Chapter 76 — The Unpaid Balance

CHAPTER 76

The Unpaid Balance

Senior Runner Deng Shun met Shi Feng at the lane corner at the morning bell and marched the bound Zhao Sheng straight to Zhou's Medicine House as the market shutters opened.

Shi Feng walked behind the two runners, carrying the cracked sample jar and the signed slip from his threshold. After sitting trussed in the firewood shed until dawn, Zhao Sheng looked even less like a travelling merchant than he had the night before.

Zhou Mingde saw the group through his open shop door.

His brush stopped above a customer's receipt.

“Move those people away from my entrance,” Zhou Mingde said. “Customers have business here.”

The senior runner, Deng Shun, stepped beneath the shop sign and opened his register.

“Zhou Mingde, we're asking about a payment bearing your seal,” Deng Shun said. “Answer here, or come to the office.”

Two customers turned around. The apprentice at the herb drawer closed it very slowly. Outside, a woman who had meant to pass the shop stopped to adjust a sandal that needed no adjusting.

Zhou Mingde looked at Zhao Sheng, then at Shi Feng.

“A peddler's complaint?” Zhou Mingde said. “I've sold medicine in this district for twenty years. He has a board and four jars. Perhaps somebody should inspect him instead.”

The customer nearest the counter nodded uncertainly. Zhou Mingde had a large shop, a proper sign and a familiar name. Shi Feng's robe still carried a mended cuff.

“That's Fairy Ling's husband.”

“The one from the little stall?”

“What has he done now?”

Shi Feng set the cracked jar on the step. Deng Shun showed the payment slip without handing it over.

“This seal,” Deng Shun said. “Is it yours?”

“Seals can be copied,” Zhou Mingde said.

“Then we'll compare it with the supplier receipts in your shop,” Deng Shun said.

The apprentice took a half step back from the ledger. Zhou Mingde saw the movement and glared at him.

Shi Feng kept quiet. He hadn't come to win a shouting match. The runner had a simpler way to test the lie, and Zhou Mingde had supplied it himself.

Deng Shun laid the invitation beside the payment record. Both named the same hired room. Zhao Sheng had given its location before the guard found the invitation in Shi Feng's bag. The lodging keeper's statement recorded who rented it and who asked for the extra shutter latch.

“Speak,” Deng Shun said to Zhao Sheng.

Zhao Sheng swallowed.

“Zhou Mingde hired me to take the notes or the prepared medicine,” Zhao Sheng said. “Half before, half after. I was to offer a large order so Shi Feng would bring the samples.”

“Liar!” Zhou Mingde shouted.

Zhao Sheng flinched, then looked at the shopkeeper with sudden resentment.

“You told me he'd be easy to fool,” Zhao Sheng said. “You said a cripple would be pleased somebody wanted his stock.”

Several people looked at Shi Feng's hands. One knuckle was scraped. Zhao Sheng was bound, sore and alive. Whatever had happened in the room, the easy part hadn't gone as expected.

“Did he order you to injure anyone?” Deng Shun asked.

“No,” Zhao Sheng said. “He said not to. He wanted the preparation, not trouble with the Ling household.”

“Then put that down as well,” Shi Feng said.

Deng Shun's brush moved. Zhou Mingde stared at Shi Feng, thrown by the correction. He had expected an accusation to grow as it reached the street. This one was becoming exact.

The woman by the doorway straightened from her sandal.

“Isn't this the shop that sent the man with the swollen arm?”

“Blistering root, wasn't it?”

“He offered protection first!”

The crowd turned toward Zhou Mingde's sign. A moment ago its size had proved his importance. Now everyone could read it while asking what kind of business stood underneath.

“That complaint was nothing to do with me,” Zhou Mingde said.

Shi Feng took out the earlier sealed sample and the tower's finding on its contents. The altered ointment remained separate from his clean stock. He gave the papers to Deng Shun.

“That evidence belongs with this complaint,” Shi Feng said. “The witnesses' names are inside.”

He didn't claim the paper proved every thought in Zhou Mingde's head. It established what had been added to the ointment and where the errand payment came from. Alongside the new theft commission, it was enough to make the guard ask further questions.

Deng Shun called for the supplier ledger.

Zhou Mingde put his hand on it.

For an instant Shi Feng thought the shopkeeper might try to tear out a page. Deng Shun's second runner stepped beside the counter, and the hand lifted again. Zhou Mingde hadn't lost his mind. He was still choosing which disgrace cost less.

The apprentice opened the book. There were notes beside several suppliers: refuse the peddler, reserve all usable roots, inform the house if new stock arrived. Some were in Zhou Mingde's own handwriting.

The customer waiting for his receipt slowly pushed his unpaid medicine back across the counter.

The customer muttered that he would return later.

He didn't wait for an answer. The other buyer followed him out. Nobody needed their names to remember the empty places they left.

Zhou Mingde's face turned dark red.

“You came to destroy my business,” Zhou Mingde said to Shi Feng.

“I came to sell mine,” Shi Feng said. “You made that difficult.”

Deng Shun closed the ledger. He would take Zhou Mingde's statement at the office, along with the receipts and the seal. The charge concerned theft and commercial interference. The result would be decided there, where customers couldn't shout over the clerk.

Zhou Mingde walked between the runners without chains. Zhao Sheng went behind him, still bound. Their positions were different, but neither walked away from the complaint.

The apprentices stayed in the shop. One began putting lids back on open jars with hands that wouldn't quite steady.

Shi Feng picked up his cracked sample and returned to his own awning.

People followed at a distance. By the time he laid out the clean stock, Tao Laifu was waiting with a question about sore palms. Shi Feng explained the ordinary salve and its limits. He didn't raise the price because a crowd had arrived.

Across the street, two apprentices lifted the carved signboard down from Zhou's Medicine House and pulled the heavy shutters closed under the ward clerk's seal. A murmur ran through the morning market.

“Zhou Mingde tried to steal the peddler's formula and lost his own signboard before breakfast!”

“No wonder his shop feared that little awning—the peddler's salve is the real thing.”

“Give me two jars before the line reaches the corner!”

“Will Zhou's house reopen?” Tao Laifu asked, peering past the crowd now pressing up to Shi Feng's board.

“That's for the guard and Zhou Mingde,” Shi Feng said, handing the next buyer a sealed jar at the usual price. “Keep this lid dry.”

By mid-morning his sample tray was empty and three new buyers had left deposits for tomorrow's batch.