Chapter 704 — The Servant’s Paper

CHAPTER 704

The Servant’s Paper

The young lord of the Azure Sun came to Willow Ford at noon, on foot, because his carriage wouldn’t fit in the lane.

He walked up the middle of the frosty stones with his six attendants behind him, and every door along the lane closed as he passed. Auntie Niu stayed at her stall. She held her bun tongs like a weapon.

The queue at the gate melted away. In ten breaths there was nobody left in front of the little table except Ji Yuanhe with his account book, and Shi Feng beside him.

Qu Ming stopped in front of the table and looked at Shi Feng.

For a moment, he didn’t say anything at all. Then the flame on his finger flickered.

“You,” Qu Ming said.

“Me,” Shi Feng said. “At the Pavilion, you decided I wasn’t worth a second look. Welcome to Willow Ford, young lord.”

The attendants glanced at one another. Yao Chen kept his face still and examined Shi Feng carefully. Unlike his master, he wasn’t letting the plain robe decide what he expected from the man behind the table.

Qu Ming recovered quickly and smiled.

“Good,” Qu Ming said softly. “Then I won’t need to explain twice. Yao Chen.”

Yao Chen stepped forward and laid a sheet of gold-flecked paper on the table. It was already written out and sealed with the red sun of the Azure Sun Sect. Only the signature line was empty.

“The young lord makes you an offer,” Yao Chen said. “Three million a year.”

Behind his shutter, the cloth seller gasped out loud.

Shi Feng picked up the paper.

“I’ll read it aloud,” Shi Feng said. “My attendant likes to know what’s on the table.”

“I, the undersigned, swear a servant’s oath to the young lord of the Azure Sun Sect,” Shi Feng read, “to be the young lord’s furnace, to refine at his word and for his house, and to be loyal to him in all things, for a stipend of three million a year, for as long as the young lord has need of me.”

He set the paper down and took Ji Yuanhe’s brush out of the old man’s hand.

“There’s a mistake, young lord,” Shi Feng said, taking the brush to the word ‘loyal’. “For a paid service, you want ‘employed’. Loyalty to a friend isn’t something a stipend buys.” He crossed out the word and wrote the correction above it.

He looked at the paper a moment longer.

“And now that it’s been corrected, I still won’t sign it,” Shi Feng said, and set the brush down. “I sell pills, young lord. I don’t sell hands. If you want pills, Master Ji will write your order and you can wait ten days like everyone else.”

Qu Ming looked at the line through “loyal”.

The flame on his finger grew.

It didn’t flare. It simply grew, from the size of a bean to the size of a plum, and then it dropped onto the paper. The gold-flecked sheet went up in a single breath and turned to white ash. The Scorching Sun Flame didn’t stop there. It ran off the edge of the paper across the table like spilled oil and went straight for the open account book in front of Ji Yuanhe.

Ji Yuanhe sat frozen with his hands flat on the table.

Shi Feng’s hand came down on the open page first.

Shi Feng met the flame with Thousand Forge Flame Art and the Second Anvil Fire. At Minor Success, its beats held even as the other fire surged into his palm. He hammered and folded the Scorching Sun Flame into his own, beat by beat, until only warmth remained.

He lifted his hand. The page under it was whole. Only one corner had browned, where a line of Ji Yuanhe’s figures ran off the edge.

The lane was dead silent.

“He took the Scorching Sun Flame in his bare hand…”

“That’s Qu Hanshan’s own fire art!”

“…”

Shi Feng wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Young lord,” Shi Feng said quietly. “You can burn your own paper. That’s Master Ji’s book.”

Yao Chen moved.

He came across the table from the left, fast, with his open palm aimed at Shi Feng’s chest. Red light gathered in it. Crow of the Morning Sun, an Azure Sun palm art. One palm would leave a burn in the shape of a bird on a man’s ribs.

Shi Feng let the Quiet Sleeve Art close over his own right hand.

To Yao Chen’s senses, that hand simply vanished. He felt Shi Feng’s chest in front of his palm and Shi Feng’s left hand on the table, and nothing at all where the right hand should have been.

Then two fingers were resting on the inside of his wrist, exactly on the pulse.

Yao Chen stopped an inch from Shi Feng’s robe. Shi Feng’s two fingers rested on the pulse inside his wrist. The attendant hadn’t sensed them approach, but he knew what a push of qi there would do. His arm could be useless for a month.

The two of them stood very still across the little table.

“Yao Chen,” Qu Ming said.

Yao Chen looked at his master.

“Not in a lane,” Qu Ming said softly. “Lanes have no witnesses worth having.” He looked at Shi Feng, and his smile came back. “At her pavilion, everything is witnessed.”

Shi Feng took his fingers from Yao Chen’s wrist. Yao Chen stepped back and lowered his palm. The red light in it went out.

“Then I’ll mind my manners if I’m ever there, young lord,” Shi Feng said.

“Everyone in this city has business at her pavilion,” Qu Ming said. “Sooner or later.”

He turned and walked back down the lane, with his attendants behind him. At the lane mouth, he stopped beside Auntie Niu’s stall and looked back at the gate.

“You sell pills, furnace,” Qu Ming said. “Let’s see who still buys them.”

Then he was gone.

Ji Yuanhe checked the browned corner before copying the damaged figures beneath the old line. His careful hands steadied Shi Feng’s anger. Qu Ming had meant to frighten them, but the old man was saving his work instead of abandoning the book.

“Twelve orders yesterday,” Ji Yuanhe said. “All twelve still on the page.”

Shi Feng looked at the lane mouth for a long time.

He had a feeling there wouldn’t be twelve by tomorrow.