Chapter 637 — Stocked in the Tower

CHAPTER 637

Stocked in the Tower

“The northern clan is barred from the Wanhe market hall for ten years,” Steward Tan Shou read, “and fined two hundred thousand spirit stones, payable to the city.”

He rolled the scroll up neatly. The Pavilion’s side room was warm and quiet, and the tea was real. Branch Master Cen Rong sat at the head of the table and drank it without a word.

“And my schedule?” Shi Feng asked.

“Paid in full by the envoy before he left the city,” Tan Shou said, and set a small pouch on the table. “Cup, floor and door. Two hundred stones. He asked me to say he admired the paper.”

The pouch held exactly two hundred.

“Then the north has good manners,” Shi Feng said. “And the two porters?”

Tan Shou paused for half a breath. It was a very polite pause.

“Released from the City Lord’s cells this morning,” Tan Shou said. “For lack of evidence.”

“The flask was evidence,” Shi Feng said. “I said so. Your men heard me.”

“The flask was examined,” Tan Shou said, “and found to contain tea.”

Shi Feng smiled widely.

“Then I’d like to buy the rest of it,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll drink it in front of the City Lord, and he can watch me tell him how good it is.”

“...” Tan Shou said nothing at all.

The city takes the fine and releases the men who attacked me, Shi Feng thought. Calling the flask tea was how the evidence disappeared — a settlement with the clan, not a judgment.

Tan Shou bowed and left. Cen Rong set her cup down only after his footsteps were gone.

“Don’t be angry with him,” Cen Rong said. “He did more than his master wanted. Wanhe can punish a thief. It can’t hold a clan.”

“He paid for the cup,” Shi Feng said. “That doesn't make what was in it tea.”

“You were paid for a cup,” Cen Rong said coldly. “Next time they won’t bring tea.” She looked out of the window, toward the white tower that rose over the branch’s courts. “The Pavilion tower has never lost a guest. Not in eleven hundred years.”

It was the first time she had ever said it. She said it to the window, as if it were a fact about the weather.

“What’s the rent?” Shi Feng asked.

“Ask me when you need it,” Cen Rong said. “Not before.”

That night he opened the Commission Book to the last page and wrote one line under the day’s sets, in small characters.

Protection: not sold in Wanhe. Stocked in the tower.

Three days later, the Pavilion’s winter auction hall was full to the back wall.

“Lot twelve, a Soul Formation-grade flame-stone,” Fan Baoshou whispered, holding the catalogue under his nose. “Worth forty thousand, young master. Forty, at most.”

“Twenty thousand,” Shi Feng called.

Across the aisle, a young master in grey fox fur turned around at once. Shi Feng had seen him before. He drank with Zhuo Heng every night at the Willow Wine House, and he’d been in the Pavilion appraisal hall the day Zhuo Heng was made to bow.

“Thirty thousand,” the fox-fur young master said loudly. “Since when does a lane bumpkin bid on Pavilion lots?”

“Forty,” Shi Feng said.

“Sixty!”

“Seventy,” Shi Feng said, sounding nervous.

“A hundred thousand!” the young master shouted, and half the hall turned to look at him.

Shi Feng let his face fall and lowered his paddle. The hammer came down at a hundred and twenty thousand, after an old man in the back row pushed the price up just for fun.

“A flame-stone worth forty, for a hundred and twenty?”

“Whose son is that?”

“Somebody’s father is going to beat him tonight.”

Fan Baoshou stared at Shi Feng.

“Young master, you never wanted that stone,” Fan Baoshou said.

“Never,” Shi Feng murmured, opening the catalogue to lot nineteen. “He wanted to beat me, not buy the stone. He stopped checking the price, so I let him win it. Now he's spent a hundred and twenty thousand and has to explain it at home. His steward won't let him bid freely on the next lot.”

“This Fan has done business in Wanhe for thirty years,” Fan Baoshou said, beaming, “and he’s never seen anyone fleece a man without spending a copper!”

“Lot nineteen,” the auctioneer announced. “The Riverless Step, a Soul Formation-grade movement art. Its master crosses water as if the river were not there. The reserve is one hundred thousand.”

Shi Feng raised his paddle. “A hundred and ten,” Shi Feng bid clearly.

The fox-fur young master’s hand twitched. His steward caught his sleeve and held on tightly. The young master’s face went from red to white, and he sat on his hands.

“A hundred and forty,” a buyer at the front said.

“A hundred and fifty,” Shi Feng said.

Nobody spoke. The hammer fell.

“Sold, at one hundred and fifty thousand,” the auctioneer said, bowing toward him with perfect courtesy. “May the Pavilion have the honoured buyer’s name for the register?”

“Feng Shi,” Shi Feng said. “Lamp-Oil Lane.”

Across the aisle, the fox-fur young master’s steward was already leaning into the Zhuo box, talking fast and low. His master had bid past his purse, and the steward wanted the Zhuo seal to stand behind the balance until morning.

Zhuo Heng had watched the whole lot without bidding. He did not look once toward Shi Feng’s seat. “The Zhuo seal doesn’t leave the house,” Zhuo Heng said, at the volume of a man ordering wine, so the front rows heard it. “Not for a man who loses an auction to a noodle cook.”

The steward bowed and went back. The young master’s face was still white.

A murmur ran along the rows. In the front, a grey-haired buyer in a travelling cloak, who hadn’t turned his head all morning, slowly turned it now and looked at him for a long time.

“Lamp-Oil Lane,” the old man repeated quietly, as if he were writing it down.