Chapter 769 — Declined, with Thanks

CHAPTER 769

Declined, with Thanks

Ji Yuanhe brought the brush very slowly, as if it weighed a hundred catties.

Shi Feng wet it, wrote on the signature line and blew on the ink. Then he folded the petition and put it in his sleeve.

“Come on,” Shi Feng said. “You can carry the buns.”

The tea stall at the lane mouth was as poor as Situ Jinghong had promised. It had two stools, a cracked pot and a boatman asleep under the awning. Situ Jinghong sat on one stool with a straight back, drinking the bad tea as if it were the best in Tianjing. His guards stood in the sun.

He saw the paper in Shi Feng’s hand and smiled.

“Master Shi. That was quick,” Situ Jinghong said, setting down his cup.

Shi Feng laid the petition on the table and opened it. On the signature line, in plain characters, it said: Declined, with thanks.

Situ Jinghong looked at it for a long while. His smile didn’t move at all.

“May this Situ ask why?” Situ Jinghong asked. “Only out of curiosity.”

“You can,” Shi Feng said, taking the other stool. “First, I don’t want your family deciding when my petition gets read. Your seal moves it forward today. What happens when I refuse your next request? Every time someone asks how I earned the 5 Mark, I’ll have to explain your family’s help before I can mention my own work.”

“The Situ don’t lend things in order to take them back,” Situ Jinghong said mildly.

“Second,” Shi Feng went on. “I sat the 4 Mark alone, under my own name. When I sit the 5, I’ll sit it the same way. I’m in no hurry to hear my name read out with somebody else’s seal beside it.”

The boatman under the awning woke up, saw the Situ blue, and quietly went back to sleep.

“And third?” Situ Jinghong asked.

“Third, I told the princess’s steward I’d fight every round she set,” Shi Feng said. “Once I’ve said a thing, I don’t take it back. That doesn’t change for the 5 Mark.”

Situ Jinghong put down his cup.

“You keep your word to a steward’s desk,” Situ Jinghong said.

“I keep it to everyone,” Shi Feng said. “The desk just happened to be the one that heard it.”

For a moment the young master only looked at him. Then he smiled again, exactly the same smile as before, and rose.

“Then this Situ looks forward to tomorrow,” Situ Jinghong said. “Truly. It’s rare to meet a man who can’t be bought. They’re usually so poor.”

“I’m not poor,” Shi Feng said. “Bring a spare brush tomorrow, Young Master Situ. I’d hate for you to say you lost on a bad one.”

Situ Jinghong bowed, left the petition on the table and walked away up the lane with his guards. He didn’t look back once.

Ji Yuanhe picked up the paper, tore it into eight neat pieces, and fed them into the tea stall’s stove one at a time.

“Eight,” Ji Yuanhe said.

That afternoon Shi Feng went to the Lantern Lane inn by the canal, where Cheng Mobai lodged in a room so small that his sword had to lean in the corner.

“Brother Shi!” Cheng Mobai said, grinning, when he opened the door. “You found this dump. Good. I wanted to ask you something.”

He’d been sharpening his crooked sword on a whetstone balanced on his knee. The patch on his left sleeve was new. He’d sewn it himself, badly, in red thread.

“Ask,” Shi Feng said.

“The inspector’s ring law lets a second throw the towel for a fighter. I’d rather have someone there,” Cheng Mobai said. “So I asked around.” He shrugged. “Nobody asks after a poor man in a busy market. Nobody wants to stand behind a swordsman from a village they’ve never heard of.”

“So you want me,” Shi Feng said, glancing at the sword in the corner.

“You’re the only one in this contest who never asked me where I’m from,” Cheng Mobai said.

“I’ll stand,” Shi Feng said. His tone grew serious. “But if I throw the towel, stop fighting. I won’t do it because I’m bored.”

Cheng Mobai laughed out loud. “If you throw it, I’ll never forgive you!”

“Be angry afterward,” Shi Feng said. “I’m not standing there to watch you die for a bout.”

Cheng Mobai stopped laughing and looked at him. Then he nodded once.

“Situ Jinghong came to see me this morning,” Shi Feng said. “If he comes to see you, don’t drink his tea.”

“I can’t afford tea,” Cheng Mobai said cheerfully. He tipped his purse out on the bed to prove it. Forty coppers rolled across the blanket. “That’s my whole fortune until the contest pays. My mother gets half of whatever I win.”

Shi Feng counted the coppers without meaning to. Forty, exactly. Cheng Mobai gathered them carefully, embarrassed by nothing except the hole in his purse. Shi Feng liked him more for it.

Near midnight, someone pounded on the Willow Ford gate.

Niu Tiezhu stood outside with a lantern, out of breath. Auntie Niu’s grandson ran errands for half the lane and always heard everything first.

“Master Shi! The watch went into the Lantern Lane inn an hour ago!” Niu Tiezhu said. “They dragged out that swordsman with the patched sleeve. They found a sack of pavilion silver under his bed. Stolen from the princess, they’re saying!”

Ji Yuanhe had come to the door behind Shi Feng in his sleeping robe.

“He had forty coppers at dusk,” Shi Feng said. “I counted them.”

“Somebody told the watch exactly which room to search,” Niu Tiezhu said. “That’s what the whole lane says.”

Shi Feng looked up the dark lane toward the tea stall, where Situ Jinghong had sat that morning and promised to want nothing.

The semi-finals began at the noon drum, and Cheng Mobai’s bout was first.