Chapter 923 — Twelfth

CHAPTER 923

Twelfth

The Hold’s hot spring filled a stone room under the east tower. Snow never settled on its hot roof.

Shi Feng sat in it up to his chest for a whole day. His two cracked ribs were bound in linen, and his left arm lay along the stone rim in the steam. The white had gone out of the skin by noon. By evening he could close the fingers halfway, and it hurt more than the freezing had.

Helian Ba came down at dusk with a jar of wine and two bowls, and sat on the rim with his boots in the water.

“The Situ clerk’s gone,” Helian Ba said, and poured. “Left at the second watch. Took one horse and nothing else. His bags are still in the east room.”

“After trying to get one of us killed, he stayed for dinner?” Shi Feng asked.

“He liked it fine until dinner,” Helian Ba said, and grinned. “Then my uncle asked him, in front of the whole hall, whether southern clans always suggest death duels for other people’s sons. He didn’t have an answer. Uncle said a guest who can’t answer a question at the Helian table should eat somewhere else.”

Shi Feng drank. It was northern wine, rough and very strong.

A Situ censor had written the memorial that blamed him for Linghu Yan. Now a Situ clerk had come all the way to Iron Glacier Hold to ask for a duel to the death, under a northern custom that would make it legal. If Helian Zhan had agreed, nobody in Tianjing could have called it murder. The clerk had picked the right custom and the wrong man.

“Your cousin turned him down at the table,” Shi Feng said. “He could have taken the offer.”

“Zhan?” Helian Ba snorted, and set his bowl on the stone. “We ride with the prince’s banner at the hunts. That’s hunting. Killing a guest because a southerner asked is something else. Zhan would rather lose than be told how to win.”

Three days later the next Tianji issue came up the post road.

A rider brought it into the Hold’s great hall at breakfast, and twenty Helian juniors fell on it at once. They tore one corner off fighting over it. The tallest of them got it up onto a bench and read it out at the top of his voice.

“Eleventh, unchanged. Twelfth…” the tallest Helian junior read, stopping in surprise. “Twelfth, Shi Feng. Thirteenth, Helian Zhan.”

The hall went up in noise.

“Twelfth? Only twelfth?”

“He put our heir on his knee! Our heir was twelfth! He should take the twelfth and go higher!”

“That’s not how the list works, idiot! The Tianji Mansion doesn’t add up duels like a shop counter!”

“Then it’s printed too low! The Tianji Mansion has eyes but can’t see Mount Tai!”

“Write to them! Somebody write to them!”

Helian Zhan sat at the head table with his arm in a sling and ate his congee. He didn’t look up.

“Eat your food,” Helian Zhan said. “All of you.”

The juniors sat down. Some of them were still muttering.

Shi Feng ate his congee too. Twelfth. He’d come to the Hold at thirteenth, and he’d leave it at twelfth, and the man he’d passed was sitting four seats away calling for more pickles. It was the first time a rank had come with a guest token attached. Shi Feng felt pleased. He’d won a friend as well as a place on the list.

At the far end of the hall, Pang Yue sat alone with his bowl.

The Lantern Guard deputy had ridden into the Hold on the second of the three days, as he’d said he would, to accompany the witness north. He’d watched the duel from the bank without a word. He hadn’t cheered and he hadn’t left. Since then he’d eaten every meal at the end of the same table and spoken to nobody.

That night he came to the guest court.

Shi Feng was sitting on the step with a brazier, working the stiffness out of his left fingers one at a time. Pang Yue stopped at the bottom of the steps. He didn’t come up, and he didn’t sit.

“Elder Shi,” Pang Yue said, and bowed stiffly. “One question. Then I’ll leave you alone.”

“Ask it,” Shi Feng said, and put his hand down on his knee.

“At Grey Goose Pass,” Pang Yue said slowly. “Before the Commander went into his rift. Did he say anything?”

Shi Feng thought back. The red line on the pale face. The guard shouting his name. The faces under the wagons.

“No,” Shi Feng said. “He looked at the drivers, and he was afraid of being seen. Then he left.”

Pang Yue didn’t move for a while.

“Afraid,” Pang Yue said at last, very quietly. His thumb moved along the edge of his sword guard and stopped there. “The Commander was fourteenth on the Tianxing. He wasn’t afraid of anything.”

“He was afraid of that,” Shi Feng said.

Pang Yue looked at him a moment longer. Then he bowed again, the same stiff bow, and walked away across the snow without another word.

Shi Feng sat with the brazier and thought it over. A man who was afraid of being seen had somebody he was hiding from. Pang Yue had served under Linghu Yan for years. He knew better than anyone what his commander had feared, and who could have made him fear it. He’d come north to watch the man the memorial accused. He’d just heard something that didn’t fit the memorial.

In the morning, the Lantern Guard’s horse was gone from the Hold’s stable. Pang Yue had taken no leave of the clan master and left no message for the witness he was meant to accompany.

Qin Wuyan stood in the stable yard, looking at the empty stall and the hoofprints in the snow.

“South,” Qin Wuyan said.

[Tianxing: 12th]