Chapter 727 — Brine

CHAPTER 727

Brine

The smell reached them before they could see the stall.

It was salt. Not the clean salt of a kitchen, but the sour salt of pickling vats, thick enough to sting the nose. Ji Yuanhe stopped at the top of Lantern Row with his hand over his mouth.

The household seal on the herb chest was unbroken. The lock was still closed. But the chest was standing in a white puddle, and a crust of salt had dried along every seam.

Shi Feng broke the seal himself and lifted the lid.

The herbs were drowned. Somebody had poured a whole barrel of brine through the gaps in the planks, and it had soaked everything. The Jiang roots had gone soft and grey. The Tang bundles had burst out of their gold paper. Every leaf was white with salt.

Ji Yuanhe looked into the chest and started to count.

“Forty-two roots,” Ji Yuanhe said. His voice had gone thin. “Eleven bundles. Thirty leaves. White. All white.”

“I see it,” Shi Feng said quietly.

“All of it,” Ji Yuanhe said again. His fingers had started moving on their own, counting nothing.

Shi Feng held his shoulder until the frantic finger movements stopped. The loss had frightened Ji Yuanhe more than the money warranted.

“It’s only herbs,” Shi Feng said. “Nobody poured it on you. Go and sit by the fire-ring. Count the bricks for me. I need to know if any are cracked.”

Ji Yuanhe went. After a moment Shi Feng heard him counting bricks, one by one, slow and even.

Shi Feng looked at the chest again, and his good mood was gone.

The lock and household seal were intact. The brine had entered through the gaps between planks, without anyone needing to open the chest. Shi Feng examined the salt crust angrily. Whoever had planned it knew exactly what the watch would check.

He took the chest into the back of the stall, behind the hanging cloth, and sat down beside it.

No ordinary alchemist could use a single root in that chest now. Salt killed a herb’s fire, and a pill made from them would fail on the first cloud. But Shi Feng wasn’t going to make pills from them.

He picked out the first root, wiped off the salt with his sleeve, and ate it.

The salt made him cough, but the Physique took the root’s qi without leaving any behind. It was ruined for refining, not emptied of its ingredients’ worth. Shi Feng swallowed and reached for the next one. He wouldn’t let the saboteur destroy more than the herbs’ usefulness to a furnace.

He ate the second one.

Forty-two roots. Eleven bundles. Thirty leaves. It took him nearly an hour. Halfway through, the market began to wake around him, and he heard Wei Hanlu arrive at stall forty and complain about the smell.

“What is that? Did the drain overflow?” Wei Hanlu said.

“It’s coming from the pill-boy’s stall,” Yan Boqing said. “Is he… eating something back there?”

Wei Hanlu lifted the edge of the hanging cloth and looked in. Shi Feng had a soggy grey root in one hand and a white leaf in the other.

“Good morning,” Shi Feng said.

Wei Hanlu dropped the cloth.

“He’s eating them,” Wei Hanlu said outside, in a strange voice. “Raw. With the salt on. Has he gone mad?”

“Somebody ruined his stock,” Yan Boqing said. He sounded less amused than he wanted to. “Look at the chest.”

Shi Feng finished the last leaf and sat still for a while.

His stomach ached after so much raw stock. The salt made it worse, and he knew it could last into tomorrow. Still, the qi was safe inside him.

He drank two cups of water, stood up and came out from behind the cloth.

Ji Yuanhe was sitting by the fire-ring with his hands on his knees.

“Ninety-six bricks,” Ji Yuanhe said. “None cracked.”

“Good,” Shi Feng said. “Then we can use them.”

“There are no herbs,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“There’s a third of a sack left in my ring,” Shi Feng said. “One batch will keep the counter open. Old Gou should reach the canal steps at the first bell. That’s now. Send him for double the herbs.”

Ji Yuanhe got up and went.

Shi Feng lit the fire.

When the first bell finished ringing over the West Market, stall forty-one was open, as it had been every morning. The cauldron was warming. The pills from last night’s batch were laid out on the counter, and the price board said the same as yesterday.

“He opened,” someone said in the lane.

“After that? With that smell?”

“He opened on time. Look.”

The first customer stepped over the drain, held his nose, and bought two.

At the top of Lantern Row, a woman with a sandalwood fan had been standing in the shadow of the candle stall, watching. She tapped the fan once against her palm and started walking down the slope toward him.