Chapter 732 — The Lot Box

CHAPTER 732

The Lot Box

The practice ground of the Phoenix Tail Pavilion lay behind the main hall, a square of grey stone a hundred paces wide, with a raised ring in its centre and covered galleries on all four sides.

On the morning of the third round the galleries were full. The household had let in the families of the twenty-four, and the families had brought their friends. Servants held parasols over young ladies who had come to look at the candidates. Old men in good robes sat in the front row, studying the ring like horse dealers.

On the highest gallery, behind a gauze screen, two women sat side by side, one of them veiled from brow to chin. Nobody needed to be told who they were.

“Twenty-four candidates,” Ke Lianshu said from the edge of the ring, bowing to all four galleries in turn. “Twelve bouts. Each candidate draws a lot from the box. The two who draw the same number fight. The loser goes home.” He bowed again. “Fists and feet have no eyes. This humble steward begs everyone to fight hard and kill nobody.”

A clerk carried the lot box out and set it on a table at the foot of the ring. It was black lacquer, the size of a small chest, with a hole in its lid just wide enough for a hand.

The candidates lined up.

Qu Ming drew first and held his lot up without looking at it. One. The gallery murmured. Situ Jinghong, a slim young man in pale grey with an ink brush tucked in his sash, drew next and smiled at whatever he saw. Gu Yanxing, the general’s heir, drew without a word and walked back to his place.

Tang Mingyu drew fourth. He looked at his lot and smiled very widely.

“Seven,” Tang Mingyu said.

The candidates who drew after him looked at their lots, and some of them sighed with relief.

Near the end of the line, Shi Feng reached into the box. The clerk politely tilted it toward him. His fingers met smooth wood on either side, enclosing a narrow space with just one lot inside. He felt along it once, then took the lot out and looked at it.

Seven.

“Tally 1,107,” the clerk read loudly. “Bout seven. Against Young Master Tang Mingyu.”

Tang Mingyu laughed out loud. He rolled one gold bead between his fingers and flicked it, lazily, so that it skittered across the stone and stopped against Shi Feng’s boot.

“See you in the ring, alchemist,” Tang Mingyu said. “Bring your post.”

The galleries laughed. Shi Feng picked up the bead, looked at it and put it in his sleeve.

“It’s gold,” Shi Feng said. “Thank you.”

He walked back to the line of candidates.

The man standing next to him was the only candidate in the square without a family seal on his belt. He was tall and thin and perhaps twenty-five, with a plain sword in a plain scabbard. His right sleeve had been patched at the elbow with cloth of a different blue. He’d drawn his lot early and had been watching the box ever since.

“Cheng Mobai,” Cheng Mobai said quietly, introducing himself without turning his head. “Bout nine.”

“Shi Feng,” Shi Feng said. “Bout seven.”

“I know.” Cheng Mobai’s mouth twitched. “Everybody knows. I’ll say this once, quietly. I sleep in the pavilion’s stable loft because the inns want three silver a night. Last night, at the third watch, a man carried that box out of the household office and across the yard to a carriage with a gold abacus on its door.” He paused. “He carried it back a quarter of an hour later. It was the same box. I don’t think it weighed the same.”

Shi Feng kept his face still. Tang Mingyu’s pleasure at drawing seven no longer looked like confidence in his luck.

A box with a false wall. One lot kept apart in its own narrow corner, and a clerk who turned the box toward one hand only. The Tang hadn’t needed to touch the lots at all. They’d only needed the clerk, and one night to fit the wall.

He couldn’t prove it now. The box was already back in the clerk’s arms, and the clerk was carrying it away to the household office, bowing to the galleries as he went.

“Thank you,” Shi Feng said to Cheng Mobai, and meant it. “You didn’t have to tell me.”

“I didn’t like the abacus,” Cheng Mobai said.

“Did you get a good look at the man carrying it?” Shi Feng asked. “I’d like to know whether he’s still here.”

Cheng Mobai finally turned toward him. For a moment he studied Shi Feng’s expression, then grinned. He’d apparently been expecting anger, or a protest to the steward.

“He had a new pair of boots on this morning,” Cheng Mobai said.

“I’ll remember those boots,” Shi Feng said. “For now I still have to face Tang Mingyu. Knowing how he arranged it is useful, even if I can’t prove it.”

At the edge of the ring, Ke Lianshu straightened from his last bow and lifted his voice.

“Bout one!” Ke Lianshu called. “Young Lord Qu Ming of the Azure Sun Sect!”

Qu Ming stepped up onto the stone. The air above the ring began to shimmer with heat.