Chapter 700 — The Sill

CHAPTER 700

The Sill

The first man came over the back wall at the third watch, without a sound.

He wore a porter’s brown jacket and a porter’s straw hat, and he landed in the corner of the courtyard like a cat. Two more came over behind him in the same brown jackets. None of them looked at the kitchen, or the furnace shed, or the front gate.

All three of them looked at Ji Yuanhe’s window.

Shi Feng was already sitting on the sill.

Shi Feng had waited there since dusk, hidden beneath the eaves with his back to the shutter. Quiet Sleeve concealed his aura from their sensing. Ji Yuanhe stayed awake inside as instructed. Shi Feng listened to all three intruders before letting any of them reach the window.

The first man crossed the courtyard in four quick steps. Something came out of his sleeve, a short curved blade the colour of dead grass. He lifted it toward the shutter’s latch.

“It’s open,” Shi Feng said. “You don’t need to break it.”

The man didn’t stop to be surprised. The sickle changed direction in the air and came at Shi Feng’s throat instead.

It was fast. The blade hissed, and the cold grey qi that ran along its edge made the frost on the sill curl up and turn brown before it even arrived. Withered Reed Sickle. Whatever that edge touched would dry out like a reed in autumn, wood, flesh or qi.

Shi Feng raised his left sleeve into its path.

The sickle went into the cloth, and the Quiet Sleeve Art swallowed it. For the space of a breath, the man’s blade vanished from his own senses, and his wrist didn’t know where it was. Shi Feng turned his arm inside the sleeve and pushed.

The sickle came out of the sleeve going the wrong way. It sank into the courtyard wall beside the window up to its handle.

The bricks around it went grey. Then they crumbled and poured down the wall like dry sand.

The man in the straw hat pulled his sickle free and sprang back three paces. The other two spread out on either side of him. Both of them had drawn short knives.

“Alchemist Shi,” the first man said, quite politely. “You were sitting in the dark.”

He took off his straw hat. Under it was a plain, forgettable face, about forty, with a thin scar through one eyebrow. A strip of grey cloth was tied around his wrist.

Deity Transformation, Shi Feng judged. The two with knives were Soul Formation.

“My attendant sleeps badly when people climb walls,” Shi Feng said. “I thought I’d keep him company. Who are you?”

“Fu Can,” Fu Can replied. “A porter.”

“You carry very little for a porter,” Shi Feng said.

Behind the shutter, a thin voice began, very quietly.

“One,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Two. Three.”

Fu Can glanced at the shutter. Something like interest crossed his plain face.

“He still counts,” Fu Can said.

Shi Feng’s good mood went away all at once.

Shi Feng recognised the interest in Ji Yuanhe’s count. These weren’t thieves looking for pills or money. They knew the old man’s habits from the Pit. He watched Fu Can carefully, keeping himself between the three men and the shutter.

“Away from that window,” Shi Feng said. “Take your men over the wall. I won’t fight beside Master Ji’s bed.”

Fu Can looked at him for a moment longer. Then he nodded, as if a price had been agreed.

“Not tonight, then,” Fu Can said.

He went up the back wall in one step. The two knife men went with him. On the top of the wall, Fu Can turned and looked back down into the courtyard.

“Tomorrow, then,” Fu Can said. “And the night after. You can’t sit on a sill forever, Alchemist Shi.”

They dropped into the alley on the far side. Their footsteps ran away toward the canal. They didn’t run quickly, and they didn’t try to be quiet.

Shi Feng stood on the sill and listened to them go.

Following was what they wanted. If they drew him into the alley, someone else could climb the wall behind him. Shi Feng listened for a fourth man while he considered how to end the threat without leaving Ji Yuanhe unguarded.

“You want me away from this window,” Shi Feng said quietly. “I heard you the first time.”

But if he let them go, they would come back tomorrow, as they’d said. And the night after. Sooner or later, he would sleep.

He meant to finish this tonight, away from the window. Driving them out of the yard wasn’t forgiveness for the blade aimed at his throat.

He rapped on the shutter twice with his knuckle.

“Master Ji,” Shi Feng said. “Bar it from inside. Then keep counting, as loudly as you can. If you stop, I’ll come straight back.”

The shutter bar slid home.

“Four,” Ji Yuanhe said, louder now. “Five. Six.”

Shi Feng went over the wall.

The alley led a hundred paces to Willow Canal. Black walls hid the water except where barge lamps shone on it. Coal barges lay moored along the near bank, their stern lanterns swinging in the wind. Shi Feng kept Ji Yuanhe’s distant count within hearing.

On the last barge in the line, three men in porters’ jackets stood waiting for him.

Behind him, faint and steady over the rooftops, the counting went on.

“Eleven,” Ji Yuanhe called. “Twelve.”

Shi Feng drew the grey Sword and stepped off the bank onto the water.