Chapter 915 — Seven Clouds over Frost Pass

CHAPTER 915

Seven Clouds over Frost Pass

The Frost Pass tower’s furnace room was on the top floor, and it hadn’t been used by a 6 Mark in eighty years.

Xun Bai said so three times while he unlocked it. The third time, his voice shook.

“The last one was Old Tower Master Dai himself,” Xun Bai said, pushing open the heavy door. “He refined one pill here on his way north and left the same day. We’ve kept the room exactly as he left it, Master Shi. We even kept his tea bowl.”

“You kept his tea bowl for eighty years?” Shi Feng asked. “Did he at least wash it?”

Xun Bai looked at the bowl on the shelf, and his face went red.

“…No,” Xun Bai said.

“Then I’ll use my own,” Shi Feng said, and lit Mo’s cauldron.

He refined the Wen house’s Rift-Mending Pill first, because it was the simplest of the three, and he wanted his burnt wrist to warm up on something easy. The Gao house’s Stage-Pushing Pill came next. The Duanmu pill was last and hardest. A cracked spatial vein needed herbs that pulled against each other, and he spent an hour holding them apart in the heat before he let them close.

He didn’t fold the clouds. Three commissions for three northern houses didn’t need a sky full of them. They needed three good pills, delivered on time.

At noon, seven clouds stood over Frost Pass City.

People came out of every house in the city to look up at them. Seven white clouds in a neat ring over the grey tower, and the winter sky blue and empty everywhere else.

“Seven clouds! That’s a Major Success pill!”

“Three pills, seven clouds each, in one morning?”

“My grandfather saw the old Tower Master’s pill in this city when he was a boy. He said it was only six!”

“Don’t tell the old Tower Master that!”

The Wen, Gao and Duanmu representatives were waiting at the bottom of the tower stairs when Shi Feng came down. Each of them took a sealed jade case in both hands, bowed and handed Xun Bai a stack of stone notes without saying a single word about the price.

Xun Bai counted the notes twice. Relief finally showed on his face. The houses had accepted the pills, and he no longer had to defend the price.

One million two hundred thousand, and the spare herbs into his ring. The north had paid what it was asked.

Ruan Heng came to the tower that afternoon in a travelling cloak, with his scroll case under his arm.

“This official rides south today,” Ruan Heng said, bowing. “The deposition goes to the inquiry. A second copy goes to Her Highness, under the Censorate’s seal, as Long law requires when a royal guest is deposed.” He paused. “This official will deliver both himself.”

“Thank you, Inspector,” Shi Feng said. “And the Deputy Commander?”

Ruan Heng’s face didn’t change, but he took a moment before he answered.

“Deputy Commander Pang has asked to accompany the witness north,” Ruan Heng said. “In case the inquiry has further questions.”

“The witness is me,” Shi Feng said.

“Yes,” Ruan Heng said.

“Then he’s welcome to follow me,” Shi Feng said. “Tell him to bring warm boots. I hear the north gets colder.”

Ruan Heng bowed again, and for the first time Shi Feng thought the man was trying not to smile. Then he left for the south gate.

That night Shi Feng wrote to Long Caili.

He wrote on the tower’s good paper, in a plain hand, and kept it short, because she would.

Deposed at Frost Pass, in a Pavilion hall, before a Pavilion scribe. Inspector Ruan carries your copy himself.

A Lantern Guard captain filed a grievance. He’s alive.

The inquiry will look for the salt drivers. Hao Dafu’s salt licence is the soft place. Someone will press there.

Direction: still north.

He read it over once. He wanted to ask how she was bearing the inquiry. After a moment, he put the brush down. She needed the warning quickly, and she would understand why he’d sent it. He sealed the letter and gave it to the Pavilion courier with the tower’s own seal on the outside, so no post station in the Empire could open it on the way.

They left Frost Pass by the north gate the next morning.

Qin Wuyan walked three paces behind his shoulder. A hundred paces farther back, a big man in black armour rode a grey horse, and didn’t try to close the distance.

The north road ran out through the notch between the two black hills, and on the other side the land turned to pine forest, dark and endless under the snow.

A carriage was waiting at the side of the road where the pines began.

It was a fine carriage, painted black, with a pair of white horses and a driver in a fur hat. The door opened before Shi Feng reached it, and a man stepped down into the snow and bowed.

He was a slim man in his thirties, in a fox-fur coat, with a gentle, pleasant smile on his face. It was exactly the same smile he’d worn in Shi Feng’s own little shop in Wanhe, when he’d set down a cup of poisoned tea in front of Shi Feng and asked him to drink.

“Master Shi,” Chu Ze said warmly. “What a long road it’s been. This one has come a very long way to apologise for a cup of tea.”