Chapter 954 — A Princess at the Lotus Gate

CHAPTER 954

A Princess at the Lotus Gate

Two days later, a carriage with the Long household’s dragon on its door stopped at the foot of the Lotus Gate’s steps, and every petitioner on them stood up at once.

Gate Elder Qiu Moshan came out under the arch in full formal robes. He bowed lower than Shi Feng had ever seen him bow, and four stewards behind him bowed lower still. The full rites for an Imperial princess took long enough that the petitioners began to whisper before they were done.

“A princess? Here?”

“The Fourth Princess. Look at the veil. It’s her!”

“First on the Tianxing, climbing our steps. I’ve waited here since autumn, and I’ve never seen that.”

Long Caili came up the steps in a travelling cloak of dark grey fur, with the pale gauze veil hanging from her brow to her chin. She didn’t look at the petitioners. She didn’t look at the outer hall either. She asked the Gate Elder one question, and he sent a steward running for the inner peaks at once.

Shen Yaoqing came down a quarter of an hour later. The two women met under the arch, and Shen Yaoqing bowed to her by the rites, and Long Caili said something too quiet to hear. Then they went inside together, and the outer hall’s doors closed behind them.

Shi Feng watched it from the Snowpine Court gate.

“They’ve been friends since girlhood,” Qin Wuyan said beside him.

“How do you know that, Senior?” Shi Feng asked.

“This one has eyes,” Qin Wuyan said.

An hour after that, a steward came to Snowpine Court and bowed. The Fourth Princess would call on the honoured guest in the outer hall, if the guest was free.

She received him in the outer hall’s east room, openly, with the doors standing wide. Elder Kong Shuhe sat on the right side of the room in plain white. He was a dry, upright man with a long, narrow face. Gate Elder Qiu stood by the door. Shen Yaoqing stood behind her friend’s chair, her hands folded and her face cold.

“Master Shi,” Long Caili said.

“Your Highness,” Shi Feng said, and bowed.

Elder Kong set his teacup down.

“Your Highness will forgive this old man,” Kong Shuhe said coldly, before anyone else could speak. “Two days ago a Censorate inspector came to this gate with a writ. Today an Imperial princess. The Empire’s business now comes to the Serene Jade’s door on this guest’s account. When the city gate catches fire, the fish in the moat suffer.”

“The inspector came for an account, Elder Kong,” Long Caili said. “He was given one at the gate. My surety covers the guest. If the Empire wants anything more from him, it comes to me. The Serene Jade is asked for nothing but its courtesy, and it has given that already.”

Kong Shuhe looked at her for a moment. Then he picked up his teacup again and said nothing.

Long Caili turned her head to Shi Feng. Her voice didn’t change at all.

“Your drivers are already under my contract,” Long Caili said. “All eleven wagons. Hao Dafu has been told to stay on the salt road and speak to no one he doesn’t know. Anyone who wants to hear them must hear them through my house.”

“Thank you,” Shi Feng said.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Long Caili said. “The men at the Grey Goose waystation are a Situ errand. The Censorate sent them, but the Situ chose the men. They’ll find someone who remembers what they’re paid to remember.”

“And then?” Shi Feng asked.

“Then my elder brother moves that the inquiry sit at a northern circuit seat,” Long Caili said. “Not in Tianjing. The witnesses are in the north, and so are you. If you’re heard in the north, answering it isn’t turning around.”

Shi Feng saw it at once. In the north, he’d be a Pavilion guest elder answering a summons on his own road.

“That would let me answer without walking into their trap,” Shi Feng said. “Thank you for arranging it.”

“There’s one more thing,” Long Caili said. “The black jade token. Where do you keep it?”

“In my ring,” Shi Feng said.

“Keep it at your belt,” Long Caili said. “Where a commissioner can see it, if one ever asks to bind you.”

“Why?” Shi Feng asked.

“You’ll know when one asks,” Long Caili said.

Gate Elder Qiu coughed politely by the door.

“Your Highness will be glad to know the honoured guest is quite recovered,” Qiu Moshan said. “After the four bandits in Frost Wind Valley, the whole outer hall—”

“Three,” Long Caili said.

Qiu Moshan stopped.

“Three,” Long Caili said again. “One dead. A deacon and a hunter fled. The deacon was cut from the elbow to the armpit. The guest’s back was opened to the bone, and it took thirty-one stitches.”

The room went quiet. Shi Feng closed his mouth before correcting Qiu Moshan. Long Caili remembered even the stitches. He felt touched, and kept it off his face.

“Her Highness asked to see the patrol’s log at the gate,” Qiu Moshan said slowly. “Before her tea.”

“I read everything that touches my surety, Gate Elder,” Long Caili said, and her hands stayed folded in her lap. “It’s my money.”

Kong Shuhe looked at her, then at Shi Feng, and his long face tightened. He didn’t say anything.

Long Caili rose. Everyone else in the room rose with her.

“Your Highness came all the way up the white stair for this?” Shi Feng asked. “You could have sent a letter. I’m glad you came.”

“The visit was to Yaoqing,” Long Caili said. “You were on the way.”

She went out. Shen Yaoqing went with her, half a step behind, as a host walks with an honoured visitor and as a friend walks with a friend. Shi Feng watched from the outer hall’s steps while they went down through the snow together to the Lotus Gate. At the arch, Long Caili stopped and said something. Shen Yaoqing shook her head once and answered.

Then she got into the carriage. By evening it had passed Lianxia, heading south for the salt road.

Shi Feng went back to Snowpine Court. He took the black jade token out of his ring and turned it over in his hand. It was cool and heavy, carved with a coiled dragon. He didn’t know what a commissioner would see in it.

He tied it at his belt anyway, on the left side, where anyone who looked at him would see it first.