Chapter 726 — Bought at a Loss

CHAPTER 726

Bought at a Loss

“Young Lord Qu’s word,” the clerk at Hundred Herb House said, bowing very low. “This humble one is truly sorry, Master Shi. We’re out of everything.”

Behind him, the shelves were full to the ceiling.

Shi Feng looked at the shelves. Then he looked at the clerk, who didn’t dare to look back.

“You’re out of everything,” Shi Feng repeated. “Including the forty sacks behind you.”

“They’re all reserved, Master Shi,” the clerk said.

“For whom?” Shi Feng said.

The clerk said nothing. Over the door of the herb house hung a small red-gold plaque, the size of a hand. A sun in flames. The Azure Sun Sect’s seal.

All seven houses Ji Yuanhe visited bore the Azure Sun plaque. Their owners paid for the sect’s protection, and none intended to defy its young lord for one independent alchemist. Qu Ming hadn’t needed to visit the stalls. He’d reached the herb supply instead.

“Thank you anyway,” Shi Feng said, and left.

Outside, Ji Yuanhe was waiting with the empty basket.

“Eight,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“Eight doors shut by the same order,” Shi Feng said. “He’s made sure we know whose decision it is.”

He didn’t sound annoyed. Qu Ming could close the Azure Sun’s doors. He couldn’t close every door in the capital.

The Jiang dealer’s shop was a narrow room on Silk Lane with no plaque over the door at all. Jiang Fuhai was a thin, bald man of fifty who weighed every root twice on two different scales.

“The Azure Sun doesn’t tell the Jiang family who to sell to,” Jiang Fuhai said, putting down his scales. “But the Azure Sun does remember who sold to whom. So the price is forty parts in a hundred over the market.”

“That’s a lot,” Shi Feng said.

“It is,” Jiang Fuhai agreed calmly. “Even brothers keep clear accounts. Go and find a cheaper house that will open its door.”

Shi Feng paid it. He bought enough for three days, and Ji Yuanhe counted every root into the basket.

That covered half. The other half was harder.

“Ji Yuanhe,” Shi Feng said on the walk back. “Golden Abacus Hall sells herbs as well as pills. Did you see the prices on its herb board?”

“A third,” Ji Yuanhe said. “All of it. A third.”

“The Tang are at war with every Phoenix Tail price,” Shi Feng said. “Not just pills. Every herb the princess sells, they sell for a third. So we’ll buy our herbs from them.”

Ji Yuanhe stopped walking.

“From them,” Ji Yuanhe repeated.

“They know our faces,” Shi Feng said, handing over a pouch. “Send a porter who isn’t tied to this stall. Pay him properly for the work, and have him bring the sacks to you at the canal steps.”

Ji Yuanhe looked at the pouch for a long time. Then he took it.

An hour later, a porter called Old Gou walked into Golden Abacus Hall with a list in his sash and came out with two full sacks. The Tang clerks wrapped every bundle in gold paper, said three blessings over it and thanked him for his custom. Old Gou carried the sacks down to the canal steps, where Ji Yuanhe was waiting, and was paid twice what a porter earned in a day.

He came back the next morning and asked if there was more work.

By noon, gold paper was piled behind stall forty-one on Lantern Row.

“I don’t understand,” Yan Boqing said when he saw it. He’d come over to borrow a brazier, because his own was smoking. “You’re buying from the Tang? You refused their money yesterday!”

“I refused to be paid by them,” Shi Feng said, sorting roots into piles. “Buying from them is different.”

“How?” Yan Boqing said.

“They’re cutting the herb price to hurt the princess’s stalls,” Shi Feng said. “At a third, the Tang lose money on every root we buy. They don’t need to know which furnace gets it afterward.”

He put a root into the cauldron.

“Then I make it into a pill,” Shi Feng went on. “A better pill than theirs. And I sell it to somebody who would have gone across the lane to buy one of theirs. That costs them again.”

Yan Boqing’s fan had stopped moving.

“So every herb you buy from them,” Yan Boqing said slowly, “costs them twice.”

“It costs them a root, and it costs them a customer,” Shi Feng said. “And the root is cheaper than the Jiang dealer’s.”

Yan Boqing studied the gold wrappers. Shi Feng let him work through it instead of explaining again. After a while, the fan closed and the young master returned to his own stall, forgetting the brazier he’d come to borrow.

That afternoon the clouds went up three times over Lantern Row. Each time there were six. Each time, by the end of the batch, a few more people had come down the lane from the Golden Abacus queue.

At dusk, the household’s runner came along the row with lanterns to light every stall’s sign. Then he locked each candidate’s stock chest with a household seal.

“The chests stay here at night,” the runner said, bowing. “Every stall is the same. The market watch walks the row twice.”

“Twice,” Ji Yuanhe repeated, looking at the dark lane.

Shi Feng looked at the seal on his herb chest, at the household’s lock, and at the drain running past the step.

“Twice is better than nothing,” Shi Feng said, and they went home to Willow Ford.