Chapter 95 | She Keeps the Seal

Feng Lianzhu was warm against his right side, an arm loose across his ribs. Her sleeve lay across his inner robe, their collars loosened by sleep. The lamp had burned low. Beyond the shutter, Azure was still dark.

[...]

The 4 familiar currents settled into the reserve anchored at his lower dantian. Nothing flashed across the room. Nothing moved except Feng, who made a small sound in her throat and shifted closer before going still again.

Xu let the panel fade.

By the time he woke again, pale morning light had reached the shutter.

Feng opened an eye when he sat up.

"Leaving already?"

"Downstairs."

"Cruel." Her voice was rough with sleep. "I finally stop feeling like my bones were borrowed, and you choose ledgers over me."

Xu pulled on his outer robe. "Rest."

She closed her eye again. "That’s not an apology."

"I wasn’t apologizing."

A faint smile touched her mouth.

He buckled his sword at his left hip, took the charcoal courier-mark sketch from the west table, and slipped the paper inside his robe. Feng reached blindly toward the same table until her fingers found the sheath of her knife. She dragged it onto the mat beside her and went back to sleep.

Golden Crescent was already making noise when Xu came downstairs.

A porter argued with somebody near the front doors. Wood knocked against wood. 2 clerks were sorting salvaged jars onto a shelf that still smelled faintly of smoke. The branch was alive, if not pretty about it.

Su Meilin stood near the eastern shelves with a stack of replacement slips in her hand.

"No," she told a clerk. "If the neck is cracked, it doesn’t go back out because the jar still looks expensive. Put it with the losses."

The clerk hesitated. "But Mistress Su, that batch—"

"Will cost me more when it leaks over the rest. Loss pile."

He moved.

Su looked over and saw Xu waiting near the worktable.

"You know," she said, coming toward him, "most guests wait until they’re invited before standing beside a merchant’s books."

"I’m not touching them."

"Mm. Very restrained of you."

He took the paper from inside his robe and set it on the clear corner of the table.

The teasing left her face.

"Feng came back last night," Xu said. "The silver she followed never passed through Pan’s yard."

Su picked up the sketch.

"Where did it go?"

"Through other freight hands. She lost the stream at a transfer point using this mark. Cangyun-bound freight."

Her thumb stopped short of the charcoal line.

"A person?"

"No person Feng could name."

"A house?"

"No house either."

Su exhaled through her nose. "So Pan was a door. Not the hallway."

"Maybe."

She gave him a quick look. "That was almost cautious."

"Don’t get used to it."

"Tragic."

Su crossed to the locked workbox on her side of the table. She opened it, slid the sketch beneath a bundle of branch papers, and locked the box again.

Xu watched the key disappear into her sleeve.

"Your rear gate needs more men," he said.

"There it is."

"2 night guards. Local. Shun vets them. I’ll cover the wages."

Su had been reaching for another stack of slips. Her hand stopped halfway.

"Not your silver."

Xu looked at her.

"The guards, yes," she said. "Your silver, no."

"Why?"

"Because men learn very quickly which purse feeds them." She picked up the slips and tapped their bottom edge against the table until they aligned. "If you pay the guards, then the first time your man says this and my clerk says something else, guess whose voice suddenly sounds more important."

"Shun won’t run your branch."

"I know. The guards won’t know that on their first day."

Xu considered it.

Su watched him with the look she used when waiting for somebody to reveal the hidden fee in a contract.

He said, "Golden Crescent pays them."

For a beat, she didn’t move.

Then a corner of her mouth lifted. "That was disappointingly easy."

"You wanted an argument?"

"I prepared for an argument. There’s a difference."

"Waste of preparation."

"I’ll survive."

She set the slips down. "I set their shifts. I dismiss them. Shun can tell me if they’re useless, drunk, lazy, blind, or likely to sleep through a robbery. He doesn’t become their branch master."

"Agreed."

"And if I ask for an escort on a dangerous load, your people can answer. If I tell Shun the arrangement is over, it ends."

"Shun handles the response."

"So long as he remembers whose cart he’s escorting."

"He will."

Su narrowed her eyes. "You’re making this less satisfying than it should be."

"Zhou Kai."

The clerk at the next table jerked upright. "Mistress?"

Su didn’t look away from Xu. "Find me 2 night-watch candidates from the porter contacts. Men who’ve actually stayed awake after midnight. Bring them before afternoon."

Zhou Kai glanced between them. "You want them today?"

"Unless you’d prefer tomorrow’s attackers to wait politely."

"Today is good."

He fled with the speed of a man who had found the correct answer.

Su finally looked down at the slips again.

"Anything else you want to buy for me?"

"Nothing else."

"Good. I was worried you’d discovered generosity."

Xu almost smiled.

She caught it.

"Don’t look pleased with yourself."

He turned toward the rear passage.

"I’m going to find Shun."

"Much safer than smiling at me."

By early afternoon, Zhou Kai had found 2 men.

