Chapter 873 — The Eve

CHAPTER 873

The Eve

“Attendant for the sitting,” Si Jiahe said, and wet his brush. “Your name, please, Master Ji.”

“Ji Yuanhe. 2 Mark. Hongye Kingdom,” Ji Yuanhe said.

The candidates’ room behind the Glass Hall was small and warm. It had one long table, two lamps, and a window that looked down on the busiest street in the Pavilion quarter. The princess’s crates stood against the wall, under the Pavilion’s paper since the morning after the business with the porter.

Si Jiahe wrote the name, blew on it, and bowed.

“Forgive me, Master Shi. I have to read the attendant’s rule aloud,” Si Jiahe said. “An attendant may hand herbs and call the count. He may not touch the fire. If he touches the fire, the sitting is void and the fees are kept. I’m very sorry.”

“Read it clearly,” Shi Feng said. “Master Ji needs to hear where the limit is, even if he sees me struggling.”

“I’ll sit on my hands,” Ji Yuanhe said seriously.

Si Jiahe bowed again and left them alone with the crates.

Ji Yuanhe broke the first seal. He lifted each herb out in both hands, turned it once under the lamp, and set it on the table in a row.

“Star-Swallow Ginseng, four hundred years. Good,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Ninefold Thunder Orchid, two stalks. Good. Heaven-Ladder Vine, one coil, dry at the tip. That’s how it should be. Purple Heaven Heart Root.”

He held the heart root up to his nose for a long time.

“Good,” Ji Yuanhe said at last.

Shi Feng listened to the old man’s voice. It was calm and even, and it stopped when the herbs stopped. In the Pill Pit Ji Yuanhe had counted to hold himself together. Now he counted because he liked to, and anyone could hear the difference.

There were eleven herbs for the 5 Mark pill, all from the princess’s vault. For the 6 Mark there were nine more, all of them Profound Heaven-grade. Three of those came from the Imperial Inner Treasury, and no shop in Tianjing had sold one in a hundred years.

Shi Feng pulled the practice tray toward him. It was a flat jade tray with a shallow bowl in the middle, and he put a sliver of the Star-Swallow Ginseng into it.

At this grade, every herb carried its essence in a pattern, like the grain in a piece of wood. Put two patterns in one furnace without tuning them to each other, and they’d tear each other apart.

He lit a thread of fire under the tray and drew the pattern up out of the sliver. It rose in thin gold lines over the bowl, like the strings of a qin. He touched the first string with one finger to tighten it.

It snapped.

The sliver turned to grey ash in the bowl.

Shi Feng examined the break in the fading pattern, then brushed the ash aside. At least it had failed here, with time left to learn.

“That sliver cost eleven thousand,” Ji Yuanhe told him.

“Pulling from the root end broke it,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll start at the tip. On the third day, the same mistake would cost the whole pill.”

He put in a second sliver and drew the pattern again. This time he worked from the tip. He tightened the strings slowly, one after another, until they hummed.

He tightened them one turn too far. The hum went high and thin, and the pattern cracked down the middle.

“Twenty-two thousand,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“I know. I can count too, Master Ji,” Shi Feng said, rubbing his blistered fingers. “Too tight sings before it breaks. Good. Now I know what it sounds like.”

The third sliver held. Its strings hummed low and steady over the bowl. He put a sliver of thunder orchid beside it and drew that pattern up as well, and turned it string by string until the two hums matched.

The jade tray stopped trembling.

Ji Yuanhe let out a long breath.

Shi Feng went through all twenty herbs that way, one sliver of each, until the lamps burned low. He failed no more. When he finished, he swept the ash from the first two slivers into a twist of paper and put it in his sleeve. Nothing on that table was going to waste.

They left the Pavilion after dark. The street outside was still full of people, and the teahouse across from the gate was the loudest building on it.

Its upstairs windows stood open. A dozen young men in sect robes sat round the tables, and every lamp in the place was lit. Shi Feng knew the voice before he saw the face.

“The front row!” Qu Ming said, loud enough for the whole street to hear. “I’ve paid for the front row of the Azure Sun box. Tomorrow I’ll sit there with a pot of tea and watch a servant’s furnace die.”

The sect sons laughed and banged their cups on the tables.

“A servant? Isn’t he the princess’s guest?”

“Guest, servant, what’s the difference? She pays him either way!”

“Sitting the 6 Mark at Shattering Void. He’ll lose his eyebrows!”

“Young Lord Qu, will you take bets?”

“Bets?” Qu Ming laughed. “Nobody will bet the other side. The higher the climb, the harder the fall. Remember that tomorrow, all of you.”

Ji Yuanhe stopped walking. His thin hands curled at his sides.

“Master Ji,” Shi Feng said.

“He called you a servant,” Ji Yuanhe said stiffly.

“I heard him, Master Ji,” Shi Feng said. “He can shout all night. I need you rested beside the furnace tomorrow. Come on. You promised me congee, and the rice won’t cook itself.”

Ji Yuanhe looked up at the window one more time. Then he followed.

Behind them, the laughter went on late into the night. Across the street, the Pavilion lamps went on burning as well. The clerks had a glass wall to raise round the stand before dawn.