Chapter 657 — Ladles and Pokers

CHAPTER 657

Ladles and Pokers

Shi Feng walked back from the canal at sunrise with his left arm in a sling, and found Lamp-Oil Lane waiting for him with weapons.

Tao Erniang stood in front of the shop with a rolling pin. Behind her were three washerwomen with ladles, the cobbler with his iron last, and the oil seller’s two sons with a carrying pole. At the front stood Fan Baoshou, red-faced, gripping a cudgel as thick as his wrist.

“Whoever touched my tenant!” Fan Baoshou shouted at the empty street. “Come out! This Fan will break your leg!”

“It was my arm, Broker Fan,” Shi Feng said.

“Then this Fan will break his leg anyway!” Fan Baoshou roared. “As interest!”

Tao Erniang turned, saw the sling, and went white, then red.

“You went out?” Tao Erniang shouted. “With a broken arm? Alone? At dawn? Are you trying to make an old woman die early?”

“I wanted to see if the canal was still there, Auntie Tao,” Shi Feng said cheerfully. “It is.”

Tao Erniang raised the rolling pin, then lowered it again.

“…” Tao Erniang looked at him helplessly, still gripping the rolling pin.

Shi Feng looked down the line of ladles and wanted very badly to laugh. Every one of them was mortal. The man with the grey band could have flattened the whole lane with one sleeve, and they had all come out anyway, in their sleeping clothes.

At the lane mouth stood Zhuo Heng with four Zhuo apprentices, holding a long iron furnace poker. There was still ash on the end of it.

“Young Master Zhuo?” Shi Feng said, surprised. “How long have you been there?”

“Since midnight,” Zhuo Heng said stiffly. “The house’s proxy doesn’t get taken off our lane.”

“Our lane?” Shi Feng asked.

“Plum rain, no one stays dry,” Zhuo Heng said, not looking at him. “If they can take you, the Zhuo House is next. That’s all.”

Shi Feng nodded once, and let it stand.

“Thank you,” Shi Feng said warmly, and he meant it. Then he looked at the poker. “Isn’t that from your grandfather’s third furnace?”

“I borrowed it,” Zhuo Heng said, his ears reddening as he shifted his grip.

“Does he know?” Shi Feng asked.

“…He will,” Zhuo Heng said.

“Then I’ll tell him you defended the lane with it very bravely,” Shi Feng said. “Against nobody, all night.”

The apprentices coughed. Zhuo Heng gripped the poker tighter and didn’t leave.

Shi Feng opened the Commission Book out of habit and found nothing to write. Nobody here owed him anything. No fee for this, Shi Feng thought. They’d spent the night guarding a man who could defend them better than they could defend him. He closed the Book.

“Tea for everyone, Xiaoyu,” Shi Feng said. “On the shop.”

“On the shop?” Tao Xiaoyu asked. “Are you sick?”

She didn’t laugh, though. She waited until the lane had gone in for tea, then held out her hand. On her palm lay a strip of grey cloth, about a finger wide.

“It was tied on the sign’s nail when I came down to open,” Tao Xiaoyu said quietly. “Nobody in the lane wears grey. I asked them all.”

Shi Feng looked at the strip for a long time.

He worked it out plainly. The taker had stopped dead at the tower’s threshold, because a tower has a line. Lamp-Oil Lane had no line. It had a rolling pin, three ladles and a broker with a cudgel. If the man wanted to hurt the nose that ruined his market, the lane was the easy target.

“You did well,” Shi Feng said, and put the strip in his sleeve. “Don’t tell your mother.”

The next morning, Branch Master Cen Rong unwound the splint in her office on the fourth floor of the tower and pressed two cool fingers along the bone.

“It’s knitting already,” Cen Rong said.

He laid the grey strip on her desk. Cen Rong didn’t touch it.

“Put it away,” Cen Rong said. “In this office, it’s a strip of cloth. Bandits drop all sorts of things.”

“Now let me tell you what Wanhe can’t do,” Cen Rong continued, binding his arm again. “So you don’t pay for it later. The tower protects what’s inside its doors. Your lane is outside.”

“And?” Shi Feng asked.

“And the 4 Mark sittings are held only in Tianjing,” Cen Rong said. “So are the Records Hall’s higher desks. Wanhe has neither.”

“Is that all?” Shi Feng asked.

“The willow bends but doesn’t break,” Cen Rong said, and took out a sheet of tower paper. “The man on Tower Street stopped at a line. Lines are all a branch has.”

Shi Feng read it upside down. The One-Tribulation Pill. The eight clouds on the book. The nine at the Contest. The East Market purge. No praise, only facts and dates. At the bottom: Recommended from the Wanhe branch to the Ninefold Tower, Tianjing, under my seal.

It was the first Pavilion paper that had ever been on his side.

“How much do I owe for this?” Shi Feng asked.

“The Pavilion doesn’t sell its recommendations,” Cen Rong said.

“Then I’ll owe it,” Shi Feng said. “I hate owing, Branch Master.”

Cen Rong almost smiled, and sealed it.

“The Pavilion keeps a register of missing Marks,” Shi Feng said. “Doesn’t it?”

“Every branch,” Cen Rong said. She opened a drawer and took out a long black book. “Whose name?”

“Pei Wuyan. Three Mark,” Shi Feng said. “He died in a corridor. In the Pill Pit.”

Cen Rong didn’t ask where that was, or how he knew. She dipped her brush and wrote it in her own hand: Pei Wuyan, 3 Mark, died in the corridor of the Pill Pit. Then the date.

“Reported by?” Cen Rong asked.

“A fellow tenant,” Shi Feng said.

She wrote that too.

A name on a wall that matters, Master Pei, Shi Feng thought. Paid.

Cen Rong closed the black book and folded her hands on it.

“You know the law,” Cen Rong said. “A Mark is sealed to a man, not to a shop sign. You’ll sign your true name when you sit.”

“Then I’ll sit when I can survive being found,” Shi Feng said.

Cen Rong looked at him for a long time and said nothing.

“Senior Brother has a lesson for it,” Shi Feng added, standing and tucking the recommendation into his robe. “Never walk in the front door of a house that’s looking for you.”

“And the back door?” Cen Rong asked.

“He hasn’t taught me that one yet,” Shi Feng said with a grin. “I’ll have to make it up.”