Chapter 863 — The Market Dries Up

CHAPTER 863

The Market Dries Up

The Hall of Hundred Roots was the largest herb house in Tianjing. It had three floors, four hundred drawers, and a gold signboard the length of a carriage.

Today every drawer on the top floor stood open and empty.

“All of it, Master Shi,” the shopkeeper said, wringing his hands. “Every Profound Heaven-grade herb in the house. They came at the third watch with lanterns and cash. Azure Sun stewards, and two buyers from the Tang houses. They paid triple and took the boxes too.”

“Who signed?” Shi Feng asked.

“The stewards paid with notes drawn on Young Lord Qu Ming’s account,” the shopkeeper said. “But they carried Elder Qu Hanshan’s seal. Nobody in the capital refuses that seal.”

Shi Feng walked along the empty shelves. Here and there a label still hung from a drawer. Seven-Star Dew Moss. Heaven-Locking Root. Ninefold Cloud Lily. He read every one of them.

“Five other houses are the same,” Ji Yuanhe said quietly behind him. “I asked at every one. The Tang shops on Gold Street won’t even open their doors.”

“They wouldn’t,” Shi Feng said. “It’s clever. The law says nobody may block me. So they don’t block me. They just buy every herb a 6 Mark pill needs, and clause sixty-one does the rest. If I sit with borrowed herbs from the hall, the pill belongs to the hall. If I sit with nothing, there’s no pill at all.”

“What about the Orchard herbs?” Ji Yuanhe asked. “We still have most of them.”

“They’re Shattering Void-grade,” Shi Feng said plainly. “They’re good herbs. They won’t do for the 6.”

He didn’t sound angry. He was already counting what he had left.

He paid the shopkeeper a silver piece for his trouble and walked out into the street.

Long Caili’s pavilion stood on the Vermilion Avenue, five storeys of red lacquer and jade tiles. Its gates were always open, and its prices were always high.

The princess received him in her counting room, not her hall. She sat behind a desk covered in ledgers, wearing deep blue, with a jade abacus at her elbow. A veil of pale gauze covered her from brow to chin. She didn’t look up when he came in. She finished adding a column first.

Shen Yaoqing stood by the window in pale Serene Jade white, her arms folded. She looked at Shi Feng once, from head to toe, and went back to looking at the street.

“Every Profound Heaven-grade herb in the capital,” Long Caili said, still writing. “Bought between the third and fifth watches. Qu Ming spent four million of his own money. Two Tang houses spent another three. I heard at dawn.”

“You heard before I did,” Shi Feng said.

“I have a pavilion on every street they bought from,” Long Caili said coldly. “Of course I heard first.”

She closed the ledger. Then she took a key from her sleeve and laid it on the desk.

“My vault is on the fourth floor,” Long Caili said. “Take what the sitting needs. Both furnaces. And take the Inner Treasury pick I chose at the Hunt. The Starfall Heart Lotus. I didn’t choose it for its looks.”

Shi Feng looked at the key, and didn’t touch it yet.

“Highness,” Shi Feng said. “That lotus is worth more than the whole Hall of Hundred Roots.”

“Then don’t waste it,” Long Caili said.

“Is it a gift?” Shi Feng asked, looking from the key to her face.

“No,” Long Caili said, finally lifting her eyes from the desk. They were cold and very clear. “It’s an investment in my recruit. A fine horse deserves a fine saddle. I expect a return.”

“Then I’ll write you a receipt,” Shi Feng said.

He took a sheet of her own paper from her own desk and wrote on it quickly. Received from Her Highness Long Caili, herbs for one sitting and one Starfall Heart Lotus. Payable in one 6 Mark pill, from the sitting. Signed, Shi Feng.

He turned it around and slid it across to her.

Long Caili read it. Her eyes didn’t change at all.

“And if there’s no 6 Mark pill?” Long Caili asked.

“Then I’ve broken my word to you,” Shi Feng said. “That’s why I won’t treat this as a casual attempt.”

Long Caili folded the receipt in half and put it in the ledger, between two pages of figures, as if it were one more account.

At the window, Shen Yaoqing spoke without turning around.

“You made my master’s pill in private,” Shen Yaoqing said. “Behind a sealed door, with nobody watching but me.”

“I did,” Shi Feng said.

“This time the whole capital will be watching,” Shen Yaoqing said. “Three days, behind glass. If you fail in public, the man who made my master’s pill will be a joke. And people will start to ask whether that pill was luck too.”

“Is that worry?” Shi Feng asked.

Shen Yaoqing turned her head and looked at him coldly.

“It’s a fact,” Shen Yaoqing said. “The man who made my master’s pill had better not fail in public.”

“Then I won’t,” Shi Feng said.

He picked up the key. Shen Yaoqing watched him do it and didn’t say anything else, but she didn’t look back at the street either.

Long Caili had already opened the next ledger.

“The vault keeper will count everything out to you,” Long Caili said. “He’ll count it back too, after. Go.”

By evening the herbs were packed into eight sealed crates in the pavilion’s storeroom, under the princess’s guard. Ji Yuanhe had counted every root aloud twice, and the vault keeper had counted every root a third time, unwilling to trust either alchemist’s count without checking it himself.

Shi Feng walked home by the long way to stretch his legs.

At the corner of Willow Ford Lane, a paper-seller was shouting the evening news. The Azure Sun had bought out the market. The princess’s alchemist had no herbs. The odds on the sitting were thirty to one against.

Under that, almost as an afterthought, the paper-seller shouted one more line.

“Baili Xuan of the Azure Sun says he’ll be on the Pavilion steps on signing day! Twenty-first on the Tianxing! Come and see!”

Shi Feng bought a copy, folded it, and put it in his sleeve.

“Twenty-first,” Shi Feng said to himself. “Then I’d better get there early.”