Chapter 937 — Elder Ye Wanqiu

CHAPTER 937

Elder Ye Wanqiu

Elder Ye Wanqiu came into Snowpine Court on her own feet, slowly, without a cane.

She was a small woman with grey hair pinned flat. The black crease down the left side of her neck was gone. A thin pale line was all that was left of it. Shen Yaoqing walked one step behind her with both hands half lifted, ready to catch her master if she slipped on the ice. Ye Wanqiu didn’t slip.

She stopped in front of Shi Feng and looked him up and down.

“So this is what you look like when I’m not lying on a pillow,” Ye Wanqiu said. “In Tianjing you were mostly a bandaged arm.”

“You look better standing too, Elder Ye,” Shi Feng said, and bowed.

Ye Wanqiu bowed back to him, a real bow from the waist, and Shen Yaoqing’s hand moved toward her elbow and stopped.

“Don’t argue. I’m thanking you,” Ye Wanqiu said dryly. “Without the Void-Mending Pill this old woman would be ash in a jar by now.”

“You don’t need to strain yourself for me,” Shi Feng said, glancing at the hand Shen Yaoqing had almost put under her elbow. “The fee was paid.”

“The fee was paid to the princess’s furnace,” Ye Wanqiu said. “My life was paid to you. They’re different things.” She waved a hand at the sitting room. “Come in out of the snow. My knees are new, and I’d like to keep them.”

They sat. Shen Yaoqing poured tea for her master and then for the guest, by the rules, and remained standing.

“You’ve read the rules to him?” Ye Wanqiu asked her.

“All three, Master,” Shen Yaoqing said.

“Then he knows what he can’t do, and I’ll tell him who decides it,” Ye Wanqiu said, wrapping both hands round her cup. “Ask.”

“Who rules this mountain?” Shi Feng asked.

“The Sect Master, in name,” Ye Wanqiu said. “He’s been in closed-door seclusion for thirty-one years. He comes out for a disaster or a tribulation, and we’ve had neither lately.”

“Then who decides day to day?” Shi Feng asked.

“The elders’ hall,” Ye Wanqiu said. “Seven seats. Grand Elder Zuo has the middle one. What the seven decide is the sect’s word. In practice there are never seven of us in the room. Three is enough to hear an enquiry, and three will hear yours.”

“Which three?” Shi Feng asked.

“You’ll see on the day,” Ye Wanqiu said. “Not me. I owe you my life, so I can’t sit on anything with your name on it.” She drank. “And then there’s the small house on the eighth peak.”

Shi Feng waited.

“It answers to nobody,” Ye Wanqiu said. “Not the hall. Not the Sect Master. Nobody at all.”

She watched him over her cup. Shi Feng drank his tea and didn’t ask whose house it was.

“Good,” Ye Wanqiu said. “You didn’t ask. Half the guests who reach this court ask me that before the tea’s cold.”

Then she set her cup down and turned in her chair to look at her disciple.

“Yaoqing,” Ye Wanqiu said. “The debt for that pill is the sect’s, and it’s mine. While he’s on this mountain, you’ll host him to the letter of every rule we have. Not one rule less. And not one more.”

“Yes, Master,” Shen Yaoqing said.

Ye Wanqiu turned back to Shi Feng.

“You heard the last part,” Ye Wanqiu said. “If my disciple does one thing for you that the rules don’t require, someone in the hall will say the Ye line sold the outer hall for a pill. So she’ll be correct, and you’ll find her very cold. That’s my order, not her manners.” She paused. “Well. Partly her manners.”

Shen Yaoqing kept her face still, though she set the teapot down a little harder. Her master was teasing her in front of the guest.

“Then I won’t ask her to do anything that puts your line in difficulty,” Shi Feng said.

“A drop of kindness should be repaid with a gushing spring,” Ye Wanqiu said, and got to her feet. “I can’t give you a spring on this mountain. I can give you a correct host. Go and file your enquiry before the hall closes for the day.”

The Hearing Hall stood on the east side of the outer court, and its main doors were shut. Gate Elder Qiu Moshan sat at a small desk in the cold antechamber with the roll open in front of him.

“The honoured guest has an enquiry,” Qiu Moshan said, and dipped his brush.

“I file an enquiry as a reader of the sixth desk,” Shi Feng said.

The brush stopped above the paper for one breath.

“The sixth desk’s sealed entry,” Qiu Moshan said.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

“Then don’t name the subject to me,” Qiu Moshan said evenly. “The hall will hear it from you, once, inside. Not here.” He wrote a line, then another. “Shi Feng, 6 Mark of the Sky Pavilion, guest elder of the Pavilion. Filed as a reader of the sixth desk. Asks to be heard once.” He blew on the ink. “The hall will sit on the morning of the third day, at the first bell.”

“Thank you, Gate Elder,” Shi Feng said.

“Don’t thank me,” Qiu Moshan said. “Thank the plate.”

When Shi Feng came back through the outer hall, it was full of furs.

The great houses’ stewards stood along the walls of the guest chamber in sable and fox, and an outer-hall steward met Shi Feng at the door with a lacquer tray stacked high with letters.

“Twenty-six, honoured guest,” the steward said. “Since dawn. The Zhangsun have sent a second one. Those who come are guests, and the outer hall can’t turn their letters away.”

“Then don’t turn them away,” Shi Feng said. “Sort them by how close the patient is to dying, not by the house’s rank. I won’t open any of them until after the hearing.”

“After the hearing?” Shen Yaoqing asked coldly behind him. “You told the stewards in Lianxia the same thing.”

“And they believed me,” Shi Feng said. “So I’ll say it here too. These houses are the sect’s neighbours. If I take their money before I ask the sect for something, someone on this mountain will say I came to buy an answer with pills. After the hearing, whatever the answer is, I’ll read every one.”

The outer-hall steward bowed and carried the tray away. One by one, the stewards in furs sat back down to wait.

Shen Yaoqing wrote something short in her record book.

“Tomorrow, as your host, I’m required to show you the outer hall’s boundaries,” Shen Yaoqing said. “From the Lotus Terrace. Be ready at the first bell.”