Chapter 179 - 180: Payment Plans

Chapter 179: Chapter 180: Payment Plans

Old Moneyface did not have two and a half million gold in cash.

Nobody did. That was the first thing the little man explained when he arrived at the guest hall at sunrise, red-faced and sweating, with a clerk, two bodyguards, and a donkey cart piled with iron-bound chests.

"I can pay you in coin," he said, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief the size of a bedsheet. "But you would need a very large wheelbarrow. Or I can write a draft on the Merchants’ Bank of Silverbrook, redeemable on demand. Or I can pay you part in gold bars."

"Gold bars," said Daniel, who was still in his nightshirt and holding a cup of tea.

"How many?"

"All of them."

"All?"

"I want to see the cart."

The cart was seen. It was seen by Daniel, and Lyra, and Paul, and Brick Head, who had to be restrained from hugging the donkey, and by roughly forty guests of Heaven’s Domain who had drifted over from the breakfast hall with mouths open. A stack of gold bars the size of loaves of bread glittered on the cart in the pale light. There were a lot of them.

On the far side of the courtyard, a clump of Golden Dragon retainers in gold-trimmed robes stood stiff and silent, watching.

"That’s a great deal of money," said Paul faintly.

"It is," Daniel agreed.

"What are you going to do with it?"

Daniel thought about it, sipping his tea.

"Pay my debts," he said.

---

By noon, the debts had been paid.

He gave Fluffy a carrot cake the size of a wagon wheel, with a candle in the middle. She wept into it and ate half of it before anyone could stop her. He gave Brick Head the largest, longest, most serious hug of his life, and Brick Head wept too, harder, for several minutes, and then announced that he had never been so happy.

He apologized to Lyra for the arch, and Lyra said "You are an idiot," and punched him in the arm, and then stood there pretending not to smile.

He thanked Cheeky, formally, with a bow, for the boots. Cheeky bowed back, frowning, and then spent three minutes telling him he’d wasted his gold on silly things.

That left one item on the list.

He was crossing the courtyard with a wheelbarrow of gold bars, heading for the Silver Anvil smithy, when he saw her.

Su Wan stood at the edge of the yard in plain grey clothes, no armor, her braid pulled over one shoulder. She was watching the retainers. They were watching her. Nobody said a word. The air between them felt like a drawn bowstring.

Daniel dropped the wheelbarrow handles and walked over.

"Su Wan."

"What?"

"Dinner."

She blinked. "What?"

"Tonight. A good one. I owe you." He tilted his head. "I’d also like you to tell me how to beat the man who thinks he owns you."

She said nothing for a long time.

"I do not need to eat," she said at last, stiffly.

"Everyone needs to eat."

"I am not hungry."

"Neither am I. I’m just very, very polite."

A muscle twitched in her cheek. It might have been a smile. It might have been a threat.

"...Where?" said Su Wan.

---

The Silver Anvil smithy did not usually take customers who arrived with wheelbarrows of gold, but it made an exception.

The master smith was a vast woman named Brenna with forearms like tree trunks and a leather apron scarred by sparks. She looked at Daniel’s pistols for a long time. She looked at Cheeky, who had come along because she said she was *not worried, merely curious*. Then she looked at the gold, and put her hammer down.

"You have the best metal-sense I’ve ever seen in a girl," she said to Cheeky, after five minutes of watching her run her fingers over a half-forged blade. "How old are you?"

"I don’t know."

"Don’t lie."

"I’m *not*."

Brenna grunted and gave her a hammer. "Show me."

Daniel left them to it. When he came back three hours later, Cheeky was standing at the forge with soot on her cheeks and a deeply satisfied expression, and the Golden Jack pistols were sitting on the bench.

They were not the same.

Their barrels had been re-forged in a way that made the metal sing. The grips were wrapped in fresh leather. A faint line of gold ran down each frame like a vein of light.

