Chapter 71 — The Household Discount

CHAPTER 71

The Household Discount

The smell of the new cream reached the courtyard before Ling Qingzhu did.

It was a heavy floral stink. It crossed the pear tree, drowned out the smell of supper, and kept going toward the gate. Granny Qin’s sesame-cake brazier stood across the lane, and the old woman’s voice carried over the wall.

“Heavens! Who’s boiling flowers in Qingliu Lane? Ai ya, my nose.”

Ling Qingzhu came through the gate holding a little porcelain jar between two fingers, as far from her body as her arm could reach. She shut the gate before untying her veil. Even that silk had caught the dreadful scent.

“The shop changed the recipe,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Smell it. No, don’t. Someone’s boiling a flower garden.”

“Is it that bad?” Shi Feng asked, looking up from his account book.

She put the jar down at the far end of the kitchen table, as far from her own seat as she could get it.

“It stinks,” Ling Qingzhu said. “And greasy. My teacup slid right out. I paid real silver!”

Shi Feng read the label without touching the cream. The jar was expensive, the seal was fancy, and six lines praised the beauty it would supposedly keep. The medicine itself got half a line.

A fool’s price for a fool’s cream, he thought. He also remembered how she rubbed the backs of her hands after cold mornings at the basin, and how she hid it whenever anyone looked.

She noticed his glance right away.

“Don’t offer to sell me ointment,” Ling Qingzhu said. “I know that look. That’s your customer look.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Shi Feng said.

“Good,” Ling Qingzhu said. She turned her face away. “I’m your wife. Wives get the household discount, and the household discount is free.”

Shi Feng’s heart gave a small, unexpected jump, and his expression went blank with surprise. She meant the public arrangement, of course. He closed the account book anyway, faster than usual.

He had faced refined artifacts without a flutter, he scolded himself. One sentence about a wife shouldn’t rattle him!

The next afternoon, after he finished the stall’s stock, he set aside a handful of plain ingredients.

Mo Tianheng’s memory held a dozen grand formulas for skin and bone, and Shi Feng sneered at every one of them in his heart. Showy recipes were useless to him. His Bone Refinement qi would fail halfway through the extraction, and a gift ruined by ambition was no gift at all. He chose the simplest one. It needed careful mixing but no pill technique.

He warmed the base on the kitchen stove and strained it twice. The first sample came out too heavy, so he changed the amounts and made a smaller batch instead of wasting the pot. The second batch went on smoothly and left no perfume behind.

Granny Qin peered over the wall, sniffing like a hound.

“Young man, that smells like honest herbs!” Granny Qin shouted. “Not like that flower-boiling from yesterday! Who’s it for? Eh? Eh?”

“A customer who doesn’t pay,” Shi Feng said.

“Ha! That’s called a wife!” Granny Qin cackled so loudly that the pear tree shook. “Feed her well, young man! Feed her well!”

Shi Feng ignored her. Old women see too much, he thought.

He filled a plain jar, wiped the rim, and left it on the shelf beside her cup. He didn’t mention it. Their one room had no place to hide a gift, and he wanted her to find it herself.

Ling Qingzhu found it after washing her hands. There was no fancy seal and no proud name claiming to come from an immortal valley.

“What’s this?” Ling Qingzhu asked.

“For you,” Shi Feng said, not raising his head from the table.

She opened the lid. The lack of any smell surprised her after yesterday’s jar. She held it closer and waited for a sting under the plain scent, but there wasn’t one.

“Is it for sale?” Ling Qingzhu asked. “I don’t pay for stink.”

“There’s no bill,” Shi Feng said.

She rubbed a little on the back of her hand. It felt wonderful! Her first thought was to ask which shop sold it. Then she saw the empty jars drying beside his work table.

“You made this?” Ling Qingzhu asked. Her voice was very short. “Yourself? At the kitchen stove?”

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

She was startled, and her fingers slowed. She remembered complaining. She didn’t remember asking him to do anything about it.

For a moment she looked at him in a way he couldn’t name. It pleased him more than any customer’s praise. Nobody was haggling, and nobody was trying to push the price down.

Then her expression turned bright and innocent, and she smiled so sweetly that it hurt.

“Even the capital’s cosmetic houses leave oil on the skin,” Ling Qingzhu said slowly, testing the smooth salve on her knuckle. “Where did a Qingshi Town sword student learn to blend a base this clean?”

“Old notes and a cheap pot,” Shi Feng said calmly.

She looked at him for a moment longer, as if realizing how little of his day fit inside the six-month contract she had written.

“Don’t leave it in the sun,” Shi Feng said calmly.

Ling Qingzhu nodded and carried the jar inside, still pleased and totally unaware of what she’d done.

She came back out with the fashionable cream and held it at arm’s length.

“Can the stink come out?” Ling Qingzhu asked. “It was expensive. Throwing it away admits I was cheated.”

Shi Feng sniffed it and shook his head. “Pulling the scent out would ruin the medicine,” Shi Feng said. “It’s a lost cause.”

“Then it’s not your fault,” Ling Qingzhu said, and for once she didn’t call him useless. “I’ll be gracious about it.”

That small trust pleased him too, against his better judgment.

“Give it here,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll wrap it so it stops stinking up the house.”

She held the paper steady while he tied the cord. Their hands met at the knot, and hers stayed there a moment after the cord was tight.

Neither of them mentioned it.

Footsteps scraped outside. Ling Qingzhu caught up her veil and tied it before Granny Qin peered over the wall again. “Young people! Holding hands in the courtyard in broad daylight!” Granny Qin shouted happily.

“Granny Qin!” Ling Qingzhu snapped, her ears turning pink. “We were tying a parcel! Go mind your customers!”

Granny Qin cackled and ducked back behind the wall while Ling Qingzhu picked up her wooden practice sword by the pear tree and demanded ten minutes of footwork drills just to stop thinking about the parcel.

That evening a drop of cooking water splashed her hand and slid off more easily than she expected. She turned her wrist under the lamp, studying her skin with the seriousness of someone who’d found a small private treasure.

Shi Feng saw her looking. He bent over the vegetables before she could catch him smiling.

At bedtime he spread his bedding on the floor in the corner, as always, and she went behind the screen to change. When she came out, the plain jar was standing beside her mirror, and the costly jars had been pushed to the back. Their fancy lids fought uselessly for a spot she could reach.

He saw it when she called him over to trim the lamp wick. His gaze stayed on that jar a heartbeat too long. Being useful is reason enough to be glad, he told himself.

He wasn’t quite convinced.

Then she drew the bed curtain, and he lay down on the floor and looked at the ceiling.

Behind the curtain, Ling Qingzhu used the cream once more and remembered how quietly he’d said for you. No crowd had demanded that gesture. No prince’s carriage waited outside the wall.

She wanted to ask whether he made it because of her complaint, or because he’d noticed her hands himself. But he was lying three steps away, and she could hear him breathing.

Either answer would make her ask why she wanted to know. Her heart was uneasy, and she didn’t like it. She closed the jar and set it carefully beside the mirror.

The marriage had grown some comfortable routines, she decided.

Comfortable was a safe word. It took far less courage than the words waiting underneath it.