Chapter 909 — Do Not Turn Around

CHAPTER 909

Do Not Turn Around

The courier found him on his fourth morning in Hanli, sitting cross-legged on the inn’s back step and breathing his qi back up.

She was a woman of about thirty in the plain grey of the princess’s pavilions, with dust to her knees and a horse behind her that looked ready to lie down in the yard. She bowed to him, deeply and correctly.

“Honoured guest Shi Feng,” the courier said. “From Her Highness. I’m to wait for your reply.”

She didn’t sit down. She stood by the door with her hands folded and waited.

“How many horses?” Shi Feng asked.

“Six, honoured guest. One at every second post,” the courier said.

Shi Feng took the letter. It was sealed in plain wax with no crest. He broke it and read it there on the step.

It was short. Long Caili’s hand was small and very straight, and it didn’t waste a single stroke.

A memorial has been filed. Linghu Yan is dead, in the palace’s west canal. The Censorate says you killed him on the north road. An inquiry under Long law has been granted. It is mine to answer. My elder brother stood with me.

Ji Yuanhe is well. He is counting nothing but pills.

Do not turn around. Your coming back would be the only evidence they lack.

There was no signature. She hadn’t needed one.

Shi Feng read it twice. Then he folded it and sat with it on his knee for a while, looking at the yard.

Linghu Yan had been alive and bleeding when he stepped into his rift at Grey Goose Pass. Four days later he was dead in a canal inside the Imperial City. Shi Feng didn’t need to be told who could kill a late Shattering Void genius quietly inside palace walls. It was the same person who’d sent him, and the same person who’d watched him come home with his face bare.

He’d been right at the pass. Linghu Yan had had bigger problems than Shi Feng.

And now the princess had them.

“Bad news, young man?” Hao Dafu asked from the kitchen door, with a bun in each hand. “You’ve got a face like a man whose wagon lost a wheel.”

“A memorial,” Shi Feng said, and folded the letter into his sleeve. “Someone in Tianjing says I killed the man from the pass.”

Hao Dafu dropped one of the buns.

“Killed him? He ran! All eleven wagons saw him run! I’ll go and tell them myself!” Hao Dafu said.

He picked the dropped bun up, dusted it on his sleeve and put it in his coat.

“And they’ll ask you why a salt master is defending the princess’s guest,” Shi Feng said. “Then they’ll ask who pays your road money. Then they’ll ask about your salt licence. You’ve got a train, a trade and a name in this province. I’ve got a bag and a herb chest. If you speak for me, they’ll take yours apart to get to mine.”

Hao Dafu opened his mouth, then closed it.

“Then what are you going to do?” Hao Dafu asked. “Go back?”

Shi Feng had already thought it through.

First, if he went back, he would be the princess’s guest walking into Tianjing in the middle of an inquiry about her guest. Whatever he said, the Censorate would write that he came, and coming would look like a man with something to settle. Second, the inquiry would put him under Long law in the capital, and under Long law the princess answered for him. Every day he spent in a cell would be a day she paid for. Third, Ji Yuanhe was in her pavilion. If Shi Feng was in the capital, everyone who wanted to squeeze him would know exactly where to squeeze.

She had seen all of that before she picked up her brush. That was why the letter was so short.

“No,” Shi Feng said. “She’s right. If I turn around, I hand them their proof. If I keep walking, they have a dead man and a printed rank, and she’s very good with paper.”

He went inside and borrowed the innkeeper’s brush. The courier waited at the counter, very politely, while he wrote on the back of a rice bill.

Received: one letter, sealed, from Her Highness.

Terms: accepted in full.

Direction: north. Not turning around.

Ji Yuanhe: keep him counting pills.

He looked at it, then added one more line.

Account: open. I’ll settle it in person.

He folded it, sealed it with a drop of candle wax and his thumb, and gave it to the courier with two silver for the horses.

“It’s shaped like a receipt,” the courier said, looking at it.

“Her Highness likes receipts,” Shi Feng said, and tapped the folded receipt. “She’ll read it faster.”

The courier bowed again and went out to her tired horse.

The innkeeper took his brush back and wiped it carefully. He was a round, quiet man who’d said almost nothing in four days, and Shi Feng had thought he never would.

“Young master’s going north, then,” the innkeeper said.

“To the Serene Jade,” Shi Feng said.

The innkeeper nodded slowly, as if that settled something.

“There was a lady through here,” the innkeeper said. “Nine days before your salt train came in. A lady in white, alone, with a jade lotus at her belt. She stayed one night in my best room and paid for it in exact coin, to the copper.”

Shi Feng looked up.

“Did she leave anything?” Shi Feng asked.

“No message, young master,” the innkeeper said. “I asked her, because she looked like a lady who might. She said, ‘No message.’ Then she looked south, back along the road, for a long time before she left.”

Shi Feng was quiet for a moment.

Shen Yaoqing had left Tianjing first, as she’d said she would, and she hadn’t waited. A Serene Jade chief disciple who wanted to leave nothing behind wouldn’t have stopped at the most obvious inn on the north road at all. She wouldn’t have stood looking back down the road for so long, either. She’d stopped where a traveller from Tianjing would stop, and she’d paid to the copper so the innkeeper would remember her. A woman who wanted to disappear would have slept in the hills and paid in rough silver.

“Thank you,” Shi Feng said, and looked south down the empty road. “That’s a message.”

The innkeeper didn’t understand, and didn’t ask.

That afternoon Hao Dafu finished his business in the market, and the next morning the train rolled out of Hanli’s north gate with Shi Feng walking beside the lead mule, facing north.