Chapter 945 — The Duty

CHAPTER 945

The Duty

“What exactly did Old Tower Master Dai tell you to do?” Shi Feng asked.

They were a morning’s ride west of the Zhangsun fortress, on a road of hard snow between black pines. The Zhangsun had given them two of their best horses and refused to take them back. Shi Feng’s shoulder had closed overnight, and it only ached when he lifted the reins too high.

Qin Wuyan rode beside him with his back straight and his eyes on the road. He didn’t answer at once. Shi Feng had learned that this meant he was choosing his words, not ignoring the question.

“Profound Heaven hands stay off you,” Qin Wuyan said. “Your fights stay your own.”

Shi Feng counted it in his head. Eleven words. After two months together, this was Qin Wuyan’s clearest statement of his duty.

“Last night,” Shi Feng said. “If Zhangsun Lie had put that spear through my chest instead of my shoulder?”

“Then you would have lost,” Qin Wuyan said. “It was your fight.”

“And if his father had stood up from his chair?” Shi Feng asked, shifting the reins to his good hand.

“Then this one would have stood too,” Qin Wuyan said. “The patriarch is late Shattering Void. That is below this one’s line. But a father on his feet is not a father in his chair.”

Shi Feng nodded. It was a strict rule, and he liked it better for being strict. A guardian who stepped into every fight would leave him at mid Shattering Void for the rest of his life.

“One more question,” Shi Feng said. “Someone stronger than both of us. Late Profound Heaven. Higher. What happens then?”

Qin Wuyan turned his head and looked at him for the first time that morning. His face was old and plain, with deep lines at the eyes, and there was nothing in it at all.

“Then this one is spent first,” Qin Wuyan said.

He looked back at the road.

Shi Feng didn’t say anything for a while. The old man had served the Pavilion for two hundred and eleven years. He’d said it in the same voice he used to order noodles.

“Then I’ll be careful about the trouble I bring you,” Shi Feng said at last. “I want you alive at the end of this road.”

“This one intends to be,” Qin Wuyan replied.

They reached the foot of the white stair at dusk and climbed it in the cold blue light. Halfway up, the cloud closed beneath them again. By the time they came to the Lotus Gate, the lamps were lit along the outer hall’s long eaves.

The petitioners were still on the steps. Some of them had been there since autumn, wrapped in furs and waiting for a seal or a hearing. They all stood up when he came through.

“That’s him. The 6 Mark.”

“They say he cut the Zhangsun heir’s spear in half last night.”

“In half? I heard he caught the spear in his teeth.”

“You idiot, he caught the howl in his sleeves! The herb traders came up at noon!”

Gate Elder Qiu Moshan met him under the arch and bowed exactly as deeply as the old courtesy asked. Then he coughed politely and looked toward the side of the courtyard.

“Honoured guest,” Qiu Moshan said. “A visitor has been waiting since the afternoon. This old man offered her the guest hall. She said she preferred her carriage.”

The carriage stood by the wall, black lacquer on runners, with a crest of three silver pines on the door. Four bearers in grey furs stood beside it, stamping their feet and trying not to look cold.

The door opened before he reached it.

The woman inside sat on a heap of white furs with a hand warmer in her lap. She was old, small and very upright, with grey hair pinned so tightly that it pulled at the skin of her temples. She looked him up and down once, from his boots to his face, and clearly didn’t think much of either.

“You’re the 6 Mark,” the Chunyu matriarch said, tapping the hand warmer with one finger. “You’re younger than they said.”

“I’m Shi Feng,” Shi Feng said, and bowed. “And you’re cold, Senior. You should have taken the guest hall.”

“I’m Chunyu Qiong,” Chunyu Qiong said, ignoring that. “The Chunyu hold the valley a night’s ride east of here. Don’t bother asking whether you’ve heard of us. My heir is Chunyu Xiao. Peak Deity Transformation. He’s tried his tribulation for Shattering Void twice, and twice the sky cracked his meridians and threw him down. The third time will kill him. Our own alchemists say so, and they’re cowards, so this time they’re probably right.”

“You want him through it alive,” Shi Feng said.

“I want him through it alive,” Chunyu Qiong said. “Nine hundred thousand. And the Snowfold Screen.”

She took a flat case of white lacquer from beside her and set it on the furs. She didn’t open it.

“It’s our house art, Shattering Void-grade,” Chunyu Qiong said. “It folds a sheet of space in front of the body, so a blow lands in the fold instead of in you. No one outside the Chunyu has ever read it. My grandfather would have bitten through his tongue before he gave it away. My grandfather is dead.”

Shi Feng thought about the spear last night, and the howl that had shaken his steps loose. A spatial art that defended instead of moving was exactly what he didn’t have. A man who could only step away from a blow lost the moment someone stopped him from stepping.

“The hearing here is finished,” Shi Feng said. “So I’m free to take commissions. I’d like to see your heir’s meridians before I name a pill.”

“You can see them tomorrow,” Chunyu Qiong said. “Is the price acceptable?”

“Usually I’d haggle,” Shi Feng said.

“I don’t haggle,” Chunyu Qiong said coldly. “Haggling is for people who don’t know what they want. Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

“Good,” Chunyu Qiong said, rapping the carriage wall twice with her knuckles. “Then we leave now. The roads are worse in the morning.”

“It’s dark, Senior,” Shi Feng said.

“The roads are worse in the morning,” Chunyu Qiong repeated.

Shi Feng looked at Qin Wuyan. Qin Wuyan was already untying his horse.

From the far side of the carriage, someone shifted in the furs. A young man sat in the corner, half hidden, with both hands wrapped to the elbows in white bandages. He hadn’t said a word. When the lamplight fell on him, he turned his face toward the window.