Chapter 75 — The Wrong Kind of Jealousy

CHAPTER 75

The Wrong Kind of Jealousy

“Two empty baskets, a big order, and a smaller price!” Yan Meizhen announced with a loud laugh as she walked through the courtyard gate. “Master Shi, did you miss me?”

Shi Feng was fixing a cracked lid and didn’t look up. “Not particularly,” Shi Feng said.

“Cruel!” Yan Meizhen said, delighted.

He’d arranged the pickup at home, because the stall’s narrow counter couldn’t hold so many full baskets. Ordinary wound medicines needed no secret furnace meeting, and he saw no reason to pay a porter extra to carry fragile goods downhill.

Across the lane, Granny Qin leaned over her stall counter, craning her neck.

“A woman in green, carrying baskets, going through that gate!” Granny Qin shouted to her nephew Qin Bao. “Go and look, boy! Go and look!”

Qin Bao stared, stunned, and didn’t move.

Inside, Ling Qingzhu tied her veil and appeared at the pear tree before Yan Meizhen set down the second basket. The visitor’s perfume was light, expensive and instantly annoying.

Yan Meizhen looked at the white robe, then at Shi Feng, then back at the robe. Her expression changed as recognition crossed her face. Then came the more useful thought of a merchant wondering if knowing this woman might get her a better deal.

“Oh! Your wife?” Yan Meizhen asked.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

There was no pause, and no remark about papers or private arrangements. Ling Qingzhu felt a small, unreasonable satisfaction.

Yan Meizhen bowed with a bright smile. “Fairy Ling! What a lucky man you are, Master Shi. I’d have married him myself, but he’s far too stingy!”

Shi Feng said nothing.

“He counts every spirit stone twice,” Ling Qingzhu said, her eyes perfectly pleasant above the veil. “Count your change, Miss Yan.”

Yan Meizhen laughed loudly and went back to the jars.

“A big order should cut your packing costs,” Yan Meizhen said.

“It did,” Shi Feng said. “You brought the baskets.”

Ling Qingzhu watched them count the sealed jars. Their back-and-forth was quick, almost comfortable. Yan Meizhen knew which medicines needed dark storage, which lids had to stay dry, and how long her company could keep a reserve without paying for more than it needed.

She also knew when Shi Feng was joking. That last discovery was especially irritating, Ling Qingzhu thought, and her thumb pressed hard against her sleeve.

“Can the next delivery come two days earlier?” Yan Meizhen asked.

Shi Feng checked his written schedule and shook his head. “I won’t promise work I can only finish by shorting another order.”

“I’ll add a fee!” Yan Meizhen said.

He considered the number, considered the furnace room he could actually book, and refused again. Ling Qingzhu’s opinion of the perfume improved a little. Before leaving, Yan Meizhen looked at the cracked lid on the table.

“You should make the jar maker pay for that,” Yan Meizhen said.

“I plan to,” Shi Feng said.

“Good! Don’t be soft!” Yan Meizhen said. She paid the balance, tied up her baskets, waved cheerfully at Ling Qingzhu, and walked out without leaving an invitation or any other sensible reason for jealousy.

“She’s gone already!” Granny Qin complained across the lane. “Boy, what kind of watching was that?”

The whole lane was disappointed that there was no scandal. Ling Qingzhu was jealous anyway.

Shi Feng carried the broken lid to the shelf. Behind him, she picked up a spare jar and turned it in her fingers, hunting for a flaw in the glass to explain her mood.

“You’re awfully attentive to her needs,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“She pays on delivery,” Shi Feng said.

The answer hit more than one target. Ling Qingzhu set the jar down very carefully.

“I was talking about how you treat customers,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“So was I,” Shi Feng said.

“She visits a lot,” Ling Qingzhu said, picking at the jar’s label.

“The medicine leaves every time,” Shi Feng said. “That’s usually the point.”

Her eyes narrowed and her expression cooled. He could’ve asked whether she disliked the color green, and he would’ve enjoyed her answer far too much.

With the visitor gone, she removed her veil. He looked at her face properly. Under the irritation was real discomfort, and Shi Feng thought: this isn’t one of her public performances. He knew how to answer an insult. A question she couldn’t bring herself to ask took more care.

“She buys supplies for hunters,” Shi Feng said. “They use them on the road, and she comes back when they need more. That’s all our business is.”

“I didn’t ask what your business was!” Ling Qingzhu said.

“You’ve been talking about it for a while now,” Shi Feng said.

Her cheeks went warm. She walked to the middle of the courtyard.

The practice blade still stood beside the hanging cord. Their short lessons had grown irregular whenever a commission took his mornings. Ling Qingzhu picked it up, tested its weight, and made the turn he’d shown her.

Her point passed the cord without touching it.

Shi Feng watched her reset her feet. She picked up a correction faster than most people understood the explanation. There was no qi in the movement and no declared realm, only an ease that made an ordinary gesture look inevitable. A real talent, Shi Feng thought. She was concealing practice, perhaps more than practice. He had no evidence for an exact realm or any right to name her talent from a wrist movement.

“Like this?” Ling Qingzhu asked, and a smile escaped her.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

“Good,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Then your green customer didn’t need the whole morning, did she?”

He almost laughed. “Want another lesson?” Shi Feng asked.

“If you haven’t sold the time to someone else,” Ling Qingzhu said, turning away.

He took the second practice blade.

They worked until the sun crossed the courtyard wall. Once he fixed the angle of her wrist with two fingers beneath it, and Ling Qingzhu stood perfectly still for a moment after he let go. Her heart beat a little faster, and she blamed the sword.

The lesson cost no spirit stones. Shi Feng didn’t enter it in his accounts.

At supper she moved her stool closer, because a cold draft was coming from the other side of the room. The window there was shut. Shi Feng served the rice and mentioned neither fact.

Her sleeve brushed his wrist. Neither of them moved away.

The silence felt different from a pause in conversation. He found himself listening to the small sound of her spoon against the bowl, happy just to have her there. Then Ling Qingzhu asked, very casually, whether going with her to a household visit in seven days would clash with his profitable customers.

The word going was harmless. The reminder of their arrangement under it was not.

“I’ll make time,” Shi Feng said. He was surprised at how quickly he said it.

“Good. Without you I’d smile at three aunts for two hours,” Ling Qingzhu said, brightening, and started describing the occasion right away. He listened, enjoying her pleasure, while the unfinished account beside the lamp waited for him.

Later she went behind the screen to change, then drew the bed curtain. Before spreading his bedding in the corner, Shi Feng set her cleaned bowl upside down on the little table beside her bed and placed Zhou Mingde’s sealed commission slip beside the cracked sample jar by the door, ready for the district watch at the morning bell.

Across the district, Zhou Mingde counted out a thief’s remaining payment on his counter and wondered why Zhao Sheng still hadn’t knocked on his back door.