Chapter 765 — The General’s House Is Watching

CHAPTER 765

The General’s House Is Watching

The one-eyed officer came to Willow Ford at dusk, alone and on foot, and stood at the gate like a sentry until someone noticed him.

Auntie Niu noticed him first. She came out from behind her steamer with a ladle in her hand and looked him up and down.

“Buns are two copper,” Auntie Niu said. “If you want the boy, he’s inside bleeding on my good towels.”

“The officer will wait,” the one-eyed man said.

Shi Feng came out with his left arm in a sling and Ji Yuanhe a step behind him. The officer saluted him exactly as he would have saluted a captain, fist to palm, and held out a flat lacquered box tied with red and black cord.

“From the general’s house,” the officer said.

Inside lay a squat clay jar sealed with wax and a single card. The jar smelled sharply of camphor and pine resin. Shi Feng knew the smell at once. It was the Gu army’s wound salve, the kind that was issued to officers on the northern wall and never sold in any market.

The card had one line on it, written in a heavy, square hand.

The general’s house is watching.

“That’s all?” Ji Yuanhe asked.

“That’s all,” the officer said.

“And the young general?” Shi Feng asked.

“He broke his spear. He’s at the armoury having a new one forged,” the one-eyed officer said. “He asked me to say it’ll be ready before the rematch.” The officer paused. “The young general keeps his word. Once a word is spoken, four horses can’t pull it back.”

He saluted again, turned on his heel and marched off down the lane. The lane watched him go in silence. Then everyone started talking at once.

Shi Feng sat down on the step and turned the jar over in his good hand.

“The Situ sent wine,” Ji Yuanhe said slowly. “Twice. And the Gu sent medicine.”

“Once,” Shi Feng said. “And they didn’t ask for anything.”

“Is that better?” Ji Yuanhe asked.

“It’s different,” Shi Feng said. “The Situ wanted me to accept their help before telling me why. The Gu saw their own spear wound me. This is respect, though they may want something later.”

Ji Yuanhe broke the seal on the jar and began to clean the shoulder properly, counting each turn of the bandage under his breath. The salve burned like fire for ten breaths and then went cool. By the time Ji Yuanhe had finished counting, the wound had already stopped weeping.

Shi Feng moved his shoulder and found it easy. It was very good salve.

Two days later, the Tianji Mansion’s new issue reached the lane.

Niu Tiezhu ran up with it from the canal stall, waving it over his head, and half the neighbours gathered around Auntie Niu’s steamer to listen. The boy read the top ten aloud first, the way everyone did. The princess was still first. A Cangming Sword Palace disciple had moved up to fourth. There was a long paragraph on a northern clan’s son who had broken into Shattering Void at twenty-six.

Then he read the gossip page, about which Tianxing had been seen with which sect’s daughter. That took longer.

Nobody asked him to read the eighties.

Ji Yuanhe took the issue off the boy afterward, turned it to the back page and ran his finger down the column. He stopped and turned it round so Shi Feng could see.

Eighty-fifth. Shi Feng. Beside it, in smaller characters: above Gu Yanxing.

“There,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“There,” Shi Feng agreed, and went back to his porridge.

A water-seller leaning on the wall glanced at the page over Ji Yuanhe’s shoulder.

“Shi Feng? Never heard of him,” the water-seller said. “Some swordsman. Tiezhu, read the bit about the Situ girl again.”

[Tianxing: 90 → 85 | Note: nobody read that far.]

That afternoon a household runner brought him up to the princess’s tea room at the Phoenix Tail Pavilion. Long Caili was sitting at the low table behind her veil, with her ledger beside her teapot, and she didn’t get up.

“Sit,” Long Caili said. “How’s the shoulder?”

“Healing,” Shi Feng said. “The Gu sent salve.”

He put the card on the table between them. Long Caili looked at it without touching it. She read it twice, and for a moment her fingers stopped on the ledger.

“From whose hand?” Long Caili asked.

“A one-eyed officer brought it,” Shi Feng said.

“Not who brought it. Whose hand wrote it,” Long Caili said, turning the card with one fingernail, so that the square characters faced her. “That’s the old general’s own hand. His son’s is narrower. I’ve had letters from both.”

“Does it matter?” Shi Feng asked.

Long Caili poured him tea before she answered. She filled his cup slowly, still looking at the card. The old general’s attention mattered more than she’d expected.

“The Great General’s house stands with my Fifth Brother. This card comes from Gu Yanxing’s line,” Long Caili said. “They don’t watch anyone they don’t mean to back, and in ten years they’ve never once sent my brothers a card.”

Shi Feng picked up his cup. That was what the card was worth. The First Prince already backed her, but even a lesser Gu line commanded soldiers. Their support would give her something her brother’s protection couldn’t. Shi Feng understood why she’d paused over the handwriting.

“They sent it to me,” Shi Feng said. “If they mean to back me, they can say so when they’re ready. For now, I’ll thank them for the medicine.”

“Everything you bring through that door goes in my ledger,” Long Caili said coolly. “I’ve already written it down.” She drank. “You have a visitor waiting, by the way. My people saw his carriage turn toward Willow Ford an hour ago.”

“Who?” Shi Feng asked.

“Tang Wenbo,” Long Caili said. “With a paper under the Tang seal. He took it to you, not to me.” Her veil stirred with a short breath. “Which tells me what’s in it.”

She opened her ledger again. The audience was over.

When Shi Feng came back to Willow Ford, a black Tang carriage was standing at the lane mouth with its curtains drawn, and Tang Wenbo was waiting beside it with a lacquered box held in both hands.