Chapter 973 — The Black Jade Token

CHAPTER 973

The Black Jade Token

The chain lay on the table between the teacups, black and cold.

Shi Feng looked at it and didn’t reach for it. If those runes closed on his wrists, every meridian in his arms would shut, and he’d ride to Tianjing as weak as a mortal, in a covered carriage, with twenty Lantern Guard riders around him. The teahouses would see exactly what the memorial wanted them to see.

Before he could speak, Qin Wuyan stepped away from the tent flap.

He crossed the tent in two steps and put two fingers on the chain. He didn’t press, and he let out no pressure. He just laid two old fingers on the iron and left them there.

“Pavilion law,” Qin Wuyan said. “A guest elder of the Sky Pavilion is not bound before judgement. Not by any hand.”

Pang Yue’s jaw tightened. He didn’t take the chain back.

“With respect, Guardian,” Situ Mingzhao said, very politely, and folded his hands on the table. “Pavilion law governs the Pavilion’s halls and the Pavilion’s people. This is an Imperial road, and the man is named under Long law. This official honours the Sky Pavilion, but this official can’t set the Long law aside for it. The court would never forgive him.”

“This one did not ask you to set anything aside,” Qin Wuyan said. “This one said what the Pavilion’s law is.”

The two fingers stayed on the chain.

The scribes had stopped writing. Nobody dared touch the chain under Qin Wuyan’s fingers. But his strength alone couldn’t settle the dispute between the two laws. Shi Feng thought a delay would suit the people behind the memorial. Unless someone gave way, they’d have to wait for Tianjing’s answer.

That was probably what someone in Tianjing wanted.

Shi Feng untied the black jade token from his belt, where it had hung in plain sight since the Lotus Gate, and set it beside the chain, with Long Caili’s own seal facing up.

“Then perhaps this belongs in the record too, Commissioner,” Shi Feng said.

Situ Mingzhao glanced at it politely. Then he looked again.

His face changed.

It wasn’t much. His smile stopped for a moment, and his eyes went from the token to Shi Feng and back to the token. He leaned forward and looked at the seal for a long time without touching it. Then he turned to the elder of his two scribes.

“Bring the seal register,” Situ Mingzhao said quietly. “The Long household section.”

The scribe ran out and came back with a thick book bound in yellow silk. Situ Mingzhao compared the seal against a drawing in the book, line by line. Then he closed the book and sat back.

“This is a surety seal of the Long household,” Situ Mingzhao said. His voice was still courteous, but it was very careful now. “Issued in Her Highness the Fourth Princess’s own name. It means Her Highness has bonded herself personally for the bearer. Under Long law, a man under an imperial bond may not be moved from the bonder’s business without the bonder’s consent.”

“And what’s Her Highness’s business?” Shi Feng asked.

Situ Mingzhao looked at the token’s other side, where the pavilion’s mark was carved.

“Her pavilions,” Situ Mingzhao said. “In the north.”

Pang Yue’s head turned sharply toward the token.

“There’s a Caili pavilion in Lianxia,” Shi Feng said. “Two hours behind me. It’s been there a season. Its furnace room opened last week.”

Shi Feng sat back on his stool and finally understood all of it.

She’d slid this token across her counter in Tianjing and called it “for my business in the north”. At the time, she hadn’t had any business in the north at all, and everyone in the room had known it. The week after, she’d bought a branch in Lianxia by letter. Then she’d bought the lot behind it and built a furnace room nobody in town would use. Each of those had made “her business in the north” a little more real, in ink, in the pavilion books, where a commissioner could read it.

And at the Lotus Gate, in front of Elder Kong, she’d told him to keep the token where a commissioner could see it if one ever asked to bind him.

She’d planned it from the first day, across her own counter, before the memorial had even been written. She’d known someone would try to bring him south in chains, so she’d made him her business, and put her business here.

Shi Feng felt grateful and a little helpless. She’d prepared all this without telling him. He wanted to laugh at how thoroughly she’d outplanned the commissioner, but kept his expression calm.

“Under the bond, then,” Situ Mingzhao said slowly, “the Guest Elder can’t be escorted to Tianjing without Her Highness’s consent. And this official doesn’t have it.”

“You don’t,” Shi Feng agreed.

“Then the escort can’t proceed,” Situ Mingzhao said. He breathed out through his nose and smiled again, as courteously as before. “The commission will hear the Guest Elder at the circuit seat his summons named. At Shuoyang. This official will enter the bond in the record.”

Outside the tent flap, one of the Lantern Guard riders muttered to the man beside him.

“The mantis stalks the cicada and never sees the oriole behind it.”

“Shut up, you idiot. Do you want the commissioner to hear you?”

Inside, Qin Wuyan lifted his two fingers off the chain and put his hands back into his sleeves.

Pang Yue picked the chain up. He coiled it slowly around his hand and hung it back on his belt. For a moment he stood looking at the black jade token on the table, and his face was grey and tired.

“It was procedure,” Pang Yue said, without looking up.

“I know,” Shi Feng said, and tied the token back at his belt. “Deputy Commander. Your commander’s killer isn’t in this tent.”

Pang Yue’s hand closed on the coiled chain. He didn’t answer. He bowed stiffly to the commissioner, turned and walked out into the snow.

“We leave for Shuoyang at first light, Guest Elder, if that suits your convenience,” Situ Mingzhao said. “This official will send a rider ahead to tell the circuit court it may expect us.”

“First light suits me,” Shi Feng said.

That night, in a tent the Censorate had given him, Shi Feng sat with the black jade token in his palm and turned it over and over. One side was her pavilion. The other side was her name.

He’d promised to take care of her business at that counter. Now he understood how much she’d risked by putting her name behind him. Shi Feng closed his hand around the token. He wouldn’t let this inquiry be used against her.