Chapter 684 — The Bell

CHAPTER 684

The Bell

“At Winter Onset,” Shi Feng said. “The 4 Mark. In my true name.”

For half a breath the salon was silent. Then it laughed.

“His true name! What other name has he got?”

“Feng Shi, sitting as Feng Shi. How brave!”

“Winter Onset’s seventeen days away. Has he even got the herbs?”

“…”

“Good!” Yuwen Dewei said, clapping his fan against his palm. “I’ll buy a seat in the gallery.”

“Gallery seats are free, Master Yuwen,” Shi Feng said. “I checked.”

He finished his tea, since it was paid for, and left. He said nothing about any Mark beyond the 4. Nobody asked, and nobody in that room would have thought to.

The Imperial Sky-Watch counted the clouds over every ward of Tianjing from the Bell Tower at dawn. Under the Bell Tower, it also rented out the only rooms in the city where it didn’t.

Officer Gai Haoran was a thin man with an abacus at his belt who checked the hiring paper twice before reaching for his keys. He unlocked the sealed room with three keys.

“Three days, three hundred thousand, as agreed,” Gai Haoran said. “Even blood brothers keep clear accounts, honoured resident. The Sky-Watch bills on the third evening.”

“I’d expect nothing less,” Shi Feng said, delighted.

The room was bare stone with a furnace in the middle and a seal on every wall. Ji Yuanhe sat on a stool by the door with his hands on his knees. Shi Feng laid out Deity Transformation-grade herbs from his Cistern winnings, lit the furnace, and began.

The fire took. The herbs melted in order. He tapped the beat on the furnace rim with his knuckle, one, two, three, four, and on the four he folded the furnace steam down over the lid, the way he’d done ten thousand times on the spoons.

Boom.

The great bell of the Bell Tower struck the double-hour right over their heads. The whole room hummed with it. The beat in Shi Feng’s head broke, the fold fell apart, and the steam slapped the lid and scattered.

He caught the fire before it dropped and started the beat again.

“Did you hear that?” Shi Feng demanded of Ji Yuanhe. “Right on the beat! I had the steam exactly where I wanted it.”

“It rings every double-hour,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“Then I’ll have to rebuild it every double-hour,” Shi Feng said, glaring at the ceiling. “I paid for quiet. I should’ve asked about the bell.”

The bell rang twice more before the pill was done, and twice more his fold broke. Each time he rebuilt it, grumbling aloud at the ceiling the whole while.

Even so, the clouds rose above the lid. One, two, three, four.

“Five,” Ji Yuanhe said quietly.

Five was the pass for a 4 Mark. The clouds kept climbing past it. Shi Feng let them. At the top of the count they darkened, and a thin, small pill tribulation came down out of nothing and struck the lid.

The seal on the walls swallowed it whole. Not a spark showed above the Bell Tower’s roof.

Shi Feng opened the lid and looked at the pill. It was alive, and a little crooked. He knew exactly where the crookedness had come from. It had come from the bell.

On the third evening Gai Haoran came down with his abacus.

“The seal’s meter reports a disturbance, honoured resident,” Gai Haoran said, without any expression at all. “The Sky-Watch saw nothing. The Sky-Watch was paid to see nothing. Three hundred thousand.”

Shi Feng counted it out with a smile. That left him eight million one hundred and forty thousand.

“Lesson forty-two,” Shi Feng said. “A sealed room is a roof that was invoiced in advance.”

Gai Haoran wrote it down, which Shi Feng found very satisfying.

Madam Liu Su was waiting at the Willow Ford gate the next morning, plump and shining in silk, with a little book in her hand.

“I’ve opened a book, young master,” Liu Su said. “‘Will Feng Shi sit?’ Half the Row is betting you’ll lose your nerve. The other half is betting you’ll burst at three clouds. I’m selling to both.”

“And what are you betting, Madam Liu?” Shi Feng asked.

“Me? Peaches and plums say nothing, yet a path forms beneath them,” Liu Su said, smiling. “Do you know the Glass Hall runs on the Pavilion’s bell clock? A bell for the lighting, a bell every double-hour, a bell for every cloud the board calls. Very dignified.”

Shi Feng’s smile stayed exactly where it was. Inside, he groaned.

The bell was a problem he couldn’t ignore, Shi Feng thought. In the Glass Hall the bell would ring a dozen times a day, and every ring would break his beat.

He bought the Candidate’s Handbook from her for ten silver, haggled her down to nine out of principle, and read it at the courtyard table until the light went. On the fourteenth page he stopped.

A candidate may bring his own vessel, to be sealed and inspected by the examiners. A candidate may bring one attendant.

Shi Feng sat still for a moment. Then he reached into the ring and took out Mo’s cauldron.

It came out heavy and black and old, the Pit-Breaker that he’d bought for three hundred and twenty thousand in Wanhe. He set it on the table and ran his thumb along the inside wall, over the small hammer marks Mo had left there long ago. They weren’t random. They never had been. They lay in rows, in a beat, as if somebody had hammered a rhythm into the bronze so it could never be lost.

A vessel with its own beat, Shi Feng thought. If he followed those marks, the bell wouldn’t be the only rhythm in the room.

Behind him, Ji Yuanhe put down his tea.

“One attendant,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Ji. Counts.”