Chapter 900 — Ji Yuanhe’s Furnace

CHAPTER 900

Ji Yuanhe’s Furnace

“I won’t go north,” Ji Yuanhe said.

He said it mostly to the well. Then he lifted his head and said it again, to Shi Feng.

“I won’t go north,” Ji Yuanhe said. “I’d like to stay at the princess’s pavilion as its resident alchemist.” His hands tightened on his knees. “I’d like to count other people’s pills for a while. Out loud, where somebody can hear.”

Shi Feng didn’t joke. He sat down on the rim of the well beside him.

“Tell me why,” Shi Feng said, and waited.

Ji Yuanhe thought about it for a long time, and Shi Feng let him. A year ago, the old man couldn’t say three words without a number between them.

“I’m sixty-one,” Ji Yuanhe said. “The north is cold. You’re going to walk up to a gate where a very strong man doesn’t want you, and you’ll need both hands free.” He looked down at his own hands. “I was chained to a furnace for a long time. When I count now, people smile. The pavilion has eleven furnaces, and every alchemist in it is afraid of the princess. I’m not afraid of her. I’d be useful there.”

“Did she offer?” Shi Feng asked.

“I asked her,” Ji Yuanhe said. “She said yes before I finished.”

Shi Feng was silent.

He had carried this man out of the Pill Pit on his back. He had fed him, made his cure and slept in the doorway listening for the count. He had never once asked him what he wanted, because for a year Ji Yuanhe hadn’t been able to want anything. Now the old man had asked for something, and he had asked the princess first.

“Then I’ll look at it before I say yes,” Shi Feng said, standing up.

“I thought you would,” Ji Yuanhe said.

The captain of the princess’s guard was a broad, quiet man in black lacquered armour. He had stood between Ji Yuanhe and two grey-veiled killers on Thunder-Gazing Ridge. He answered only what he was asked, and not a word more.

“Furnace room first,” the guard captain said, already moving.

The furnace room was at the back of the pavilion’s east wing. Eleven furnaces stood in two rows under a high roof, with one flue each and one door for the whole room. Shi Feng walked all of it. He put his arm up into each flue to feel how wide it was, and he looked at the hinges of the door and the bar behind it.

“One door. Good,” Shi Feng said. “The flues are too narrow for a man. But the people who took him the first time didn’t come through doors.”

“The wards,” the guard captain said, and stopped at the edge of the floor stones.

The pavilion’s wards ran through the floor stones, a Jiang-made array the colour of old bronze. Shi Feng picked up a teacup from the bench, set it on the floor and folded the space under it a hand’s width to the left.

The cup didn’t move. The space under it went stiff, and the fold slid off.

“It holds against a fold,” Shi Feng said. He picked up the cup, carried it to the outer wall, and set it down beyond the bronze line. He folded again. The cup jumped a hand’s width and rattled on the stone. “And the ward stops here. The wall by the east gate is outside it.”

The guard captain looked at the cup, then at the wall.

“I’ll move the night post inside the line,” the guard captain said.

“Now the rota,” Shi Feng said.

The guard captain brought it on a board. There were four watches a night, two guards on the east wing at each watch, and the same pairs every night.

“Change the pairs,” Shi Feng said. “Every night. And don’t post the list until the watch starts. A porter was bought in this city for one crate of herbs. A guard can be bought too, if somebody knows a month ahead which night he’ll be on the door.”

The guard captain’s face didn’t change, but he wrote it down.

“You think they’ll come back for him?” the guard captain asked, and his brush stopped.

“I know they will,” Shi Feng said, and looked at the rota. “They know he was taken once, and they know what his hands can do. A thief only needs one good night. You have to be right every night. So don’t let him learn the pattern. Move the watch, move the men, and make every night different.”

“Anyone who touches the princess’s alchemist touches the princess,” the guard captain said.

“Somebody touched mine,” Shi Feng said, and his voice went flat. “In daylight, on a lane, with a hired carriage. I’d like it to be impossible here.”

The guard captain met his eyes.

“It will be,” the guard captain said.

They walked the rest of it together: the kitchens, the stair to the east wing, and the room Ji Yuanhe would sleep in, which had a bed under a window onto the furnace yard. Shi Feng checked the window bar. Then he checked it again.

When he came back down, Ji Yuanhe was waiting at the foot of the stair beside Chief Steward Ke Lianshu, who held a brush and was pretending not to have been listening.

“Well?” Ji Yuanhe asked.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said, and put a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Stay. Count where they can hear you.”

Ji Yuanhe nodded once, as if he’d known it all along. His eyes were wet, and he didn’t wipe them.

“Her Highness will see you at her counter tomorrow at the second hour, Master Shi,” Ke Lianshu said politely. “She asks you to bring your ledger.” A small pause. “And your money.”