Chapter 984 — The Cold in the Rib

CHAPTER 984

The Cold in the Rib

Situ Mingzhao let the hall fill again after the noon meal before he spoke.

“The commission has heard the drivers,” Situ Mingzhao said, folding his hands on the table. “It thanks them. It believes there was a masked man at Grey Goose Pass, and that he came with a blade.”

Hao Dafu nodded hard. Lao Qi nodded harder.

“But a mask proves a masked man, Master Shi,” Situ Mingzhao went on politely. “Nothing more. The drivers lay under their wagons in the dark. None of them saw the first blow. The memorial says the guest struck the Commander. The drivers say a masked man struck the guest. This commission has not yet seen either first blow.” He turned a page. “Without one, it can only record a fight, and a death four days later.”

Shi Feng was irritated, but he understood the danger. If the finding recorded only a fight followed by a death, the censors in Tianjing could still use it against him. He needed the record to name the attacker.

Shi Feng stood up.

“Then the commission should see it,” Shi Feng said. “It’s still in me.”

The hall went quiet.

He undid the sash of his outer robe and drew the inner robe open on the left side. Under his left arm and across his ribs ran a long pink line, healed over and puckered at the edges. The gallery leaned forward. One of the Linghu women covered her mouth.

“The masked man’s first cut,” Shi Feng said. “At Grey Goose, before I’d drawn my sword. It closed. Not all of it came out.”

The wound had closed over one last thread of the blade’s cold. It lay too deep to burn out without opening the cut again, so he had left it there and lived with the ache. That thread still carried the blade’s nature. Shi Feng had endured the ache to preserve it as evidence. Now he needed everyone in the hall to see it.

“Steward Yan,” Shi Feng said. “A jade plate, please.”

Yan Lianbi already had one out of his sleeve. He set it on the commission’s table with both hands.

Shi Feng laid two fingers on the pink line and opened it.

He used a thin edge of qi, no wider than a hair, and the old cut parted along its whole length. Blood ran down his side at once and soaked into his trousers. Somebody in the gallery cried out. On the Long seat, Long Zhenlei sat up straight.

Then Shi Feng lit the Thousand Forge Flame in his fingertips.

He didn’t burn the wound. He ran the flame along the inside of the cut, slowly, a finger’s width at a time. Cold hated fire and moved away from it. He herded it down the length of the cut toward one end until all of it gathered under the skin by his lowest rib. Then he closed his fingers and drew.

A thread of pale grey came out of the wound and coiled on his fingertip. He rolled it once and dropped it onto the jade plate.

It was a bead the size of a rice grain, pale and dull. Frost spread out from it across the jade.

The clerk at the end of the table was still writing. His brush scratched on the paper, and then, a hand’s breadth from the bead, the scratching stopped making any sound. The clerk looked down at his brush in alarm and wrote another stroke. It was silent too.

Pang Yue stood up so fast his chair went over.

He came round the table and stared down at the bead. He didn’t touch it. He held his hand over it, palm down, and for a long moment he didn’t breathe.

“That’s the Silent Night Blade,” Pang Yue said.

His voice came out rough, and it carried to every corner of the hall.

“I carried the Commander’s sword for fourteen years,” Pang Yue said, still staring at the plate. “I cleaned it every night. Every night my hands went cold to the wrist, and every night the cleaning cloth stopped making any noise on the steel. Nobody else in the Empire carries that cold.” He looked up at Situ Mingzhao. “It’s his. He cut this man first.”

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. On the Linghu benches, Linghu Que had his head down.

Situ Mingzhao looked at the bead for a long time.

“Deputy Commander,” Situ Mingzhao said at last. “The commission must ask you formally. You are certain?”

“I’m certain,” Pang Yue said. He didn’t raise his voice, but his hand at his side had closed into a fist. “And I want it written that I said so.”

“It is written,” Situ Mingzhao said, and nodded to the silent clerk.

Then the gallery found its voice all at once.

“He opened his own ribs in court!”

“The deputy knows it. The dead man’s own deputy!”

“First blow, drawn out and put on a plate. What’s the Censor going to say now?”

“Heaven’s net is wide, but nothing slips through it.”

“…”

The commission sealed the bead in a jade box and entered it in the record. The afternoon went on with lesser things, measurements and the drivers’ names and the route of the north road. Shi Feng sat through all of it on the bench with his robe closed and pressed his sleeve against his side.

The reopened wound kept bleeding through both robes. By day’s end his whole left side was dark. Shi Feng was tired and sore, but he stayed upright. He wouldn’t interrupt the recording of the evidence he’d just drawn out.

In the surety’s chair, Long Caili sat as still as she had sat all day.

When the commission rose, Shi Feng got up carefully and bowed to the table.

“Commissioner,” Shi Feng said. “May I have the coroner’s record overnight? I’d like to read it again.”