Chapter 822 — The Folding Chair

CHAPTER 822

The Folding Chair

The man in the reeds carried his chair out onto the causeway and set it down in the middle of the stones, facing them.

He was thin, in a plain grey robe with grey sleeves, and he had a cloth folder under one arm. He sat, crossed his legs, and opened the folder on his knee. Behind him the light in the Old Crater gate had turned the colour of brass. The last of the sun lay along the rim.

“Alchemist Shi,” Ning Zhe said pleasantly.

Shi Feng was still sitting on the cracked stones where the monk had left him. He didn’t get up. His face had gone flat the moment he’d heard the click of the chair, and it stayed flat.

“Who’s that?” Hou Tieshou demanded loudly. “Hey! Grey sleeves! This is the princess’s banner! Get your chair off the road!”

“Quiet,” Shi Feng said.

Hou Tieshou shut his mouth at once. In six days he’d never heard Shi Feng say a word in that voice.

Ning Zhe smiled at the big man, then looked back at Shi Feng.

“I waited for the monk to finish,” Ning Zhe said. “It seemed rude to interrupt. You’ve hurt two ribs on the left, and you’re breathing on the right to spare them. That’s sensible.”

“You came a long way to count my ribs,” Shi Feng said.

“I came a long way to count you,” Ning Zhe said. “Everything is counted, Alchemist Shi. You know that.”

He put two fingers into his left sleeve and drew out a hairpin.

It was thin and plain, and worn smooth where a hand had held it for years. Three small crescents were cut into its head. Ning Zhe turned it once in the brass light from the gate.

Shi Feng looked at it, and his breath went out of him slowly. He didn’t move.

That was the Deacon, Shi Feng thought. The third taker in the fog had sent the Deacon’s regards, and now the Deacon had brought them in person. He’d sat outside a monk’s fight with a hairpin in his sleeve, waiting for Shi Feng to be hurt.

“I’ll make the same offer I made before,” Ning Zhe said, laying the pin on the open folder. “An herb room of your own. A furnace better than anything in the capital. The 5 Mark within the year. I said the 4 Mark in the Pit, and you went and took it yourself in Tianjing, so you know I wasn’t lying about what you can do.”

“And?” Shi Feng asked.

“And Ji Yuanhe,” Ning Zhe said. He turned a page. “His name is still in here, with a debt beside it. Come home, and I’ll tear the page out in front of you. Nobody will come for him again. He can count, or not count, at the princess’s pavilion for the rest of his life.”

Behind Shi Feng, Yue Shaoan made a small sound. Jiao Lanyin’s bow came up an inch.

That was the real offer, and Ning Zhe knew it. Shi Feng knew it too.

“Say your conditions,” Shi Feng said.

Ning Zhe looked pleased. He liked men who asked for terms.

“First,” Ning Zhe said, “when the Hunt’s bell rings tomorrow, you crush your token. The wardens will carry you out to the Antler Gate, and a carriage there will be mine.”

“No,” Shi Feng said.

“Second, you break the princess’s contract,” Ning Zhe said. “In writing, and today. She’ll be angry, but she’s a merchant. Merchants recover.”

“No,” Shi Feng said.

“Third, the furnace room keeps your quota, as before,” Ning Zhe continued. “Six furnaces a cycle. Half must pass. You were very good at that.”

“No,” Shi Feng said.

“Fourth,” Ning Zhe said, tapping the folder. “Whatever it is you eat, you’ll eat it in front of me. I’d rather feed it than guess at it.”

“No,” Shi Feng said.

Ning Zhe waited, as if a fifth “no” might be owed.

“First,” Shi Feng said evenly. “My token’s mine, and I’ll crush it when I’m ready to leave, not when you need a carriage filled. Second, I signed the princess’s paper. My word doesn’t break because someone pays more for it. Third, I’ve seen your quotas. I didn’t like them the first time. Fourth, my dinner’s my own business.”

“And Ji Yuanhe?” Ning Zhe asked.

“You won’t tear out his page,” Shi Feng said. “You’ll keep it to threaten him whenever I refuse an order. Your promise would leave him exactly where he was before I escaped.”

Ning Zhe laughed softly. He sounded as if Shi Feng had answered a question correctly.

“You’ll come round, Alchemist Shi,” Ning Zhe said.

Shi Feng didn’t say anything. He put one hand on the stones and stood up, slowly, until he was on his feet with the grey Sword hanging from his right hand. His left arm stayed close against his ribs.

“Brother Shi,” Yue Shaoan whispered. “Brother Shi, there’s something in the reeds. Behind him. I can smell it. Ink and old paper, and two more, and they smell...” His voice cracked. “They smell like the men at the campfire. But heavier.”

Two more takers, Shi Feng thought. Heavier than early Shattering Void, or at least not lighter. And a Deacon on a chair, with a hairpin on his knee.

He glanced up at the gate. The ninth Mirror hung above the black pillars, a pale disc of light on a pole, and it looked straight down the causeway. The whole stand could see a grey-sleeved man on a chair, and a hurt banner facing him.

Good, Shi Feng thought. Let them watch the bandits.

“One more thing,” Shi Feng said. “The hairpin.”

“Comes with the furnace,” Ning Zhe said. “It always did.”

“Then I’ll take it without the furnace,” Shi Feng said.

For a moment the causeway was silent. A frog croaked somewhere out in the marsh, and stopped.

Ning Zhe sighed, displeased that the offer had failed. He picked up the hairpin and put it back into his left sleeve. Then he closed the folder.

Something grey came out of its spine.

It was a thread, thin as a hair, and then it was ten threads, and then a hundred, all of them ruled in faint lines like the columns of a ledger. Shi Feng had seen threads like them once before, wound around the wrists of an old man chained to a black iron furnace.

His grip tightened on the grey Sword.

“Let’s do it the other way, then,” Ning Zhe said pleasantly.