[Equipment Upgraded]

[Golden Jack Pistol (x2) - Level 1 → Level 2]

[Damage +10 → +16]

[New Effect: Stabilized Barrel. Mana Bullet accuracy increased.]

"You did that," Daniel said slowly.

"I helped," said Cheeky, wiping her hands.

"You *did* that."

She flushed, and looked away, and said, "It’s only a little."

"It’s very big."

"It’s *not*."

"Cheeky." He put a hand on her shoulder. "You are the best blacksmith in the whole guild."

"I’m a *tank*."

"A tank who forges."

"Stop it."

"I’m proud of you."

She did not say anything. She just reached up and squeezed his hand once, hard, and went back to the forge with her head turned away, and Brenna looked at Daniel with deep, grim approval.

---

The Drunken Turtle was the smallest noodle shop in Silverbrook.

It had five tables, a crooked roof, a paper lantern in the shape of a fish, and a cook named Auntie Ping, who had a ladle in one hand and a face like a walnut. When Daniel and Su Wan walked in, she looked at them for a long moment, grunted, and pointed at the corner table.

"Sit," she said.

They sat.

Su Wan did not look at the menu. She looked at the wall, the door, the window, and the cook, the way she looked at everything: as a threat or an exit. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her back was ramrod straight.

"Relax," said Daniel.

"I am relaxed."

"You look like you’re waiting to be executed."

"This is how I sit."

"I know. That’s the problem." He waved at the menu. "Pick something."

"I do not know what I like."

He looked up.

She was staring at the table. Her face was perfectly still, but her fingers had tightened on her knee.

"At the clan mess," she said, in a flat voice, "there was a pot. Rice, and whatever vegetable was cheapest. It was served at the same time every day. There was no choice." She swallowed. "I have never been in a place where I could ask for something."

The shop had gone very quiet.

Auntie Ping, in the back, had stopped stirring her pot.

"Well," said Daniel, after a moment, "that’s an easy problem to fix."

He took the menu and read it aloud. Chili noodles. Pork buns. Sweet-bean dumplings. Pickled melon. A bowl of broth with a single egg in it. A plate of fried dough twists dusted with sugar. A pot of tea with something floating in it that might have been a flower. He ordered all of it, plus a second pot of tea, and told Auntie Ping to bring two of everything.

"Two?" Su Wan said.

"Two. You taste each one. Then you rank them."

"Rank them?"

"From best to worst. Like a tournament."

She stared at him.

"It’s a very important tournament," Daniel said gravely. "The stakes are enormous."

For the first time that day, something that might have been a laugh moved at the corner of her mouth.

The food came in waves. Su Wan ate slowly, carefully, like a woman defusing a bomb. The chili noodles made her cough so hard that tears came to her eyes, and Daniel laughed until Auntie Ping glared at him and refilled his tea. The pork bun she put down after two bites, and ranked eighth. The broth was fifth. The pickled melon, which she tried with a look of grim suspicion, climbed to third.

Then she bit into a fried dough twist, and stopped.

"Oh," she said, very quietly.

"Good?"

"It’s *sweet*."

"That’s the idea."

She ate the whole thing. Then she picked up another and ate that one too, slowly, eyes closed, and when she opened them again she looked about ten years younger.

"First," said Su Wan.

"First place goes to the dough twist."

"I did not know it could be like this."

"Like what?"

"Pleasant." She considered the word carefully, as if checking it for traps. "I did not know that eating could be pleasant."

Daniel put down his chopsticks.

"Su Wan," he said. "You’re allowed to like things."

"I know."

"I don’t think you do."

"I am learning." She dusted sugar off her fingers. "It is... slower than I thought."

"That’s okay."

She said nothing. A lantern flickered. Somewhere in the back, Auntie Ping resumed stirring her pot, a little louder than before.

"Tell me about him," Daniel said.

She did not ask who.

"Long Tian Zhao has been the clan’s strongest heir since he was fourteen," she said. "He is arrogant. He is cruel when he is bored. He is also very, very good." She took a sip of tea. "He cultivates the Heavenly Dragon Palm, a stage-four art. It is a series of strikes backed by golden mana. The disc you saw in the gorge is the simplest form."

