Chapter 997 — The Bill for the Thunder

CHAPTER 997

The Bill for the Thunder

“His Highness’s meridians are running backward,” Lei Wanjun said grimly, crouching in the snow beside the prince. “All of them. The thunder he called up from the lake has nowhere to go, and it’s going back in.”

Long Zhenlei lay on a fisherman’s door on the shore with his eyes shut and his teeth clenched. The thunder on his skin had gone out. Under the skin it hadn’t. Small violet sparks kept running up his arms from the wrists and vanishing at the shoulders, and every time one vanished, his whole body jerked.

“It’s backlash,” Lei Wanjun said. “The Return always does this. In the Valley we’d put him in the cold pool for a month.”

“You don’t have a month or a cold pool,” Shi Feng said. “Bring him to the furnace room.”

“Master Shi,” Yan Lianbi said quietly, at his elbow. “You can’t lift your left arm.”

“I don’t need my left arm to light a furnace,” Shi Feng said.

They carried the prince up to the Shuoyang tower on the door. Half the crowd followed them up the road and stood outside the gate.

The thunder-burn herbs were still on the furnace room shelves, sealed in jade, in rows, with the princess’s pavilion tags on every jar. Shi Feng took them down one-handed. Yan Lianbi looked at the tags and then at him.

“Her Highness stocked these,” Yan Lianbi said slowly, “for a bout nobody had agreed to yet.”

“She was worried about the fight,” Shi Feng said, breaking the first seal with his teeth. “She made sure we’d have what we needed.”

He refined it with his right hand and the Thousand Forge Flame, and his left arm hung useless at his side the whole time. Twice the flame disturbed his burned meridians as it passed through his chest. Each time Shi Feng stopped, steadied his breathing and brought it back under control. Sweat ran into his eyes. Qin Wuyan stood in the doorway and said nothing.

Six clouds stood over the tower roof at dusk. The crowd outside the gate cheered.

The pill was pale blue and cold to the touch. He put it in the prince’s mouth himself, and Long Zhenlei swallowed it and lay still. Within a quarter of an hour, the sparks under his skin slowed. Within an hour, they stopped. The prince opened his eyes, sat up and looked at his hands.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Long Zhenlei said in amazement. “It always hurts for a month.”

“It’ll ache for ten days,” Shi Feng said. “Don’t call any more thunder until the ache goes.”

Then he sat down on the furnace room floor, took off his torn outer robe, and finally started on his own arm.

The black had gone up past his elbow to the middle of the upper arm. He drew the stray thunder down the meridians with the Thousand Forge Flame turned low and let it go into the stone floor in small blue snaps. It took the rest of the night. By dawn the black had gone back to a dark bruise at the wrist, and he could close his left hand most of the way. The meridians in the arm would need weeks to settle, so Yan Lianbi tied it up in a sling for him, and Shi Feng let him.

Long Zhenlei watched him do the whole thing, sitting on the bench with his chin in his hands.

“How much?” Long Zhenlei asked at dawn.

“For the pill?” Shi Feng asked. “300,000.”

“That’s all?” Long Zhenlei said. He turned to Lei Wanjun, delighted. “Uncle Lei, it’s cheap! The Valley charges more than that for the cold pool!”

“Your Highness,” Lei Wanjun said, “the Valley doesn’t charge you for the cold pool.”

“Then it’s still cheap,” Long Zhenlei said happily.

He paid it on the spot, in stone notes out of his own ring, and he wouldn’t let Lei Wanjun count them for him. Shi Feng counted them and put them away. Seventeen million seven hundred thousand, near enough, in his ring. The princess’s furnace account for Ji Yuanhe sat untouched in her vault in Tianjing.

“A good horse doesn’t need the whip,” Lei Wanjun muttered to nobody, watching the prince pay. “That boy paid before anyone asked.”

The story of the lake went south faster than any courier.

By the third day, a merchant coming north told the tower steward that Tianjing already knew. In the capital’s version, the lake had boiled.

On the fourth day, a letter came up the post road under the seal of the imperial furnaces.

Yan Lianbi brought it up to the upper room with both hands, which Shi Feng had never seen the law-steward do for any letter before.

It was from Xuanyuan Gui.

It was written with full courtesy, in an old man’s careful hand, and it was addressed one 6 Mark to another. His Highness the Fifth Prince’s own account of the spar had been filed with the court, it said, in the prince’s own words. It described the bout as a contest His Highness had requested, enjoyed, and lost fairly. Master Shi was welcome at the imperial furnace in Tianjing at any time, to discuss thunder-burn herbs or anything else.

Shi Feng read it twice and set it down.

“The prince wrote his own account?” Shi Feng asked.

“In his own hand,” Yan Lianbi said. “Four pages. The court clerks say it’s mostly about your left foot.”

Shi Feng laughed with relief. The prince hadn’t left the account to clerks or relatives. He’d written down the fight he enjoyed in his own words.

The princess had told him not to break her brother. He hadn’t. Her brother had gone home delighted, written a report nobody could twist, and sent the Emperor’s sworn brother to say thank you. Anyone at court who’d hoped the bout would turn into a crime against imperial blood had just had the Fifth Prince himself tell them it was a game.

“Master Shi,” Yan Lianbi said, folding the letter away. “May I say something outside my office?”

“Go ahead,” Shi Feng said.

“A month ago, you were a guest elder with a memorial against your name,” Yan Lianbi said. “Today the Fifth Prince’s faction thinks you’re a friend. The Gu stand with the Fifth Prince, so the Gu think you’re a friend. And the Imperial 6 Mark has invited you to his furnace.” The law-steward paused. “Your weight at court has doubled, Master Shi. You didn’t ask for any of it.”

“I asked for a fair ring,” Shi Feng said. “Everything else came with it.”

Yan Lianbi bowed and went out.

A Tianji scribe had been at the lake. Shi Feng had seen the blue sleeve and the brush on the west shore during the fight, writing.

The new issue would be out in two days.