Chapter 586 — Soon

CHAPTER 586

Soon

On the next night shift, Shi Feng wound the machine, set it in the soot, and waited until its beat had locked onto Ji Yuanhe’s hammer.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Then he lifted his ladle and tapped the rim of his furnace.

Two short. One long. Two short again.

They’d built a small vocabulary over weeks: alive, bad food, guard and sleep. This rhythm was different. Shi Feng made it in the first week but never sent it. He wouldn’t give Ji Yuanhe a promise until he believed he could keep it.

Soon.

Across the arch, Ji Yuanhe’s lips were moving.

“Four hundred and—” Ji Yuanhe said to his flame.

He stopped.

His hammer stopped with him, lifted a finger’s width above the lid. For the first time in a year, the old man’s count simply wasn’t there. His hand hung in the air and shook.

Shi Feng didn’t breathe.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

The machine kept the beat for one bar, then two and three. Shi Feng listened for any change at Clerk Shu’s table. There was none. Without Ji Yuanhe’s hammer, the little device sounded enough like the old man still working.

“Two hundred and six,” Clerk Shu said. “Two hundred and seven.”

Far above them, two wardens sat on their stools at the gate and heard the mountain breathing the way it always did.

Ji Yuanhe’s eyes turned slowly toward station nine. They were wet.

The hammer came down half a beat late.

“…Four hundred and seventy-eight,” Ji Yuanhe said hoarsely, and went on.

When Ji Yuanhe resumed, the two rhythms joined again. Shi Feng lowered his face over the furnace, hiding his relief. The interruption had gone unnoticed. The old man knew now why he’d been given that word.

The map was complete, the machine worked and Ji Yuanhe understood. Shi Feng only needed Ning Zhe to leave; he would use the receiver’s absence, not risk the escape while those watchful eyes were still in the halls.

At quarter-day on the frontier, a Martial Palace envoy nailed a notice to Artificer Hall’s gate.

He used four nails. He did it at noon, when the yard was full, and he read it out loud in a voice made for it.

“By the terms of the Qingyun pill contracts, renewal requires the Hall’s registered 3 Mark alchemist to be present!” the envoy announced. “The Hall’s 3 Mark is absent. Therefore Artificer Hall must defend its Great Sect seat in a bout at the new moon, or cede the contracts and the seat to Martial Palace!”

“The standard poaching clause also stands,” the envoy added. “Until the bout, any disciple may transfer to Martial Palace without penalty.”

The yard erupted.

“The new moon? That’s eleven days!”

“They just did…”

Zhu Liu ran to the gate with an ink brush still in his hand and started copying the notice onto a receipt.

Two outer disciples by the kiln steps took half a step toward the envoy. A third pulled one back by the sleeve, and both stayed where they were. The clause went onto Zhu Liu’s receipt with the rest of the notice, and the men at the gate read it over his shoulder.

Sect Master Li Changyuan leaned on his broom by the hall steps and looked at the four nails for a long time.

“Taking advantage of a fire to loot,” Li Changyuan said.

The envoy didn’t look at him. He rolled up his copy of the notice and tucked it into his sleeve.

At the side door of the kiln yard, Lin Langtian stood with one foot over the threshold and a travel bag on his shoulder. It was a new bag. Li Changyuan was still keeping the old one as collateral.

Lin Langtian looked from the notice to the side door. He’d meant to leave for the north. For one breath, he stood without smiling, choosing between searching for Shi Feng and keeping a place for him to return to.

Then he walked back into the yard, dropped the bag on the steps and shouted loud enough to rattle the gate.

“Accepted! Artificer Hall accepts! Write it down, envoy, and spell my name properly!” Lin Langtian roared. “A grievance has its source and a debt has its debtor! I’m collecting this one myself, and when my junior brother gets back, he’ll bill you for the inconvenience!”

The envoy’s smile slipped a little.

“And who will Artificer Hall send?” the envoy asked.

“Yours truly, naturally!” Lin Langtian said cheerfully. “Who else would you want?”

The bout needed a bond of four thousand stones by sundown. The Hall’s treasury held nine hundred.

Sima Lan didn’t ask anyone. She opened the stall at the gate, set out every pill Shi Feng had left in stock, and wrote a new price on the board in her crisp, exact hand. It was three times the old one.

“Triple?” a Martial Palace disciple shouted from the queue. “That’s robbery!”

“Supply has fallen,” Sima Lan said coolly. “The alchemist is billing his absence. Next.”

The disciple bought two bottles anyway.

By sundown, the stall was empty. Four thousand stones sat counted and tied on Zhu Liu’s desk, and Zhu Liu wrote out a receipt for the bond with trembling hands.

Sima Lan reached under the counter and touched the last bottle. She had kept it back. She didn’t put it on the board.

Rare goods are worth hoarding, Sima Lan told herself. That was the only reason.

Across the yard, Lin Langtian sat on the steps beside his new bag and didn’t open it.

Until the new moon, he couldn’t go north.