"Weaknesses?"

"He never fights from below. If he is forced to look up, he becomes angry, and when he is angry, he is sloppy." She frowned into her cup. "His Golden Domain, the pressure you felt, takes five seconds to form. He cannot move while it builds. He believes nobody would ever be so foolish as to strike him in those five seconds, because the pressure would break them."

"But it didn’t break me."

"It did not break you because you were invisible."

"Shadow Step."

"Yes." She met his eyes. "He does not know you can do that for ten seconds. He believes it lasts three."

Daniel put down his tea.

"Why are you telling me this?"

The question seemed to land somewhere deep in her chest. She sat very still. For a long moment, her hands did not move on the table.

"Because I was ten years old," she said, "when I first watched him break a boy’s arm for laughing at his shoes. And I did nothing. I have done nothing for a very long time." Her voice shook, just slightly. "I do not want to do nothing any more."

"That’s a good reason."

"It is a *selfish* reason."

"Those are the best kind."

She laughed. It was short and surprised and cracked at the edges, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, and her eyes went wide with horror, as if she had just discovered she could fly.

[Affection Level: Su Wan: +9%]

"I will not say thank you," said Su Wan, from behind her fingers.

"I wouldn’t expect it."

"But I am going to eat another dough twist."

"I’ll tell Auntie Ping."

She did eat another. And then a third. And outside the little paper window, two figures pressed against the glass, a tall woman with a pistol and a handsome man in a high collar, whispered furiously to each other.

"We are not spying," Lyra hissed.

"We’re protecting him," said Paul.

"Exactly."

"From what?"

"From... a danger."

"She’s eating *sweets*."

"It’s a very *sneaky* kind of sweet."

---

They came at two in the morning.

There were five of them, in black clothes with gold trim at the cuffs, soft boots, and long knives. They went up the back wall of the guest hall like cats, slipped through a window, and crept down a hall that smelled of old tea and lamp oil.

They stopped outside the door to Daniel’s room.

The lead man, a lean figure with a scar on his chin, put one ear to the wood. He heard nothing. He nodded to the others, drew his knife, and slowly, silently, eased open the latch.

The room was dark.

Daniel was lying in bed with the blanket pulled to his chin. His chest rose and fell. A pair of golden pistols hung from a hook on the bedpost.

The lead man’s eyes gleamed.

*The guns,* he thought. *Take the guns. Break his hands. Be gone before dawn.*

He crossed the room in three steps.

His fingers closed on the first pistol.

"Evening," said Daniel.

The lead man froze.

The figure in the bed had not moved. His eyes were closed. His breathing was perfectly steady. But his mouth was smiling.

"I was wondering when you’d get here," Daniel said. "It’s very late. I was getting bored."

"Who..." The man’s voice cracked. "How..."

"Keen Sense. Fifty meters." Daniel opened one eye. "I heard you in the courtyard. Your boots squeak."

The lead man lunged.

He did not get far.

Something fell from the ceiling, small, quick, and furious, and landed on his back with a thump and a very high-pitched battle cry. "FLUFFY GOT ONE!" she screamed, and bit his ear.

The second man turned. A huge shape unfolded from the shadows behind the door and wrapped both arms around him in a bear hug that lifted him off the floor. "I’m so sorry!" said Brick Head, tearful. "I don’t want to hurt you! Please stop kicking!"

The third and fourth men spun toward the window. A silver ribbon of metal slithered out of the wall and wrapped around their ankles, and Cheeky stepped out of the shadows with her hands raised, her face perfectly calm. The buckles of their boots had bent and fused to the floor.

"Sit," she said.

They sat.

The fifth man made it to the door, wrenched it open, and found himself staring straight into the barrel of a golden pistol.

"Evening," said Lyra.

He put his hands up.

