Chapter 901 — Terms with the Princess

CHAPTER 901

Terms with the Princess

Long Caili stood behind her own counter.

It was the long black counter on the ground floor of her flagship pavilion, where her clerks sold pills all day. At the second hour the clerks were gone and the doors were barred. The princess stood where they usually stood, in plain dark silk and a veil of pale gauze from brow to chin, with a brush, an inkstone and a contract laid out in front of her.

Ke Lianshu waited at the end of the counter with the vault ledger.

“Sit,” Long Caili said. “I’ll read. Interrupt if you must.”

Shi Feng sat on the customer’s stool. It was a little too low, and he suspected that was on purpose. He had come expecting a negotiation. She had written the terms before he arrived.

“One,” Long Caili said. “Your guest contract stands. The fee stands. The clauses stand. You’re my guest wherever you are.”

“Agreed,” Shi Feng said.

“Two. Your leave is granted for one year from today,” Long Caili said, and turned the page. “If you’re not back by the end of it, the contract doesn’t lapse. It waits.”

“That’s generous, Your Highness,” Shi Feng said, and waited for the condition. None came.

“It’s practical,” Long Caili said, and her brush tapped the contract. “A contract that lapses is a contract somebody else can sign. Three.” She didn’t look up. “Half your cash goes into my vault today, as the furnace account for this pavilion’s resident alchemist. Herbs, charcoal, his wage and his rooms. He draws on it. You don’t.”

Ke Lianshu opened the vault ledger before she finished speaking.

“Five million, one hundred and eighty thousand, Master Shi,” Ke Lianshu read out.

“Half?” Shi Feng asked. “Not a third?”

“Eleven furnaces don’t feed themselves,” Long Caili said. “And a man who leaves half his money behind comes back for it.”

Shi Feng laughed. He’d meant to leave money for Ji Yuanhe anyway. He’d only meant to argue about the amount first.

“Half, then,” Shi Feng said, and reached into his sleeve.

He counted the notes out onto her counter himself, in front of the steward and the princess, the way he counted everything. Ke Lianshu counted them again and wrote the sum in the ledger in red ink.

[Money: 10.36M → 5.18M | Note: 5.18M on deposit in the princess’s vault as Ji Yuanhe’s furnace account. Moved, not spent.]

“Four,” Long Caili said. “Anyone who touches my pavilion’s alchemist answers to me. Under Long law.”

The pavilion went quiet. Even Ke Lianshu’s brush stopped.

Long law was the Imperial Family’s own justice, and it judged the Long more harshly than anyone else. By putting a hired alchemist under it, the princess was saying that whoever harmed him would be judged as if he’d harmed a Long, and that her own name now stood behind everything done under her roof. The Censorate would come to her first.

“You didn’t need to write that clause,” Shi Feng said.

“Spoken words are no proof,” Long Caili said. “Put it in writing. And it isn’t only for him. Any alchemist who works for me should know what my name is worth.” She dipped the brush. “Is there anything you want to add?”

“One clause,” Shi Feng said, and held up one finger.

She waited.

“If Master Ji ever counts in the Pit’s rhythm again,” Shi Feng said, “even once, even in his sleep, you send me word that same day. Not the next morning. That day.”

Long Caili looked up at him for the first time.

“What is the Pit’s rhythm?” Long Caili asked.

“The hammer’s beat from the Pill Pit,” Shi Feng said. “Short, short, long, and never stopping. Anyone who hears it once will know it’s wrong. He only counts that way when he’s frightened and somebody is making him work.” He kept his voice even. “I’ll be far away. I need to hear about it on the day it starts.”

Long Caili wrote it down exactly as he’d said it, word for word, “even in his sleep” included, and turned the contract round so he could read it.

Then she signed. Her signature was small and sharp, and she didn’t look at it again once it was done.

Shi Feng signed under it.

“Done,” Long Caili said coldly. She blotted the page and handed it to Ke Lianshu. Then she took something from the drawer under the counter and set it in front of him.

It was a token of black jade the size of a coin, with her pavilion’s mark carved on one side and her own seal on the other.

“For my business in the north,” Long Caili said, and slid the token across the counter.

Shi Feng picked it up.

Her pavilions ran from Wanhe to the capital. Not one of them stood north of Tianjing. She had no business in the north at all, and everybody in the room knew it. The token would open doors for him wherever her name meant something, and it would tell anyone who saw it whose guest he was.

Neither of them mentioned it.

“I’ll take good care of your business, Your Highness,” Shi Feng said, and put the token in his sleeve.

“See that you do,” Long Caili said. “And don’t come back poorer.”

“I’ll try,” Shi Feng said. “They say the north is expensive.”

“Then don’t buy anything,” Long Caili said.

She turned and went up the stair without saying goodbye. Ke Lianshu bowed to him, very low, and unbarred the door.

Outside, the morning was bright and cold. In the furnace yard Ji Yuanhe stood beside a junior clerk, pointing at a crate of herbs and counting them one by one, out loud. The clerk was counting along with him.

Shi Feng stood at the gate and listened until the count reached twenty. He counted under his breath with them. It was plain and even, one number after another, and it didn’t sound anything like a hammer.

He went to fetch his bag. Tomorrow, the north gate.