Chapter 601 — The Furnace Clause

CHAPTER 601

The Furnace Clause

“Rent first!” Tao Erniang shouted. “Four thousand for three months, deposit included, and if you don’t like it, the river’s that way!”

She was a broad woman with flour up to her elbows and a ladle in her fist like a general’s baton. Behind her, Old Tao’s Noodles steamed and clattered, and twenty porters slurped at the long bench without looking up.

Next door stood the dead apothecary. It had a carved lintel, a dusty counter, a back room with a black iron furnace, and a cellar that smelled of nothing at all. In Wanhe, a cellar that smelled of nothing was worth more than gold.

“Four thousand is fair, Auntie Tao,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll take it.”

Tao Erniang blinked. She’d clearly been ready for an hour of shouting.

“Then sign!” Tao Erniang said, a little disappointed.

“First, Brother Fan’s contract,” Shi Feng said, and held out his hand.

Fan Baoshou handed over the densely written sheet with a confident smile. Shi Feng took his time reading every line before reaching for the brush.

He read it again, amused. The broker had counted on a frontier newcomer being too eager for a shop to examine its contract.

“Brother Fan,” Shi Feng said warmly. “First, this clause. One in twenty of every sale from this shop, for ten years. You found me a door, not a furnace. Second, this one. The tenant pays the broker’s tea, wine and sedan fare, forever. Third, this little one at the bottom, where any dispute is judged by the broker.” He smiled. “You wrote it yourself, so you won’t mind striking it.”

“That… that’s a misunderstanding!” Fan Baoshou cried. “The clerk copied the wrong sheet!”

“Then the clerk can strike it,” Shi Feng said, and held out the brush.

Finding a door didn’t entitle Fan Baoshou to ten years of furnace work. Shi Feng waited with the brush ready. He meant to pay a fair broker’s fee, not make the man his silent partner.

Fan Baoshou struck the three lines himself, sweating. What was left was a fair fee for a fair door, paid once.

The porters at the bench had stopped slurping to watch.

“The frontier boy can read!” one of them said.

“Fan Baoshou lost his one in twenty!”

“Write it on the wall, Auntie! It’s never happened before!”

“…” said Fan Baoshou.

Tao Erniang laughed so loudly her ladle shook. Then she remembered herself and pointed it at Shi Feng.

“And the money?” Tao Erniang demanded.

Shi Feng had seven hundred and ninety stones. He put five hundred and eighty on the counter.

“That’s what I can pay today,” Shi Feng said. “The other three thousand four hundred and twenty, you can chalk up on your noodle board. I’ll clear it before the first quarter’s out.”

“On tick?” Tao Erniang shouted. “A frontier boy, a mad old man and three thousand on tick!”

“Three thousand four hundred and twenty,” Shi Feng corrected helpfully.

Tao Erniang glared until her eyes reached Ji Yuanhe counting bowls at the bench. She hesitated, then turned to the noodle board. Beneath PORK BONE, TWO STONES, she chalked the debt. Shi Feng didn’t interrupt her change of mind.

“Rent first,” Tao Erniang muttered. “Everything else after.”

Notary Liao’s office was two lanes over, up one flight of stairs. He was a thin, cheerful man with ink on his teeth.

Shi Feng laid out his commission template. It was the standard Empire form, with one clause written large and dark in his own hand.

“Sets beyond the delivered half, and any waste, belong to the furnace,” Notary Liao read aloud, and laughed. “You wrote the furnace clause in bold? Young man, every contract in the Empire says that. Clients bring two sets for one pill, half fail, and the client gets his pill. Nobody has ever seen a surplus.”

“Then it costs you nothing to sign,” Shi Feng said, grinning.

Notary Liao shrugged and dipped his seal in the red paste.

“Spoken words are wind, written words are proof,” Notary Liao said, and pressed it down. “A hundred and twenty for the seal, Alchemist Feng.”

Shi Feng paid. The last ninety went on charcoal, and his pouch was empty.

By evening the shop was swept. Ji Yuanhe sat in the back room beside the cold furnace, his fingers tapping on his knee.

A thin girl of about fourteen leaned in the doorway with a paint pot. This was Tao Xiaoyu, Tao Erniang’s daughter. She had Tao Erniang’s square chin, flour on one cheek, and the calm eyes of a moneylender.

“Your shop has no sign,” Tao Xiaoyu said. “I paint signs.”

“How much?” Shi Feng asked.

“Sixty in every hundred of your first day’s tickets,” Tao Xiaoyu said.

“Sixty?” Shi Feng asked. “That’s robbery.”

“You have no money,” Tao Xiaoyu said. “Sixty of nothing is nothing. If you sell nothing, I’ve painted for free.”

Shi Feng respected the offer despite the share she demanded. Tao Xiaoyu was risking her own work on a shop with no customers. She’d noticed he couldn’t pay cash and given him a way to open anyway.

“Deal,” Shi Feng said.

She climbed the ladder and painted two characters over the door in thick black strokes. FENG SHI. They were a little crooked. The paint ran on the second one.

[Cash: 0 | Owed: 3,420]

When Shi Feng went back inside, Ji Yuanhe had stopped tapping. The old man was looking straight at the black iron furnace, which hadn’t been lit in a year.

He raised one thin finger and pointed at it.

“…One,” Ji Yuanhe said.