Chapter 987 — The Finding Goes South

CHAPTER 987

The Finding Goes South

Long Caili came up to the tower’s upper room an hour after dark, with the sealed finding in a lacquer case under her arm.

Qin Wuyan opened the door for her and then stood outside it with his back to the room. Her two guards stopped on the landing below. She came in alone, set the case on the table and sat down across from Shi Feng without being asked.

She was still veiled. She was still in court blue. She had sat in that chair for two days without saying a word, and now she put both hands flat on the table and said a great many of them, very quickly.

“The Long household’s array goes at dawn,” Long Caili said. “I’m carrying this myself. If I send it, someone will say the surety hid behind a courier.”

“When does the court sit?” Shi Feng asked.

“The day after I arrive,” Long Caili said. “Listen, because I won’t have time to write it down. Censor Situ Kerang can’t fight the finding. It’s too clean. So he won’t try. He’ll say my surety put a commoner out of the court’s reach. He’ll call it an abuse of Long privilege.”

“And then?” Shi Feng asked.

“Then someone else will be very kind,” Long Caili said. “He’ll agree that my name is cleared. He’ll propose the canal death be ruled misadventure, to spare the palace. Everyone will want to agree with him, because nobody wants an inquiry inside the palace wall.”

She didn’t say who. Shi Feng didn’t ask.

“And your elder brother?” Shi Feng asked.

“Elder Brother has read every line,” Long Caili said. “He promised to. He’ll ask two questions. Who paid Cao Shuncai. Who signed Linghu Yan’s leave.” She stopped for half a breath. “Nobody in that hall can answer either. The Censor least of all.”

“So nobody gets named,” Shi Feng said.

“Nobody can be,” Long Caili said. “The man who paid stood behind a stable door. The man who signed used the Deputy Commander’s name. You know it. I know it. The court will know it.” Her voice didn’t change. “Elder Brother will ask both questions so the whole court hears that nobody can answer them. Then the memorial dies, and the Censor goes somewhere cold. That’s as far as it goes.”

Shi Feng was angry that the people behind Linghu Yan would escape. But Long Caili was right about the missing proof. She’d understood the court’s limits before leaving Tianjing, and she’d still come north to clear his name.

“So the man who drowned Linghu Yan walks away,” Shi Feng said.

“Today he does,” Long Caili said. “The fish that slips the net today still has to swim tomorrow.”

She took a sheet from her sleeve and laid it on the table. It was a single line in a steward’s hand, with her seal under it.

“Ji Yuanhe’s furnace account,” Long Caili said. “Five million one hundred and eighty thousand. Untouched. His furnace commissions have paid for his charcoal and his wage so far. He says he won’t draw on your money until you come back and watch him count it.”

Shi Feng laughed, and it hurt his ribs.

“That sounds like him,” Shi Feng said.

“It’s very annoying,” Long Caili said.

She stood, picked up the lacquer case and tucked it under her arm. At the door she stopped.

“My Fifth Brother will ask you to fight the moment the court accepts this,” Long Caili said, without turning round. “He won’t wait for the ten days if he can help it. He’s never lost to anyone his own age.”

“I’ve read the terms,” Shi Feng said. “Not to the death.”

“That isn’t what I mean,” Long Caili said. “Don’t break him. The Gu would never forgive me.”

“And if he breaks me?” Shi Feng asked.

“Then you’ll fix yourself,” Long Caili said. “You’re an alchemist.”

She took a small jar out of her other sleeve and set it on the corner of the table by the door. It was white porcelain with a green paper seal, the Sky Pavilion’s own rib salve, the kind the Pavilion’s physicians used for torn flesh over bone.

“The tower sent it up,” Long Caili said. “For the wound you opened in court.”

Yan Lianbi was passing in the corridor at that moment, with a ledger under his arm. He heard her, looked at the jar, and blinked.

Long Caili went down the stairs without another word. Her guards fell in behind her on the landing. Qin Wuyan closed the door.

Shi Feng sat looking at the jar.

After a while Yan Lianbi knocked and put his head round the door.

“Master Shi,” Yan Lianbi said carefully. “For the record. The tower’s medicine store closed at sundown. And the tower hasn’t sent anything up to this room today.”

“I know, Steward Yan,” Shi Feng said.

“Shall I enter it?” Yan Lianbi asked.

“The salve doesn’t need an entry, Steward Yan,” Shi Feng said, picking up the jar with a smile. “I’ll thank Her Highness myself when I see her.”

Yan Lianbi bowed and withdrew. He waited until the door was shut before smiling. Shi Feng uncapped the jar carefully; his gratitude mattered more than exposing her excuse.

At dawn a pillar of white light rose from the Long household’s courtyard on the east side of Shuoyang. It stood for three breaths over the roofs and then went out.

Long Caili was gone south. In Tianjing, the Hall of Clear Rule would sit the day after tomorrow.