Chapter 676 — The Rim at Dusk

CHAPTER 676

The Rim at Dusk

“Senior Brother Lin! The Pavilion’s quarterly list came!” Zhu Liu shouted, running toward the board.

Zhu Liu ran across the Artificer Hall’s yard with a long paper in both hands and pinned it to the gate board.

Lin Langtian strolled over, eating a sweet potato, and ran a finger down the third column.

He stopped.

“Feng Shi,” Lin Langtian read aloud. “3 Mark. Wanhe.”

Then he burst out laughing so loudly that two disciples dropped a crate.

“He wrote his name backwards!” Lin Langtian shouted. “That brat wrote his name backwards and went off to the Empire to show off without me! A famous teacher produces a brilliant student!” He wiped his eyes.

“Senior Brother,” Zhu Liu said earnestly, “there’s a second paper.”

It was the Pavilion Registry’s seat review. Sima Lan took it out of his hands before Lin Langtian could, and read it standing at the gate.

Three months ago, the Martial Palace envoy had filed a challenge against the Hall’s Great Sect seat. The Hall’s registered 3 Mark had been missing for more than a year, the envoy said, so the Hall should lose the seat.

The Registry’s answer was one line.

“Challenge struck,” Sima Lan read. “Holder active, residence abroad. Willow Ford, Tianjing. Household grade.”

“Tianjing!” Lin Langtian said. “The capital! He’s living in the capital!”

“He has a household grade from the capital’s Ward Office,” Sima Lan said. “That’s the smallest grade there is. He’s renting.”

She went inside without another word.

In the back office, she copied the address into the ledger under Travel. She put a pin into the Empire road map on the wall, exactly on Tianjing. Then she wrote a bill to the Martial Palace envoy for review fees, clerk’s hours and one wasted afternoon of her time, twelve thousand in total, and sealed it.

The Martial Palace envoy came for his answer in person and was kept at the gate while she sealed it.

Zhu Liu carried the bill down and read it aloud in the yard, and then the line she had copied at the foot of it: “Challenge struck. Holder active, residence abroad. Willow Ford, Tianjing. Household grade.”

The envoy’s clerks wrote it down, and the envoy paid the twelve thousand where the yard could see him.

Lin Langtian leaned in the doorway, still eating.

“And now you’ll write to him,” Lin Langtian said.

“I’m writing to the address,” Sima Lan said coldly. “He owes rent.”

“Three pages of rent?” Lin Langtian asked.

“…” Sima Lan pressed her lips together and kept writing.

She sealed the letter and handed it to Zhu Liu without looking at either of them.

On the wall beside the map, there was a column of chalk strokes, small and straight. Nobody at the Hall knew what they counted, and nobody was brave enough to ask. There were more than four hundred now.

Sima Lan picked up the chalk and added one.

On the evening of Mid-Autumn, the Hanyan Basin looked like a city.

Four thousand tents filled the slopes around the dead ring. There were Cangming Sword Palace’s blue banners on the east ridge, Azure Sun’s golden rays on the west, and Thunder Abyss violet down by the river. At the centre, where the ring had once burned and frozen, the Pavilion had planted a circle of white posts.

Above the posts, a black line hung in the air. It was as tall as a door, and very thin.

“Rope’s checked,” Old Zuo said, walking down the line. “Fifteen hands, every knot a Zuo knot. Ah Fu, your hat’s crooked.”

Shi Feng straightened it. Ah Fu wore a wide straw hat, had ash rubbed into his face and walked with his shoulders bent like a man who’d carried other men’s loads since he was ten. The pack on his back was twice the size of anyone else’s.

Pan Hongzhu’s company sat around one fire with the ring-grass rope already tied to their belts, making the loudest jokes in the basin.

A group in Cangming blue walked past. At the front walked a man with a sneer Shi Feng knew well.

Huo Weiran looked at the rope line and laughed.

“Freelancers on a string,” Huo Weiran said to his juniors. “Rotten wood can’t be carved. They’ll come out in pieces, the same way the ring sent them out last time.”

He never looked at the porters. Nobody ever looked at the porters.

Shi Feng kept his head down and shivered a little, as a frightened porter should. Inside, he was enjoying himself enormously.

The sects were posturing at every fire. Azure Sun sent a junior to sneer at Thunder Abyss. Thunder Abyss sent two to sneer back. Let them watch one another, Shi Feng thought. He listened from under his hat, gathering what he could without drawing their attention.

Then he saw the far fire.

A man sat there alone, thin and plain, with a grey band around his sleeve. Shi Feng had last seen that band in Wanhe, on Tower Street at dusk, and his arm had spent two weeks in a sling because of it. The pills that man’s stalls had sold had smelled like the Pit.

So he’s here for the Orchard too, Shi Feng thought. Everyone is.

The grey-band man’s eyes moved slowly along Pan’s rope. They passed over the fighters, over Old Zuo, over a bent porter in a straw hat, and went on to the next company without stopping.

Above the east ridge, the moon cleared the rocks, round and white.