Chapter 837 — Odds on the Sky

CHAPTER 837

Odds on the Sky

“The princess’s alchemist creeps into Serene Jade quarters after the second watch!” the storyteller called.

The man at the front of the teahouse by the canal bridge slapped his wooden block on the table, and the whole room leaned in.

“And that’s not all!” the storyteller went on. “The Azure Sun’s own young lord says the bumpkin’s Shattering Void tribulation falls on Thunder-Gazing Ridge, at dawn on the tenth! He wants it known in every teahouse in the capital, so the whole capital can come and watch the bumpkin die!”

The room burst into noise.

“The tenth? That’s six days from now!”

“Thunder-Gazing Ridge is Long family land! The princess lent him a mountain?”

“Creeping into the chief disciple’s rooms, and then dying in public. What a man!”

“There’s no wall in the world the wind can’t get through.”

At a corner table by the window, Shi Feng finished his noodles and put the bowl down.

Ji Yuanhe hadn’t touched his. He was gripping his chopsticks so hard they’d bent.

“He told the whole city,” Ji Yuanhe said in a low voice. “The day, the place, everything. How does he even know?”

“A steward saw the princess walk me to the east wing,” Shi Feng said. “And the ridge’s deed went through the Long family registry. Anyone with money could find both by lunch. Qu Ming has a lot of money.”

“You’re not angry?” Ji Yuanhe asked.

“About the creeping? No.” Shi Feng laid six coppers on the table. “About the rest, yes.”

His voice had gone quiet, and Ji Yuanhe noticed it. Shi Feng was looking out of the window at the crowd on the bridge.

“Qu Ming thinks he’s telling the city,” Shi Feng said. “He isn’t. He’s telling everybody who wants me dead exactly where I’ll be, and when, and that I’ll be sitting in a ring I can’t leave.”

Ji Yuanhe’s face went pale. He didn’t need to ask who else might want that. He’d spent a year chained to a furnace because of them.

“Then change the place,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Change the day!”

“The sky picked the day. I can’t move it,” Shi Feng said. “And the ridge is the only ground for thirty li where nobody else gets hurt. If I run, I end up on the north road with the chestnut sellers.” He stood up. “So we don’t run. We go up there knowing.”

The east balcony of the pavilion looked down on the street of lantern shops, and in the late afternoon it caught the sun.

Shen Yaoqing stood at the rail with her arms folded in her sleeves. Long Caili sat behind her at a small table, veiled as always, with a ledger open, writing figures in the margin with a fine brush.

“The teahouses say he creeps into my rooms,” Shen Yaoqing said.

“He came in with me and left with me,” Long Caili said, without looking up. “I’ll have the steward say so.”

“Don’t,” Shen Yaoqing said. “If you deny it, they’ll only enjoy it more.”

Long Caili wrote another figure.

For a while the only sound was the brush. Down in the street, the lantern sellers were hanging the evening’s first lamps.

“Is your recruit always this sure of himself?” Shen Yaoqing asked.

Long Caili’s brush paused.

“Only when he’s right,” Long Caili said. “It’s very annoying.”

“And when he’s wrong?” Shen Yaoqing asked.

“I haven’t seen it yet,” Long Caili said, and went back to her figures. “I’m keeping a page for it.”

Shen Yaoqing looked at her friend over her shoulder.

“You gave him the ridge before he asked,” Shen Yaoqing said.

“The rent was already paid,” Long Caili said.

“You’ve said that three times today,” Shen Yaoqing said.

Long Caili didn’t lift her head. “Then it must be true.”

Shen Yaoqing turned back to the rail without another word. The corner of her mouth moved, very slightly.

Below the balcony, a table had appeared in the middle of the street. A woman sat behind it with a thick book open in front of her and a brush in her hand. A crowd was already forming.

It was Madam Liu Su. She had kept the odds on the princess’s contest, every round, and made a fortune on the final.

“New book! New book!” Liu Su called out cheerfully. “The princess’s alchemist, on Thunder-Gazing Ridge, at dawn on the tenth! Does the sky kill him, or doesn’t it?”

“What are the odds?” someone shouted.

Liu Su licked her brush and wrote on a board.

“Dies on the ridge, one to two!” Liu Su called. “Lives through it, six to one! Six to one, my dears! He’s beaten every man I ever bet against him, but the sky isn’t a man!”

The crowd laughed, and silver began to land on the table, almost all of it on the side marked “Dies”. Liu Su wrote names as fast as her hand could move.

“Six to one,” Long Caili said from her chair. “She’s generous.”

“She’s cautious,” Shen Yaoqing said. “The Azure Sun is telling everyone he’s a bumpkin. She’s heard what happened on Herb Street.”

A man came through the crowd to Liu Su’s table. He was thin and quiet, in an ordinary robe with grey sleeves. He didn’t push or call out. He set down a purse so heavy that the table creaked, and he pointed at the word “Dies”.

Then he walked away into the crowd without waiting for his slip.

Liu Su weighed the purse in her hand, and her eyebrows rose.

Up on the balcony, Long Caili had stopped writing. She watched the grey sleeves until they turned a corner and disappeared.

“Somebody is very sure,” Shen Yaoqing said quietly.

Long Caili closed her ledger.

“Tell the guard captain,” Long Caili said to her maid, “that he’s going up the ridge with my alchemist. All the way to the top.”