Chapter 895 — Tomorrow, the Sixth Desk

CHAPTER 895

Tomorrow, the Sixth Desk

The Records Hall clerk bowed before Shi Feng reached the counter.

“Honoured guest. Congratulations on your Marks,” the clerk said. “Thank you for coming so promptly.”

The hall was the same as it had been a year ago. It smelled of ink and old paper. Six desks stood in a long row under the high windows, one for each Mark. At the 1 Mark desk the queue ran out of the door. At the 3 Mark desk, forty people stood holding tickets, and Hua Yi sat behind it with her hands folded and didn’t look up.

At the far end, the sixth desk stood empty. Its chair was covered with a cloth, and a small brass bell sat on the corner of the desk, untouched.

“The 6 Mark desk sits tomorrow, at the first bell after dawn,” the clerk said. “It sits only when a holder of that Mark asks for it, so the keeper has been sent for. He’ll arrive tonight.”

“Sent for from where?” Shi Feng asked.

“From the tower’s archive, honoured guest,” the clerk said politely. “He doesn’t often leave it.”

Shi Feng took the ticket out of his sleeve.

It was a thin strip of bamboo, worn smooth at the corners and darkened where his thumb went. Three thousand and forty-one. He’d taken it on his first morning in this hall, when the Junior Keeper had politely refused his speed fee. He’d carried it through the 3 Mark desk, the 4 Mark desk, the contest, the Hunt, the Void and the Glass Hall.

“Is it still good?” Shi Feng asked.

The clerk took it in both hands, checked it against a ledger and handed it back with a bow.

“It’s still good, honoured guest,” the clerk said. “It’ll be called in queue order. There’s nobody else waiting at the sixth desk, but the Pavilion still calls it by the queue.” The clerk hesitated. “We apologise for the formality. If the guest would prefer, the Tower Master could ask the keeper to open the desk tonight.”

“No,” Shi Feng said. “Tomorrow, in order.”

The clerk blinked.

“If the Pavilion opened a desk early for a man because of his Mark, the next man in the queue would stop trusting the queue,” Shi Feng said. “And I’d stop trusting whatever answer I got at that desk. I’ve waited a year. One more night costs me nothing.”

“Then tomorrow, at the first bell,” the clerk said, and bowed more deeply than before.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Shi Feng said.

On his way out he passed the 3 Mark desk. Hua Yi still didn’t look up. But when he was three steps past, he heard her brush stop, and then start again.

That night he climbed onto the Willow Ford roof with his private book and a lamp.

The courtyard below was dark and quiet. Ji Yuanhe was asleep on his bedding inside, breathing long and slow. Next door, Auntie Niu had finally stopped counting her takings.

The tiles were still warm from the day. Shi Feng opened the book to a clean page and tallied the last forty days in short lines.

The 5 Mark. The 6 Mark. One line, one sitting.

Mid Shattering Void.

Twelve million and some at the start. Ten million and some now. Two million down, and two Marks up.

One porter, caught.

One rib, cracked twice.

One grey man on a dye-house roof.

He looked at that line for a while. Then he turned back a page, to the line he’d written on this same roof a year ago and hadn’t touched since.

After the seal: north.

Under it, in small characters, he wrote one more line.

Ticket 3041.

He closed the book and held it on his knees. Out past the roofs of Tianjing, the night sky was clear, and the stars lay thick over the north wall of the city. Somewhere beyond that wall, past fields and rivers he’d never seen, the Serene Jade Sect kept a name. It was the name of a woman whose voice he’d heard and whose face he’d never seen.

Tomorrow, a keeper would break a seal in front of him.

Shi Feng looked at his hands. They were steady. He was glad of that. They’d shaken worse over smaller things.

Below him, a door slid open. Ji Yuanhe stood in the courtyard in his sleeping robe, looking up.

“You’re on the roof again,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“I’m doing my accounts,” Shi Feng said.

“You only do your accounts on the roof when something’s about to change,” Ji Yuanhe said. “I’ve noticed.”

Shi Feng looked down at him. The old man’s face was calm, and he wasn’t counting.

“Tomorrow I’m going to read a name,” Shi Feng said. “That’s all. Go back to sleep, Master Ji. I’ll need you awake in the morning.”

“Then don’t fall off the roof before morning,” Ji Yuanhe said, and went back inside. The door slid shut.

Shi Feng blew out the lamp.

[Mark: 6 | Note: the sky went in.]