Chapter 975 — The Surety

CHAPTER 975

The Surety

At noon the next day, in the Red Lantern Teahouse on the corner of the main square, the storyteller stopped in the middle of a sentence.

Seven horses were coming up the street from the south gate. Four of the riders wore Long household blue, with the dragon on their shoulders and Shattering Void pressure around them that made the teahouse’s cups rattle. Two were young men in plain travelling clothes, and half the teahouse knew their faces from the issue sellers’ drawings.

The rider in the middle was a woman in deep blue with a veil of pale gauze from her brow to her chin. She rode very straight. She didn’t look at anyone.

“That’s… that’s the Fourth Princess.”

“Those two behind her are on the list! The thin one is twenty-something, I swear it!”

“The Tianxing’s first name has come all the way to Shuoyang to sit beside its tenth.”

“There are no waves without wind. You don’t ride a thousand li in winter for nothing.”

“…Lower your voice. Her guards can hear you.”

The whole teahouse went quiet, and stayed quiet until the seven horses had turned into the square and stopped at the steps of the Sky Pavilion’s tower.

Shi Feng heard none of it. He’d been in the tower’s furnace room on the ground floor since dawn with the door shut, learning the furnace, and by the tower’s custom nobody disturbed a 6 Mark at the fire.

When he came out an hour after noon, wiping ash off his hands, a pale attendant was waiting outside the door. The attendant told him who had arrived, and where she’d been put to wait, and how long ago.

Shi Feng went up to the third floor at once.

Long Caili was already sitting at the table in the quiet room with Yan Lianbi. Her veil was in place. Her gloves were off and folded beside her hand. A cup of tea stood in front of her, untouched, and Qin Wuyan had taken his usual place beside the door.

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

“Sit down,” Long Caili said. “We don’t have much time before the commission hears I’ve arrived and sends a clerk to welcome me. I’d like to have finished by then.”

Shi Feng sat.

“I’ll sit the hearing as your surety,” Long Caili said, in her flat, even voice. “In the surety’s chair, in the hall, every day it sits. And I won’t say a single word for you.”

“Not one?” Shi Feng asked.

“Not one,” Long Caili said. “A surety who argues for the man she’s bonded becomes a witness. A witness can be questioned and impeached. If they impeach me, the bond falls, and the bond is the only thing keeping you in Shuoyang instead of a carriage to Tianjing.”

“That’s correct, Your Highness,” Yan Lianbi said, nodding slowly. “I’d have advised the same.”

“Then we agree,” Long Caili said. “Make sure no one mistakes my silence for permission to question me.”

Yan Lianbi closed his mouth.

“Second,” Long Caili went on. “Commissioner Situ Mingzhao is a Situ. So is the censor who wrote the memorial. He won’t break a single rule. He’ll be correct to the letter in everything, and that’s exactly what makes him dangerous. Whatever comes at you in that hall will come from inside the law.”

“He bowed to me as deep as the rites ask,” Shi Feng said. “Not a hair deeper.”

“Then he’s already measured you,” Long Caili said. “Third. The Grey Goose witness was found too quickly.”

“Ruan Heng told me at the Lotus Gate that the Censorate had sent men to look,” Shi Feng said. “That was less than a month ago.”

“Eleven days,” Long Caili said. “From the day the Censorate’s men reached the waystation to the day the name was filed. Nobody finds an honest witness in eleven days at a waystation with four hands and a cook. Someone went there knowing what they wanted him to say.”

“Can you prove it?” Shi Feng asked.

“No,” Long Caili said coldly. “That’s your work, not mine. I’m the surety. I sit.”

Shi Feng looked at her for a moment.

“The token,” Shi Feng said. “At the counter in Tianjing.”

“Keep it where it is,” Long Caili said, before he could finish. “The bond stands until the finding is signed. After that, we’ll discuss what it was for.”

That was clearly all she meant to say about it.

Yan Lianbi cleared his throat. He folded his inky fingers together on the table and looked at the tea in front of the princess.

“Your Highness, forgive this steward,” Yan Lianbi said. “The Guest Elder should know. Your Highness waited an hour in the reception room on the ground floor before anyone told him you’d come. The attendants won’t interrupt a 6 Mark at the furnace. And it seems nobody lit the stove in the reception room. This steward has already spoken to them.”

“I was reading,” Long Caili said.

There was nothing before her but her gloves and cold tea. Shi Feng didn’t believe the excuse. She’d waited without using her rank to interrupt his refining, and he felt bad that nobody had told him.

“You should’ve asked them to light it,” Shi Feng said, frowning with concern. “I’d have come up as soon as they told me you were here.”

Long Caili didn’t answer. She picked up the cold tea at last and drank it, and set the cup down without a sound.

Nobody in the room said anything for a moment. Qin Wuyan, beside the door, studied the ceiling.

Then there were quick footsteps on the stairs, and the pale attendant knocked and came in, bowing so low his forehead nearly touched his knees.

“Guest Elder, Your Highness, Steward Yan,” the attendant said breathlessly. “Forgive me. The Yelü house is in the square. They’ve brought their patriarch on a litter, and they’re asking for the 6 Mark.”