Chapter 600 — Unmarked Rates

CHAPTER 600

Unmarked Rates

“Within the Empire, a regional Mark lets you sell, but it sells at unmarked rates until it’s sat again at an Empire tower,” Clerk Rao Yingchun said. “I’m very sorry, honoured guest.”

“So a 3 Mark from the frontier sells at the same price as a man with a pot by the road,” Shi Feng said.

“Yes, honoured guest,” Clerk Rao Yingchun said, and bowed again.

The silk-robed alchemist behind him laughed so hard he had to hold the rope.

Shi Feng didn’t object. Selling at unmarked rates would keep important people from investigating the frontier newcomer, and he needed customers before reputation. Once he was safer, he could decide whether an Empire examination was worth the attention it would bring.

The bell at the back sounded again. The last tablet went up, and Clerk Rao Yingchun entered the winning name and the figure in her ledger: the silk-robed alchemist, at a price that quieted the hall.

Shi Feng priced the pill as he priced everything in the Pit — silverleaf, cloud marrow, an hour held at the fourth cloud. His own figure came out lower than the one the clerk had written down. He had no tablet and no silver to spare, and at that price he would not have raised one.

The stamp came down. Red ink, a small seal, the characters FENG SHI, UNMARKED RATES. Clerk Rao Yingchun blew it dry and handed it over with both hands.

“May I ask one more thing, Clerk Rao?” Shi Feng asked. “If a man wanted to find out about a person, or an old contract, where in Wanhe would he ask?”

“The Records Hall annex, behind this building,” Clerk Rao Yingchun said. “Archivist Lou Ming keeps it. A sitting there costs ten thousand stones.”

“Ten thousand for a question?” Shi Feng asked.

“For a sitting, honoured guest,” Clerk Rao Yingchun said gently. “It’s the same thing.”

Ten thousand, Shi Feng thought. He had eight hundred and twenty. Then I’ll just have to make sure it’s a very good question.

“Thank you,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll be back when I’m rich.”

“The branch will look forward to it,” Clerk Rao Yingchun said.

He’d taken three steps out of the door when a round man in a yellow robe popped out from behind a stone lion.

“Young master! Young master from the frontier!” Fan Baoshou cried, bowing so low his hat nearly fell off. “This Fan Baoshou heard everything. A new alchemist in Wanhe needs a hall, and halls in Wanhe are like good wives. Nobody finds one alone!”

“And you find them for a fee,” Shi Feng said.

“One in twenty!” Fan Baoshou said, beaming. “A distant relative is no match for a close neighbour, young master. From today, consider this Fan your close neighbour!”

He took them to the first hall at once. It sat behind the tannery, and the smell of wet hides hit them twenty paces off.

“The rent’s very fair,” Fan Baoshou said, holding his sleeve over his nose.

“Every herb I bring in here will smell of cow,” Shi Feng said. “Next.”

The second hall was by the fish market, three storeys up. The stairs were rotten and the flue had a crack as wide as a finger.

“A little smoke never killed anyone!” Fan Baoshou said.

“The last tenant might disagree,” Shi Feng said, pointing at a shrine tablet still nailed by the door.

Fan Baoshou looked at the tablet and became very interested in the ceiling.

“Fifty-six,” Ji Yuanhe said, counting the stairs on the way down.

Fan Baoshou studied the torn robe and the new stamp, and Shi Feng saw him reconsider what sort of shop this customer might accept. The first two places had failed.

“There’s one more place,” Fan Baoshou said slowly. “A dead apothecary on Lamp-Oil Lane, with a good furnace and a dry cellar. But the landlady… well. Young master looks brave. This Fan will come for you at dawn.”

At dusk Shi Feng bought a roast sweet potato from a cart by the river. It cost three stones. It was stringy and burnt on one side.

“Senior Brother’s sweet potato was never this overpriced,” Shi Feng told Ji Yuanhe, chewing. “Or this bad. When I get home, I’ll tell him Wanhe lost to him. He’ll be unbearable for a month.”

“Eleven,” Ji Yuanhe said, counting the barges.

“Yes. Eleven months, at least,” Shi Feng said cheerfully. “He’ll be unbearable for a year.”

The inn room had one bed and one window. Shi Feng paid extra for its brazier. Only eleven days had passed since the cave, though the medicine should have lasted a month. Ji Yuanhe’s tapping had grown restless all evening. Shi Feng listened, worried the effect was already fading.

He set the stone pot on the coals, opened the herb case and laid out the gentlest herbs it still held, white root and a pinch of grave moss, the nearest thing to Quiet Dew he had left. Then he lit the fire. It was a simple pill, a Soul-Steadying Pill, and it only had to hold the old man together for one more month.

Two clouds rose over the pot, thin and grey. Common.

Better medicine needed better herbs and money he didn’t have. Shi Feng watched the two thin clouds fade. This pill could hold the cracks closed; it couldn’t fix what the Pit had done, and he would need a real treatment.

Ji Yuanhe swallowed the pill without looking at it. His hands, which had been tapping the windowsill all evening, slowed down.

“Lie down, Master Ji,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll count tonight.”

Ji Yuanhe lay down on the bed. Shi Feng sat on the floor with his back against the frame.

“One,” Shi Feng said. “Two. Three.”

He counted slowly, keeping the rhythm of Ji Yuanhe’s old furnace lid. After ninety, the old man stopped following with his lips. By a hundred and forty, he was asleep. Shi Feng lowered his voice but kept the beat unchanged.

Shi Feng kept counting quietly until two hundred, just in case.

At dawn, someone knocked on the door three times, very fast.

“Young master! Up, up!” Fan Baoshou called through the wood, sounding both excited and scared. “Hurry! The landlady bites before noon!”