Chapter 708 — The Forfeit Clause

CHAPTER 708

The Forfeit Clause

The inner gate didn’t open on a Buying Hall.

Hundreds of young men filled lacquered benches in a hall hazy with incense. Every candidate wore a jade tally. Red-robed stewards checked their lists between the rows, and a gold phoenix screen stood on the far platform. There was no sale counter anywhere Shi Feng could see.

Over the door hung a board in large gold characters.

Talent Hall.

Shi Feng stood in the doorway and read it twice.

Then he looked at the tally in his hand. Then he looked at the hundreds of young men on the benches, all of them wearing exactly the same tally.

“Ah,” Shi Feng said.

The steward at the door bowed to him.

“Tally, honoured candidate?” the steward asked.

“Just a moment,” Shi Feng said. “I think I need to go back and ask somebody something.”

He walked back out through the inner gate and across the courtyard to the short queue at the single desk. The young man in grey with the heavy jaw was just leaving it, and he waved cheerfully. Shi Feng waved back and went to the front.

Tong Ruyu looked up from her papers. She saw the tally in his hand, and she saw his face, and she went very still.

“Clerk Tong,” Shi Feng said. “Where is the Buying Hall?”

Tong Ruyu’s eyes went to the stack of papers at her elbow. She pulled out the slip on top of it, the one with Liu Su’s red phoenix stamp. She read it properly this time.

Her face went white.

She rose and bowed to him, very low.

“Honoured guest, this one has made a terrible mistake,” Tong Ruyu said. “Please forgive me.”

She bowed again.

“The Buying Hall’s queue was the left one,” Tong Ruyu said. “This desk was opened this morning for candidates who hold a Mark. That’s why the queue was short. I asked for your Mark and you gave it, and I didn’t read your slip. This one is truly sorry.”

She bowed a third time.

“There’s no need to keep bowing,” Shi Feng said. “Just tell me how to undo it.”

Tong Ruyu straightened with her hands clenched inside her sleeves. She was frightened, but she made herself recite the rule carefully. Shi Feng listened without helping her find a softer way to say it.

“Honoured guest, I must explain the rule once,” Tong Ruyu said. “Every tally is entered in the princess’s household register the moment it’s issued. If an honoured candidate withdraws, the fee is not returned. And because the household’s time has been taken up, a candidate who withdraws pays a fine of one million.”

The queue behind Shi Feng had heard every word. Somebody laughed out loud.

“One million!”

“He came to buy something and got entered by mistake?”

“A man who went into the wrong temple and kowtowed to the wrong god!”

“Five hundred thousand gone, and another million to get out!”

Shi Feng didn’t look round. He looked at Tong Ruyu, who looked as if she would rather be swallowed by the floor.

“Clerk Tong,” Shi Feng said. “Let me make sure I understand. If I withdraw, I lose my five hundred thousand, and I pay a million more on top of it.”

“Yes, honoured guest,” Tong Ruyu said miserably. “I’m sorry.”

“Then I won’t,” Shi Feng said.

Tong Ruyu looked up.

“I never asked to enter,” Shi Feng said. “You took my real answers and put them in the wrong register. I won’t pay a fine for that.” He laid the tally on her desk. “I’m not withdrawing. Tell me how to reach the lotus sale.”

“The lotus?” Tong Ruyu asked faintly.

“The Quiet Soul Lotus,” Shi Feng said. “Three hundred years old. Your Buying Hall listed it for sale today. That’s what the slip was for. If I hurry, can I still buy it?”

Tong Ruyu’s face went from white to red. She looked down at a list on her desk, and then back up at him, and for a moment she didn’t say anything.

“Honoured guest,” Tong Ruyu said. “The Quiet Soul Lotus was withdrawn from sale this morning, before the doors opened. The household has set it in the vault.”

“Why?” Shi Feng asked.

“For the princess’s recruits,” Tong Ruyu said. “The household will award treasures from the vault to the candidates who are accepted. The lotus is among them.”

Behind Shi Feng, the queue had gone quiet, waiting to see what the man who had paid half a million for nothing would do.

Shi Feng stood at the desk and thought about it.

Money couldn’t buy the lotus now. The household had put it among the prizes for accepted recruits. Shi Feng thought of Ji Yuanhe at the commission book, still needing medicine, and Fu Can listening for his count outside the window. Leaving meant abandoning the chance he’d come here for.

So the road to the lotus ran through the Talent Hall, whether he liked it or not.

He started to laugh.

Tong Ruyu stepped back as he laughed. The queue watched uneasily, expecting anger after the mistake and the lost sale. Shi Feng was frustrated too, but the decision had become simple. The Talent Hall was now his way to Ji Yuanhe’s cure.

“Then I’ll stay,” Shi Feng said. “I still need what’s in your vault.”

He picked the jade tally up off the desk, turned it over once in his fingers so that the gold number caught the light, and hooked it onto his belt.

“Then I’m a candidate,” Shi Feng said.

For a moment, the courtyard was silent.

Then the whole queue burst out laughing.

“He’s staying!”

“The pill-maker’s going to compete with Qu Ming and Huangfu Lie for a flower!”

“Somebody tell Madam Liu! She’ll want to put him in the book!”

“…At fifty to one!”

Shi Feng walked back across the courtyard toward the inner gate with the tally swinging on his belt. The laughter followed him all the way, and he didn’t mind it at all.

At the gate, the steward bowed again.

“Tally, honoured candidate?” the steward asked.

“One thousand one hundred and seven,” Shi Feng said. “And I’d like a seat near the front, please. I’ve paid for it.”