Chapter 669 — The Last Seat

CHAPTER 669

The Last Seat

The Jiang house held its autumn banquet beside a carp pond as wide as a parade ground.

Red lanterns hung over the water. Three hundred guests sat at long tables in order of rank, and the Situ favour had bought Shi Feng the very last seat at the very last table, beside a pillar.

“A curiosity from the provinces,” the steward announced, without looking at him.

“Thank you, Steward,” Shi Feng said, grinning. “The carp view from back here is excellent. In the provinces I’d charge a fee for it.”

The steward stared at him, decided he was joking, and left very quickly.

They’d invited him and put him where everyone could sneer at him. Shi Feng settled in anyway. He needed to hear the higher tables.

They told him his place all evening.

The fat merchant across the table recognised Wanhe from the Tribulation Pill rumour and dismissed it as a bought frontier stunt.

“Everyone’s quite right,” Shi Feng agreed warmly. “Frontier people will buy anything.”

The woman in the jade headdress sniffed at his 3 Mark and demanded to know who’d let him in.

“A very kind family,” Shi Feng said. “I’m still not sure why.”

The merchant then found fault with his coat.

“My best one,” Shi Feng said proudly. “I wore it specially.”

The merchant opened his mouth, found nothing to say and turned away.

At the higher tables the talk was different, and Shi Feng ate his fish slowly so he could hear it. The seam at Hanyan had grown again. The Records Hall wanted to rope it. Cangming Sword Palace wanted it open. A Jiang uncle in grey said the Pavilion would publish a notice before Mid-Autumn, and three sect envoys started arguing with him at once.

That was what he’d come for. Shi Feng wrote nothing down. He just remembered.

Near the end of the second course, the whole pond went silent.

A small man walked in from the gate. He was thin and plain, in a grey robe without any embroidery, and his hair was tied with a simple cord. He was late, and he didn’t seem to care.

Three hundred guests stood up together. The scrape of their chairs carried right across the water.

“Master Jiang Xu!”

“He came? He never comes!”

“A 6 Mark at a family banquet…”

“Sit, sit,” Jiang Xu said in a gentle voice. Nobody sat.

He walked past the head table, past the sect envoys and past the Jiang uncles. He kept walking until he reached the last table, beside the pillar.

“You’re the curiosity,” Jiang Xu said.

“That’s what the steward called me, Master Jiang,” Shi Feng said, bowing.

“May I see your hands?” Jiang Xu asked.

Shi Feng held them out. The table around him didn’t breathe.

Jiang Xu took the left hand and turned it over. He looked at the three fingers the ice at Hanyan had blackened, at the burn ridges across both palms, and at the calluses along the inside of the thumb. He pressed one callus gently with his own thumb.

“These match no school I know,” Jiang Xu said. “Not Azure Sun. Not the Imperial Physicians. Not the Pavilion.” He let go. “Someone taught you to hold a flame by letting it hurt you.”

“A cook did, Master Jiang,” Shi Feng said. “He was very strict about soup.”

Jiang Xu raised his eyebrows.

“And a question that good really ought to come with tea,” Shi Feng added, smiling. “I’ve been back here two hours, and nobody’s poured me any.”

The woman in the jade headdress went white. The merchant looked like he wanted to crawl under the table.

Then Jiang Xu laughed. It was a small, real laugh, and it surprised everyone at the pond, including, it seemed, Jiang Xu.

“An old fox doesn’t leave tracks,” Jiang Xu murmured.

He looked at Shi Feng once more, carefully, from his hair to his boots. Shi Feng felt the look go through his aura and stop at Soul Formation. He knows what it says, Shi Feng thought. And he doesn’t believe it.

But Jiang Xu said nothing about his realm.

“Come to the Pavilion,” Jiang Xu said, “when you have a Mark worth the walk.”

He went back to the head table. The guests sat down slowly, and for the rest of the night not one of them spoke to the curiosity at the foot of the last table. They watched every movement of his hands. Jiang Xu had passed their tables to inspect those hands; none of them dared resume the jokes.

Shi Feng ate the rest of his fish. It was very good fish.

He reached Willow Ford after midnight. Through the window he could hear Ji Yuanhe counting in his sleep.

A servant in plain dark clothes was waiting by the courtyard gate. He bowed, handed Shi Feng a card and walked away without a word. It was plain white paper with no crest, no seal and no name. One line was written on it in a small, neat hand.

Come when your hands have a Mark.