They stood several steps inside Golden Crescent’s back gate while Xu Shun walked around them with the expression of a man inspecting rope he expected to snap.

Su stood beneath the eave near the low bench. Xu remained at the passage mouth, out of the way.

The first candidate was thick through the shoulders and had the bad habit of staring at whoever was speaking. Shun pointed toward the warehouse lane behind him.

"If somebody runs through that gate while Mistress Su is shouting your name, what are you watching?"

The man blinked. "The gate?"

"You sounded like you were asking me."

"The gate."

"Better."

The second candidate shifted his weight.

Shun’s eyes cut to his feet. "You planning to dance all night?"

"Wasn’t planning to."

"Then stop rocking like a drunk boat."

The man planted his feet and went red around the ears.

Su covered a cough with her knuckles.

Shun ignored her. "Neither of them is useless. That’s the good news."

"And the bad?" Su asked.

"They’re not useful yet."

The broad-shouldered candidate scratched his jaw. "How useful do you need a man to stand at a gate?"

Su’s brows rose.

Shun looked almost pleased. "Ask me that again after someone sets fire to the building behind you."

The man’s hand dropped.

"Right."

Su stepped forward. "Who can dismiss you from this post?"

The question caught him off guard. His eyes went to Shun.

Xu spoke before Shun did.

"Wrong person. Look at her."

The candidate turned so quickly his heel scraped the dirt.

Su waited until he met her eyes.

"Golden Crescent pays you," she said. "Golden Crescent dismisses you. While you stand that gate, my branch gives the orders. You understand?"

"Yes, Mistress Su."

She looked to the second man. "And if someone from Young Master Xu’s household tells you to close my gate while I’m telling you to keep it open?"

He glanced at Xu, thought better of it, and faced Su.

"I follow your order here."

"Good. Learn faster than your friend."

The first man muttered something under his breath.

Shun heard it. "If you’ve got breath for complaints, you’ll have breath for the night bell."

"I didn’t complain."

"Then you’re already learning silence."

Su turned away before her smile became too obvious.

They walked from the back gate along the rear storage lane.

The second candidate chose a place beside the storage corner and planted himself there as though he’d solved the problem.

A porter came through with a crate, stopped, and stared at him.

"Move," the porter said.

The candidate frowned. "I’m guarding the lane."

"You’re standing in it."

Su pointed to the inside edge of the gatepost. "There. You can see the entrance and the warehouse door without making every worker carry stock around your shoulders."

The candidate moved.

Shun checked the new angle, then nodded. "That works."

Su glanced at him. "Painful?"

"I’ve survived worse."

"Good. I was worried."

Xu let them finish. He could kill an attacker. He couldn’t stand this gate every night.

Zhou Kai had the watch sheet ready when they returned to the workroom.

He sat with his brush hovering above the wage ledger. "Mistress Su, I left the rate line open until you approve it."

"Good."

Su read the sheet, changed a shift mark, then pressed the paper flat.

"Put the 2 men on rear watch. They stay on trial until I say otherwise."

Zhou Kai wrote quickly.

Xu stood near the corner of the table. His coin stayed where it was.

Su opened her workbox and took out the Golden Crescent seal.

The dark wooden seal rested in her palm, its lower edge stained by old ink. She pressed it into the prepared pad and stamped the bottom of the watch order.

THOK.

Zhou Kai blew gently over the fresh mark.

"Done."

Su lifted the seal from beside the paper, set it back inside the workbox, and turned the key.

"Now it’s done," she said.

Zhou Kai wisely said nothing.

The rest of the afternoon was less dramatic.

Which, Xu decided, was useful.

A replacement shelf arrived crooked and had to be sent back outside. A new guard learned not to stand in the workers’ path. A clerk brought Su 3 supplier notes in quick succession and received 3 different answers without Xu touching any of them.

By sunset, the rear gate had a watch, and Shun knew Su would send word when a load needed household escort.

When the front shutters finally closed, Zhou Kai gathered the last loose papers.

"Anything else, Mistress Su?"

Su was putting the seal away again. "Go home before you start inventing work."

"Gladly."

He left. The last clerk pulled the workroom door mostly shut behind him.

The branch settled into evening noise: footsteps overhead, a cart rolling somewhere beyond the front hall, a muted call from the rear yard.

Su turned the key in her workbox.

Then she didn’t move.

Xu waited.

Her hand stayed on the lid for a breath longer than it needed to.

"You’ve had chances," she said.

The merchant ease was gone from her voice.

Xu looked at her.

Su lifted her eyes. "The fire. The guards. The money you could’ve put into this branch. The men you could send here whenever you want."

She paused, and for once didn’t hide the hesitation with a joke.

"You could’ve made any of it conditional."

Xu’s attention sharpened.

The private threshold the System had marked after the fire returned to him without needing to be summoned.

Su’s fingers curled lightly against the workbox lid.

"So why haven’t you?" she asked. "Why haven’t you ever told me that if I want your help, I have to choose you?"