Daniel got out of bed and stretched. He was fully dressed. He had, in fact, never been undressed. He walked across the room and crouched in front of the lead man, who was struggling under Fluffy’s grip, and looked at him with a mild expression.

"Hello. Who sent you?"

"Nobody."

"Nobody has nice jewelry."

The man’s eyes dropped to the golden dragon pin on his collar, and went white.

"That’s... that’s..."

"Mm." Daniel plucked the pin free and held it up. "Say hello to Examiner Qin for me."

---

The five men arrived at the examiners’ office at dawn, bound together with a single loop of metal rope, each wearing a hastily written sign around his neck.

FOUND IN MY CLOSET, said the signs, in Daniel’s handwriting. PLEASE RETURN TO THE GOLDEN DRAGON CLAN. THEY LOOK LOST.

Examiner Qin read the signs. He read the pin. He read the signed confession, which the lead man had produced after twenty minutes alone with Fluffy and a bowl of carrot cake.

He did not say a word. He just walked, very calmly, to Elder Jian’s office, knocked once, and went in.

The shouting could be heard from the courtyard.

It lasted about four minutes. At the end of it, Elder Jian came out of the office with a very small, very satisfied smile, and walked down the corridor to the council chamber where Elder Long Wei was having breakfast.

By the time the sun cleared the ridge, the Golden Dragon Clan had been fined a further fifty thousand gold for tampering with a participant’s property, three clan retainers had been banned from the Heaven’s Domain grounds for life, and Elder Long had quietly left the guild for his estate in the south, where he would be, by all accounts, "recovering."

Daniel did not see it.

He was sitting on the roof of the guest hall, eating a dumpling, and watching the sky turn gold.

---

POV Switch: Su Wan

Su Wan did not sleep that night.

She lay on the narrow bed in her room with her eyes open, looking at the ceiling, listening to the wind. She was thinking about a pot of rice. About a dough twist. About a boy with a crooked grin who had told her she was allowed to like things.

At four in the morning, she rose, took her sword from the wall, and sat at the little table by the window.

The crest on her breastplate glinted in the lamplight.

It was a golden dragon coiled around a pearl. She had worn it for twelve years. She had polished it every night. She had bled for it, and been beaten for it, and had once, long ago, believed it was the only thing in the world that loved her.

She looked at it for a very long time.

Then she took the point of her sword and began, very carefully, to cut it off.

It took twenty minutes. The metal screamed. Little sparks flew. When it was done, she set the crest on the table, a heavy, ugly, beautiful lump of gold, and stared at the bare patch on her armor.

Her hands were shaking.

She breathed in. She breathed out.

She picked up the crest, walked to the window, and dropped it into the dark.

It fell for a long time. Somewhere far below, in the gorge, there was a faint, small, distant clink.

Su Wan stood at the window until the stars faded.

Then she put on her armor, bare-breasted of its crest, and went to find him.

---

The sun was just clearing the ridge when she reached the roof.

He was still there, sitting on the tiles with his boots dangling and a half-eaten dumpling in his hand. He looked up when he heard her step, and his face changed.

"Su Wan?"

She stopped in front of him. She did not speak. She just turned slightly, so the light caught the bare patch on her armor where the golden dragon had been.

Daniel looked at it.

For a long, quiet moment, nobody said anything.

"I will stand beside you," Su Wan said, at last, in a very steady voice. "In the ring. As your second. If you will have me."

"Su Wan..."

"I have no master," she said. "I have no clan. I have a sword, and I have a debt, and I have nothing else." She took a breath. "But I would like to choose where to spend it."

Daniel stood up slowly.

"You don’t owe me anything."

"I know." Her eyes were bright. "That is why I am choosing to."

He looked at her for a very long time. And then he smiled, a real one, soft and warm and unguarded, the one he gave to the people he loved.

"Okay," said Daniel. "Then let’s go and win."

[Affection Level: Su Wan: +17%]

He held out his hand.

Su Wan looked at it for a moment, as if it were a puzzle she had finally figured out.

Then she took it.

And this time, neither of them let go.