Chapter 890 — The Guest-Elder Seat

CHAPTER 890

The Guest-Elder Seat

The top room of the Ninefold Tower had nine windows, and every one of them looked down on Tianjing.

Old Tower Master Dai poured the tea himself. He was thin and white-haired, with steady hands, and he poured like a man who’d been pouring tea for three hundred years and still enjoyed it.

“First, an apology,” Old Tower Master Dai said. “The tower should’ve walked you home from the Glass Hall. That lane was outside our line by forty paces. Forty paces too many.”

“Your attendants came quickly,” Shi Feng said.

“Quickly isn’t the same as first.” Old Tower Master Dai set the pot down. “Second, an offer.”

He took a folded paper from beside his cup and pushed it across the table.

“The Sky Pavilion’s guest-elder seat,” Old Tower Master Dai said, nodding at the plain chair by the west window. “A chair in this tower. A stipend paid every season. And the Pavilion’s protection in any tower on the continent. If you walk into a Pavilion in the far west and say your name, they’ll open the inner doors.”

“And the duties?” Shi Feng asked.

“None,” Old Tower Master Dai said cheerfully. “That’s what makes it a guest seat. You’d be the first guest elder below Profound Heaven in the tower’s history. You’d also be the youngest by about four hundred years.”

Shi Feng didn’t pick up the paper yet. He took a different one from his sleeve, unfolded it on the table, and smoothed it flat.

It was his contract with Long Caili. He’d written every clause himself in front of her, and she’d signed it in red.

Old Tower Master Dai raised his white eyebrows and said nothing. He drank his tea and waited.

Shi Feng ran his finger down the clauses. A guest’s contract, not a servant’s. A fee. A seat in her faction, with no blood oath. Her pavilions’ backing. The right to leave on one month’s notice.

Clause seven. The guest will not take service with any other house, sect or prince while the contract runs.

“Tower Master, I’m the princess’s guest,” Shi Feng said. “If your seat comes with an oath, or a duty, or a debt, it binds me to the Pavilion, and I’d have to tell her before I signed anything. She’d ask me what it cost. I’d rather be able to say it cost nothing.”

“It costs nothing,” Old Tower Master Dai said.

“Then I’d like that in writing,” Shi Feng said. “A guest’s seat. No oath. No duty. And a fee.”

Old Tower Master Dai’s teacup stopped halfway to his mouth.

“A fee,” Old Tower Master Dai repeated.

“Pay me to sit, and the seat is a contract,” Shi Feng said. “A contract has terms, and both sides can read them. Give me the seat for nothing, and it’s a favour. Favours get collected later, at a price nobody wrote down.”

For a moment the Old Tower Master just looked at him.

Then he put the cup down and laughed. He laughed until he had to wipe his eyes with his sleeve, and outside the door, two attendants glanced at each other in alarm.

“Three hundred years,” Old Tower Master Dai said. “Kings have asked for this seat. Sect masters have offered treasures for it. You’re the first man who’s ever asked the Pavilion to pay him to accept it.”

“Is that a no?” Shi Feng asked.

“It’s a yes, you shameless boy.” Old Tower Master Dai pulled the paper back, took a brush from the stand, and began to write. “The Pavilion likes rules. It likes a man who likes them too.”

He wrote the terms himself, in the same round and comfortable hand he’d used on the register. A guest elder’s seat in the Sky Pavilion. No oath sworn. No duty owed. Protection in every tower. A seating fee of one million, paid at signing.

Shi Feng read it twice. Then he signed under the Tower Master’s name.

Old Tower Master Dai opened a drawer and counted out one million in Pavilion notes, crisp ones, onto the table.

Shi Feng counted them again, and the Old Tower Master waited without a word.

Ten million three hundred and sixty thousand, near enough. Less than he’d had when he signed for the sitting. More than he’d had when he left the steps with burnt hands.

“There,” Old Tower Master Dai said, satisfied. “Now you’re Elder Shi.”

“I’d rather stay honoured guest,” Shi Feng said. “Your clerks already say it so nicely.”

“They’ll keep saying it.” Old Tower Master Dai refilled both cups. He lowered his voice a little, though there was no one to hear. “One more thing, as your host and not as Tower Master. The Pavilion doesn’t deal with certain people. It never has. It won’t fight them for you either. But inside our line, they don’t come.”

Shi Feng thought of the grey hand on Ji Yuanhe’s collar.

“Bandits,” Shi Feng said.

“Bandits,” Old Tower Master Dai agreed gravely. “Drink your tea.”

They drank. Below the nine windows, Tianjing went on with its afternoon as though nothing had happened.

Ji Yuanhe was waiting at the foot of the tower stairs when Shi Feng came down, and he wasn’t smiling.

“Xiong Qiyun stopped me in the street,” Ji Yuanhe said. “He gave me one sentence for free. He said you’d want it.”

“Xiong Qiyun never gives anything for free,” Shi Feng said.

“He said this one would make him more money later,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Qu Ming is at the Tower Street teahouse with twelve sect sons. He’s telling everyone your 6 Mark was bought.”