Chapter 611 — Nothing, and the First Try

CHAPTER 611

Nothing, and the First Try

Zhuo Tingsong drank his tea while four of his clerks went through the archives.

The Zhuo house kept its records in a long dry room above the tea room. Two hundred years of rolls filled the shelves: herb prices, apprentice registers, guest books, letters from other Old Houses. The clerks climbed ladders and called out what they found.

“Frontier women, twenty years back… nothing, Grandmaster.”

“Crescent hairpins. Nothing in the guest gifts.”

“Nothing in the dowry lists either.”

“Then try one more,” Shi Feng said. “Anything about the Serene Jade Sect.”

The room went quiet.

The clerk on the tallest ladder stopped with a roll halfway out. The others looked at their master. Zhuo Tingsong slowly put down his cup. He looked genuinely alarmed by the sect’s name.

“Young friend,” Zhuo Tingsong said. “Old Houses don’t keep that name in their rolls. We keep our heads instead.”

“Then a person,” Shi Feng said. “Nangong Xiuyi.”

Zhuo Tingsong thought about it honestly. He looked at his clerks. One by one, they shook their heads.

“This old man has never heard it,” Zhuo Tingsong said. “Not in seventy years.”

Shi Feng nodded. He’d expected that. He’d still had to ask.

“Haste doesn’t get you there,” Zhuo Tingsong said gently, and refilled both cups. “An Old House knows what’s sold on a river. If you want to know what’s hidden, ask the Records Hall at the Pavilion branch. They know everything that can be paid for.”

“And what can’t be?” Shi Feng asked.

“Then nobody knows it,” Zhuo Tingsong said. “Or nobody who’d tell you.”

That afternoon, back at the shop, Shi Feng took out a scrap of paper and wrote it down.

Asked: jewellers, the registry, the Old Houses. Answer: nothing. Cost: eleven copper and a sketch.

He looked at the line and laughed.

“Master Ji,” Shi Feng said. “Three tries, and the best offer I got was the ninth shop. It offered to sell me my own drawing at half price. That’s a discount, at least.”

“Nine,” Ji Yuanhe said.

He'd found nothing yet, Shi Feng thought, but that wasn't a reason to give up. He could still ask at the Pavilion when he had the time and money.

He lit his own furnace before the evening rush.

Zhuo’s letter had opened the herb houses on Mortar Street. That morning he’d bought a Soul-Steadying set at wholesale, on credit, and Zhuo’s old herbalist, Old Gan, had carried the box over himself and stayed for noodles. Old Gan was eighty and deaf in one ear. He spoke bluntly enough that nobody mistook his advice for flattery.

“You’re changing the recipe?” Old Gan asked, squinting over the furnace. “For him?”

“For him,” Shi Feng said.

Ji Yuanhe sat on his stool by the wall. His fingers tapped his knee, and his lips moved. Next door, Tao Xiaoyu was stirring the big noodle pot, and her ladle knocked the rim in a steady beat. Ji’s counting always settled when she stirred.

Shi Feng cut the cold herbs fine and the warm ones coarse, and he added a pinch of river-mint that wasn’t in any book. The fire took them in order. The pill rose and the clouds came.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

He held it at six. Major Success. Ji Yuanhe didn't need a spectacular display. He needed a pill that could keep his soul steady.

“Master Ji,” Shi Feng said, and put it in the old man’s palm. “Dinner.”

Ji Yuanhe swallowed it.

“Four,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Five. Six…”

Then he stopped.

His fingers went still on his knee. His lips closed. For the first time since the cave under the cliff, Ji Yuanhe wasn’t counting anything at all, and this time nothing was breaking. He sat in the lamplight with his eyes on the doorway, where the noodle steam drifted past, and the corners of his mouth lifted. He was smiling at nothing.

Shi Feng didn’t move. Old Gan held his bowl halfway to his mouth. Next door, Tao Xiaoyu’s ladle had stopped too.

Eleven breaths.

Then Ji’s fingers twitched.

“One,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Two.”

Shi Feng let out a slow breath and turned to the furnace. He scraped a little of the dregs onto his finger and tasted them. The warm notes were all there. The steadying notes were there. But one part of the medicine was missing. The pill steadied Ji Yuanhe briefly, then failed to keep his soul together.

“Uncle Gan,” Shi Feng said. “The pill holds his soul together, but it can’t close it. There’s a note missing. Cold, clean, and quiet, like the bottom of a winter pond. It belongs at the very end, after the steadying.”

Old Gan put his bowl down.

“Cold and quiet, at the end,” Old Gan said. “That’s a Quiet Soul Lotus. I’ve seen two in my life.”

“Where can I buy one?” Shi Feng asked.

“You can’t,” Old Gan replied, wiping his mouth. “They only sell them in the capital. The Sky Pavilion holds one lot a year, and only holders of a 4 Mark licence may bid. A 3 Mark can’t even stand in the room.” He picked his bowl up again. “A heart’s sickness needs the heart’s medicine.”

The 4 Mark, Shi Feng thought. The capital.

Neither was something he could reach yet.

He went over to the stool and crouched in front of the old man.

“Master Ji, you smiled,” Shi Feng said, crouching close enough for the old man to hear. “Don’t think I didn’t see it. Xiaoyu, write it in the Book. ‘First smile. No charge.’”

“Three,” Ji Yuanhe said firmly.

“He’s denying it,” Tao Xiaoyu called through the wall. “I’ll write that down too.”

Shi Feng laughed and stood. That night, when the lane was dark, he counted out his money twice. Then he went next door, where Tao Xiaoyu was wiping tables.

“Xiaoyu,” Shi Feng said. “How do you send money to a place that doesn’t know where you are?”