Chapter 810 — Fifty-First

CHAPTER 810

Fifty-First

The warden came out of the fog at dusk on the fourth day, walking on a line of floating planks that unrolled in front of him and rolled up again behind.

He was a middle-aged man in a brown robe with the Long family’s dragon on the cuff, and he carried a jade board under one arm. He stopped at the edge of their island and bowed, quite politely, to all four of them.

“Princess Long Caili’s banner,” the warden said. “The day’s standing, by the Tally Pavilion’s weight. The Grand Warden asks every banner to hear it.”

“Go on, go on!” Hou Tieshou said, jumping up. He jumped up on his bad leg, and winced, and didn’t sit down.

The warden read from the board.

“First, the Third Prince’s banner, under Helian Ba,” the warden said. “Second, Princess Long Caili’s banner. Third, the Azure Sun Sect’s banner, under Qu Ming. Fourth, the Gu family. The Myriad Marrow Sect’s banner withdrew this morning. The Cangming Sword Palace’s banner stands sixth.”

There was a short silence on the island.

“Second,” Yue Shaoan said faintly. “We’re second. Before the Hunt they had us ninth.”

“Second!” Hou Tieshou roared. He slapped Yue Shaoan on the back so hard that the tracker nearly fell in the marsh. “Rising step by step! I told you! I told everyone! The cook hits like a mountain!”

“You said that about yourself,” Jiao Lanyin said.

“I said it about both of us!” Hou Tieshou insisted, refusing to sit down.

“How far behind the Third Prince?” Shi Feng asked.

The warden checked his board.

“About two python cores, honoured hunter,” the warden said. “The Third Prince’s banner took a Deity Transformation-grade bear on the south causeway this afternoon.”

“And Qu Ming?” Shi Feng asked. “How far behind us?”

“About one python core behind you,” the warden said.

So Qu Ming was close, and he’d have read the same board. Shi Feng nodded and thanked him.

On the stand of the Tally Pavilion, the Tianji Mansion scribe turned a page in his ledger. He looked at the warden’s report from the seventh Mirror for a while. Then he dipped his brush and wrote another small note in the margin.

51.

Princess Long Caili didn’t look at the scribe. Through her veil, her eyes were on the board, where her banner’s name stood second, one line under her brother’s.

Four places down the stand, the Third Prince didn’t look at the board at all. He sat with his eyes half closed, as if the whole Hunt bored him.

The fourth Mirror showed the long reed causeway on the east side of the marsh. Nothing had happened there all day, and only a handful of people still stood in front of it outside the Antler Gate.

Late in the afternoon, a man walked into the edge of the picture.

He wasn’t a hunter. He carried no banner and no bow, and nobody could see a token at his belt. He was thin, in a plain robe with grey sleeves, and he had a folder tucked under one arm.

He stopped at the very edge of the Mirror’s view. Then he turned his head and looked straight into it, as if he knew exactly where the crowd was standing and wanted to see their faces.

“Who’s that?”

“A warden?”

“Wardens wear brown. That’s not a warden.”

“He’s looking at us. Why’s he looking at us?”

“…”

The thin man held the look for three breaths. Then he turned and walked out of the picture, unhurried, and didn’t come back.

Back on the island, the warden had already rolled up half his planks when he stopped and turned round.

“One more thing, honoured hunters,” the warden said. “The Grand Warden asks every banner to keep watch tonight. There was an odd sight at the fourth Mirror this afternoon. A man inside the wall, with no banner and no token. He looked into the Mirror and walked off east. We’ve sent men to the outer wall to look for another gap.”

Yue Shaoan went pale at once.

“Another bandit?” Yue Shaoan asked. “Like the ones in the pines?”

“We don’t know yet,” the warden said apologetically. “Only that he was thin, and wore grey sleeves, and carried some kind of folder.”

Shi Feng had been sitting on the log with a cup of hot water in both hands. He didn’t move. But the water in the cup went perfectly still.

“Thin,” Shi Feng repeated. “With a folder.”

“So the Mirror-watchers say, honoured hunter,” the warden replied, checking the description on his board.

Shi Feng looked east, into the fog, for a long moment. His face had gone flat. He recognised the description, and the others saw his anger before he said anything more.

“He’s here himself,” Shi Feng said.

He didn’t say anything else.

The warden waited, bowed again and rolled away into the dusk on his planks. Hou Tieshou opened his mouth, looked at Shi Feng’s face and shut it again. Yue Shaoan looked at Jiao Lanyin. Jiao Lanyin looked at Shi Feng, and then she strung her bow and sat down facing east.

Nobody asked who “he” was.

Shi Feng drank his water. Ji Yuanhe was a day’s ride away, behind the princess’s walls and her checked night rota. The man with the folder was here, inside the Hunt.

At least he knew where the man was now, Shi Feng thought. He would rather have the collector watching this camp than approaching Ji Yuanhe’s furnace room while he was trapped inside the Hunt.

Out in the fog, far to the east, something that wasn’t the wind moved through the reeds, stopped, and moved again.