Chapter 617 — The Third Drawer

CHAPTER 617

The Third Drawer

“A consignment dispute filed before noon is heard before dusk,” Rao Yingchun said, laying out the form. “Please write the grounds here, honoured guest.”

Shi Feng wrote one line. The pills appraised are not the pills consigned.

By the second hour after noon, the appraisal hall was full. Branch Master Cen Rong sat at the centre table with two Pavilion law officers in blue. Pang Qi stood beside his screen with his thumb ring turning round and round. Half the branch’s staff had found reasons to stand near the doors, and the clients from the lobby had followed them in.

Zhuo Heng had come back too. He’d taken the best spot by the pillar, eager to watch Shi Feng lose the argument.

“The boy’s disappointed, Branch Master,” Pang Qi said, spreading his soft hands. “Frontier pills, frontier prices. It happens every season.”

“Master Feng?” Cen Rong asked.

“Branch Master, I’d like the officers to open the cabinet behind Appraiser Pang’s screen,” Shi Feng said. “Third drawer, left side. Under a cloth.”

Pang Qi’s thumb ring stopped turning.

The officers went behind the screen. The third drawer on the left stuck halfway and gave its thin squeak. An officer lifted out a folded cloth, opened it on the table, and twelve pills rolled gently together in the lamplight. Each one had the deep, even sheen that only a high count left behind.

“Fetch Senior Appraiser Yan,” Cen Rong said.

Senior Appraiser Yan Zhi was a stooped old man with a crystal lens on a cord. He held each pill to the lens, sniffed it, and set it down in a row.

“Perfect,” Yan Zhi said. “Eight clouds, every one. Nascent Soul-grade. Six thousand stones each at today’s market. Seventy-two thousand.”

“Those are my own stock!” Pang Qi said quickly. “I keep my own pills in that drawer. Anyone would.”

“Then they’ll have intake slips,” Shi Feng said. “Every pill in an appraiser’s drawer carries a slip. Clerk Rao told me that this morning, very kindly.”

The officers searched the drawer. There were no slips.

Shi Feng took the folded receipt from his sleeve and laid it on the table beside the twelve.

“First,” Shi Feng said, “Appraiser Pang wrote, sealed and signed that the twelve pills in my bottle were Common, four hundred each. Second, he says those are his own. Then where did he get the twelve Common ones he handed me? Third, smell them.” He uncorked his bottle and set it beside the cloth. “Senior Appraiser?”

Yan Zhi sniffed the bottle, then the row on the cloth.

“Two different fires,” Yan Zhi said. “The bottle is charcoal. These are clean as hot iron.” He looked up at Pang Qi for the first time. “Heaven’s net is wide and its mesh is loose, but nothing slips through.”

The hall broke into noise.

“He swapped a client’s pills? In the Pavilion’s own hall?”

“And stamped the receipt himself!”

“He lifted a rock and dropped it on his own foot!”

“Seventy-two thousand… that’s a hanging offence for a marked appraiser…”

“…”

Pang Qi’s knees gave way, and he sat down on the floor beside his screen.

“Why didn’t you argue at the screen?” Cen Rong asked, watching Shi Feng closely.

“If I’d argued there, he'd have hidden the twelve pills and said I misheard him,” Shi Feng explained. “He thought I believed his valuation, so he signed it. I wanted his claim in writing before he knew I'd seen through him.”

Cen Rong looked at him a moment longer. Then she turned to the officers.

“Pang Qi is struck from the roll,” Cen Rong said. “His licence is revoked. He goes to the City Lord’s court tonight, with this receipt.” She raised her voice so that every appraiser by the doors could hear. “Let this branch see it done. Pang Qi picked up sesame seeds and lost the watermelon.”

The officers lifted Pang Qi by the arms.

By the pillar, Zhuo Heng turned pale. His friend's trick had been exposed before the whole branch. He took one step toward the side door.

“Young Master Zhuo!” Shi Feng called, delighted. “Don’t go yet. You came all this way to watch me fail twice. It’d be rude to leave before the best part.”

Zhuo Heng froze.

He was saved from answering by a voice at the main door. Grandmaster Zhuo Tingsong strode in, his beard still short from the furnace bang. Someone in the lobby had clearly run all the way to the Zhuo house.

He looked at the pills, at Pang Qi being led out, and at his grandson.

“Bow,” Zhuo Tingsong said.

“Grandfather, I didn’t touch—” Zhuo Heng began.

“He’s your friend. You stood here laughing while he cheated a guest,” Zhuo Tingsong said coldly. “Bow.”

Zhuo Heng bowed. His face was burning.

“This junior apologises to Master Feng,” Zhuo Heng said through his teeth.

“Young friend, the Zhuo house is ashamed,” Zhuo Tingsong said, and bowed his own white head a little too.

“The Grandmaster has nothing to be ashamed of,” Shi Feng said, cupping his fists. Then he turned to the table. “Branch Master, there’s also the matter of my waiting. I’ve spent a full working day in this hall instead of at my furnace. Three hundred stones, billed to Pang Qi’s bond?”

“Granted,” Cen Rong said. “And the branch will buy the twelve at the Senior Appraiser’s value, as damages. Today.”

Two weeks of commissions were already in the Book. Shi Feng did the sum walking home and laughed out loud in the street.

[Stones: 55,000 → 230,000 | Note: 103,000 in commissions, 72,000 in damages.]

That evening Tao Xiaoyu hung a new board under the FENG SHI sign, painted in her biggest characters.

VALUATIONS BY THE PAVILION ONLY.

“It was a Pavilion appraiser who cheated you,” Tao Erniang pointed out from her noodle pot.

“And the Pavilion paid for it,” Tao Xiaoyu said. “That’s the point.”

The next morning the queue was a third longer. Ticket forty-one was a quiet man in grey sleeves.