Chapter 789 — Ji’s Furnace Room

CHAPTER 789

Ji’s Furnace Room

“Clause five,” Long Caili said. “A furnace room, and my protection. I don’t sign clauses I don’t keep.”

Her veil stirred as she turned. She led them down a covered walk at the back of the Phoenix Tail Pavilion, past the Buying Hall and the vault stairs, to a small courtyard behind a second wall. Two guards in Long colours stood at its gate. They were Shattering Void, both of them, and they bowed to the princess and then, a moment later, to the old man behind her.

Ji Yuanhe didn’t seem to know what to do with the bow. He bowed back, too low, and nearly dropped the cloth bag he was carrying.

The room inside was square and clean, with a high roof for the smoke and a single window onto the courtyard. A black bronze furnace stood in the middle on a stone base. There were shelves along one wall, a cot along another, and a water jar by the door. Everything was new. The tiles on the floor still smelled of the kiln.

“Her Highness’s own furnace hall is on the other side of that wall,” Long Caili said. “The guards at the gate answer to me and nobody else. Nobody comes into this courtyard without my word. Not a steward. Not an inspector. Not my third brother.”

She said the last one without any change in her voice at all.

Ji Yuanhe walked slowly into the middle of the room. He put out one hand and touched the furnace’s rim. Then he turned toward the wall behind it, and his lips began to move.

Shi Feng leaned on the doorframe and waited.

Long Caili looked at the old man, then at Shi Feng.

“What is he doing?” Long Caili asked.

“Counting the bricks,” Shi Feng said.

“Why?” Long Caili asked, lowering her voice.

“So he knows how many there are,” Shi Feng said. “If one’s moved, he’ll know. In the last place he was kept, nobody told him anything. He counted everything himself.”

Ji Yuanhe finished the wall behind the furnace, then the wall with the window. He stood for a long time in front of the shelves. Then he turned back to the princess and bowed, carefully this time, to exactly the right depth.

“Four hundred and twelve, Your Highness,” Ji Yuanhe said. “It’s a good room. Thank you.” He held the cloth bag a little tighter. “I’ll think about it.”

Shi Feng watched the princess carefully. She had supplied a new furnace room and Shattering Void guards, yet Ji Yuanhe still hesitated. She could easily mistake his fear for ingratitude.

Long Caili’s eyes didn’t change.

“Take your time,” Long Caili said. “The guards will wait.”

She turned and walked out past them into the covered walk. At the gate, both guards straightened another inch as she passed.

Ji Yuanhe looked at Shi Feng.

“Will you be in the capital?” Ji Yuanhe asked quietly.

“Not always,” Shi Feng said. “That’s why I wrote clause five above clause six. If I’m away, this room is safer than Willow Ford. If I’m here, I’ll be on the other side of that wall at least twice a day.”

“My pills don’t fail,” Ji Yuanhe said, a little stiffly.

“Then I’ll eat mine,” Shi Feng said. “You don’t have to decide today, Master Ji. The guards aren’t here to keep you inside, and neither am I.”

Ji Yuanhe nodded slowly. He took one last look around the room, counting something under his breath, and followed Shi Feng out.

On the pavilion steps, a paper-seller was crying the Tianji Mansion’s newest issue.

“The Hundred Famed Tianxing! New issue! The lake final, the lists redone!”

Cheng Mobai was already standing beside him with a copy, his bandaged arm tucked against his chest. He held it out without being asked.

“Page four,” Cheng Mobai said. “Look at sixty-three.”

Sixty-third. Shi Feng.

Sixty-fourth. Qu Ming, Azure Sun Sect.

Ji Yuanhe leaned in and read it twice. Then he pointed at the line, and at Shi Feng, and back at the line, the same way he’d done on the Pavilion steps in winter.

“Same name as the fighter,” a passing merchant remarked to his companion, glancing at the issue in Cheng’s hand.

“Shi’s a common name,” the companion said. “Who reads past fifty?”

“Didn’t that one refuse the princess’s oath?” the merchant asked. “In her own hall. I heard she had him thrown out, and then bought him back with a pavilion.”

“He refused it,” Cheng Mobai said. “In the hall. In front of the inspector.”

The merchant looked at Cheng Mobai’s bandaged arm, then at Shi Feng, and smiled the way men smile at a stranger’s story.

“If you say so, swordsman,” the merchant said.

They walked on.

Cheng Mobai stared after them, and then at Shi Feng.

“You’re really not going to tell anyone?” Cheng Mobai asked.

“Tell them what?” Shi Feng said. “They can read the name if they care. I’m not chasing strangers down the steps to make them admire it.”

“Somebody’s reading it,” Cheng Mobai said. He folded the issue and tapped it against his bandages. “Word from the Azure Sun lodge is that the young lord hasn’t come out since the lake. Not once. His attendant goes out to buy every issue, and goes back in. He’s on his fourth copy. The Azure Sun’s young lord has turned into a shrinking-head turtle.”

Shi Feng thought about the soaked figure on the shore steps, and the red robe walking past him without a glance.

A young lord who didn’t leave his lodge was not a young lord who’d given up.

“Then let him read,” Shi Feng said. “When he comes out, I’ll be easy to find.”

He took the issue from Cheng Mobai, folded it once and put it in his sleeve, and went down the steps.

At the bottom, a household runner in Long colours was waiting for him again, bowing.

“Master Shi. Her Highness asks you to come to the east garden,” the runner said. “Now, if it’s convenient. And if it’s not convenient, now anyway.”