Chapter 659 — Queue on the Left

CHAPTER 659

Queue on the Left

On the last night of spring, Shi Feng sat at the counter with a brush, a pot of his best ink and forty-one small bottles.

He wrote each label slowly, in the neatest hand he owned. The grade. The dose. What not to take it with. What to do if somebody took two.

Ji Yuanhe sat beside him on a stool and counted the bottles as they were finished.

“Twenty-six,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Twenty-seven.”

“Master Ji, look at this one,” Shi Feng said, holding it up to the lamp. “Not with wine. Not with ginseng. Not if you’re angry. That’s three taboos for an old woman who’s angry every day. I should charge myself for writing it.”

“Twenty-eight,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“You’re not listening,” Shi Feng told Ji Yuanhe, amused. He bent over the label again. “Fine. I’ll write it smaller.”

The last bottle was the best thing he’d made in Wanhe. It was a Soul Formation-grade long-life tonic, Perfect, and a mortal couldn’t take it straight. One drop in a pot of broth would spread it thin enough to mend a pair of knees and add years without breaking anything. He wrote the label twice before he was happy with it, and set it on top of the crate.

Then he took out the deeds.

Notary Liao had stamped them that afternoon, in the back room, behind a closed door. Shi Feng had paid him a fee for the stamps and a second fee for his silence until noon tomorrow. Notary Liao had taken both and said he’d never been paid to keep quiet about a gift before.

The first deed gave the shop to the Taos, rent-free for ten years.

The other ten deeds were the rest of Lamp-Oil Lane. Shi Feng signed each one over to Tao Erniang, with one clause in bold that Notary Liao had laughed at: the rents stay at the old price, and no owner may ever raise them.

They took me in before they knew what I could make, Shi Feng thought. He signed the last deed. Their rents wouldn’t rise when the lane became famous.

He tied the deeds with string and put them in the crate under the bottles. Then he carried the crate to the back door and set it down on the step, where Tao Erniang would find it on her way to the slop bucket.

He’d told her he was leaving after the noon noodles tomorrow. He hadn’t said which tomorrow. Senior Brother would call that a very honest lie.

When he came back in, Ji Yuanhe was standing at the front door, looking up at the sign.

It hung under the old FENG SHI board that Tao Xiaoyu had painted on the first day. Shi Feng had written it himself in his second month on the lane, after the queue blocked the canal bridge three days running.

COMMISSIONS. FEES HIGH. QUEUE ON THE LEFT.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Shi Feng said, folding his arms. “Look at the stroke on HIGH. Look at the hook on LEFT. I’ve written a lot of things in my life, Master Ji, but that’s my masterpiece.”

“Seven,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“Seven perfect words,” Shi Feng agreed.

He thought about taking it down and decided to leave it. The lane would need something to complain about.

At dawn the river dock was grey and cold, and the first junk north was loading rice.

An old man with a brazier sold roasted sweet potatoes at the foot of the gangplank. Shi Feng bought one for two coppers and broke it open. The steam smelled right.

“Good?” the old vendor asked.

“Very good,” Shi Feng said, chewing. “Not as good as my senior brother’s. He roasts them in a furnace that cost more than this dock. But very good.”

“Then buy two,” the old vendor said.

Shi Feng bought two, and gave the second to Ji Yuanhe.

“All aboard for Tianjing!” the junk master bawled. “Last call!”

“You told Mother noon,” Tao Xiaoyu said behind him.

Shi Feng turned around. Tao Xiaoyu stood at the end of the dock with the Commission Book under her arm. Her hair was a mess and one of her shoes was on the wrong foot. She had clearly run the whole way.

“I said after the noon noodles,” Shi Feng said. “I didn’t say which day’s.”

“I knew you’d cheat,” Tao Xiaoyu said coldly. “I only came to check you paid the junk fare. The shop’s name goes where you go. If you skip a fare in Tianjing, it’s FENG SHI they’ll curse.”

“I paid it,” Shi Feng said. “In full. With a receipt.”

“Show me,” Tao Xiaoyu said.

He showed her. She read the whole receipt, both sides, and handed it back without a word.

“Xiaoyu,” Shi Feng said. “You’ll keep the Book?”

“Of course I’ll keep the Book,” Tao Xiaoyu snapped. “Who else can read your handwriting?”

“You’ve checked everything,” Shi Feng said gently. “Go home before your mother finds the back step.”

Tao Xiaoyu looked at him for a moment. Then she lifted her chin and didn’t move.

Shi Feng laughed and walked up the gangplank with Ji Yuanhe behind him.

The ropes came off the posts. The junk swung out into the brown current, and the dock began to slide away. Ji Yuanhe stood at the rail, holding his sweet potato in both hands. His lips were already moving.

On the dock, Tao Xiaoyu cupped her hands around her mouth.

“One!” Tao Xiaoyu shouted across the water. “Two! Three!”

Ji Yuanhe’s shoulders loosened.

“Four,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Five.”

Her voice carried over the river after them, number by number, long after her face was too small to see.