshan’s eyes moved over the furnace, the ladle and the soot. They passed right over the lump of slag by the leg.

“Shu,” Yu Tieshan said.

“Ninety-four. Ninety-five,” Clerk Shu said. “Steady.”

Yu Tieshan grunted. He turned and walked back up the ramp. His boots kept perfect time all the way to the top.

Shi Feng let out his breath slowly, and stirred the furnace.

Beside it, in the soot, the little machine went on tapping.