Cloudford Town’s central bazaar smelled of river mud, wet mule manure, and stale coal dust.
Pei Jing walked along the western commercial alley. There, the ironmongers, grain factors, and furriers kept open timber stalls along the stone canal. The morning traffic was heavy. River coolies hauled forty-pound sacks of coarse millet from docked flatboats, their bare backs glistening with cold sweat, while two constables in lacquered leather caps stood near the grain scales. They leaned on ash batons.
Pei Jing kept his eyes lowered, his stride even.
Under his patched linen tunic, the bundle of three cured wolf pelts rested flat against his spine, bound tight with hemp cord so no loose fur brushed against passing carts.
He walked past the standard furriers. The merchants sitting in front of the open-air skin stalls were coarse men with grease-stained aprons who routinely docked forty percent off a hunter’s pelt for “imperfections” before turning around to sell the hide to southern traveling merchants at triple the price.
Pei Jing didn’t deal with hungry middlemen who operated on arbitrary discounts.
He continued down South Canal Street until the smell of wet hide and river refuse gave way to the sharp, astringent aroma of dried roots, bitter pine-resin, and aged sandalwood.
Before him stood Fragrant Cloud Pavilion.
It was a three-story timber establishment roofed with glazed green tiles, featuring an entrance flanked by two carved stone medicine mortars. Unlike the flyblown general stores along the docks, Fragrant Cloud Pavilion catered to the town’s merchant elite, martial escort bureaus, and visiting caravan masters. It dealt in refined healing pastes, wild ginseng, and monster beast animal parts shipped from the northern mountains.
Pei Jing stepped over the high threshold.
Inside, the air was warm, heated by two brass fire bowls burning smokeless fruitwood charcoal. Along three walls stood hundreds of small drawers of polished elm wood, each labeled with ink characters. Angelica, Radix Aconiti, Dried Earth Dragon, Centipede Husks, White Peony Root.
Behind the counter sat a woman in her late twenties, wearing a high-collared gown of slate-blue silk stitched with silver plum blossoms. Her hair was coiled with a carved bone hairpin. Her fingers, slender and stained faintly yellow at the tips from healing pollen, were tapping a counting frame with crisp, rhythmic clicks.
Su Mei’er.
Proprietress of Fragrant Cloud Pavilion and niece to the merchant judge of Cloudford Town.
She didn’t look up right away when the door creaked. Her fingers cleared the counting frame with a single sweep of the palm, then she raised her dark, assessing eyes.
She didn’t flinch at Pei Jing’s frayed straw sandals or his coarse wool tunic. In the commercial world of frontier towns, wealth often wore silk. But lethal goods often arrived in bloodstained hemp.
“Young Master Pei,” she said. Her voice was cool, smooth, carrying the faint, dry deep ring of polished brass. “The second branch rarely visits my pavilion. Has Third Elder Hongcheng sent you for his cough draught?”
“I’m here on my own account, Shopkeeper Su,” Pei Jing replied.
He unslung the hemp cords from his shoulders and set the tightly bound roll onto the counter between two brass weight dishes.
He untied the knot with two fingers, letting the three pelts unroll across the waxed cedar wood.
The grey-and-black fur swelled instantly, the long winter guard hairs standing upright. It caught the amber light of the oil lamps. The under-wool was dense, pale silver, and clean.
Su Mei’er looked at the pelts. Her fingers paused over the counting frame.
She reached out with her right hand, parting the fur along the dorsal line with two fingers. She inspected the skin side.
The leather was supple, pale grey, cured with clean wood ash and salt rather than rancid urine or lime. She turned the first pelt over, searching for arrow holes.
There was only one: a clean, narrow three-sided slit between the fifth and sixth ribs.
She turned the second pelt. A single puncture at the chest inlet.
She turned the third. A clean puncture at the base of the skull.
“Mountain grey wolves,” Su Mei’er said. Her eyebrows lifted by a fraction of a tiny fraction of an inch. “Cured within the last month. Prime winter coat. Not a single slash along the backstraps. The leather is soft enough for court boots.”
She looked up at Pei Jing, her gaze sharpening as she noted the breadth of his shoulders and the unmoving, relaxed symmetry of his stance.
“Your father didn’t kill these,” she stated. “Hongcheng’s heavy saber leaves three-foot cleave wounds that ruin sixty percent of the hide. Who shot this arrow?”
“The arrows are accounted for, Shopkeeper,” Pei Jing said, his voice entirely devoid of pride or evasion. “The merchandise is before you. Three adult mountain wolf pelts. What’s your offer?”
Su Mei’er smiled faintly, her long fingernails tapping the wooden counter.
“Standard town market rate for winter wolf hide is four hundred copper cash. Because these are clean, I’ll offer one silver coin and five hundred copper for the lot.”
Pei Jing didn’t blink.
“Your math is flawed, Shopkeeper Su.”
Su Mei’er tilted her head. “Is that so?”
Pei Jing leaned his hands on the counter. “The Cloudford River freezes in eighteen days. Once the ice locks the northern barges, fur shipments from Azure City halt until the spring thaw. The local guard post at the North Gate has just issued a winter claims notice for two hundred warm collars for the border cavalry scouts.”
He paused, letting the data point settle.
“A prime wolf collar needs thirty inches of undamaged dorsal fur. These three pelts provide enough flawless spine hide for six officer-grade collars. At current guard post tender prices, six collars yield five silver coins to an authorized supplier. Taking my pelts at one silver five hundred leaves you a profit margin exceeding seventy percent.”
Su Mei’er’s eyes narrowed slightly.
She wasn’t accustomed to teenage boys from failing branches speaking to her in the precise language of commodity arbitrage and margin yields.
“Two silver coins flat,” Pei Jing finished. “In addition, I need five bundles of tonic herb waste scum from your processing bins—the discarded rootlets of mountain ginseng, dried angelica heads, and bruised tiger-bone bark—along with one small glazed pot of wild ginger moxibustion balm.”
Su Mei’er tapped her counting frame twice.
Click. Clack.
The herb waste scum was waste material from the upper-floor pill refining rooms. Her apprentices normally swept it into the compost heaps or sold it to peasant bone-setters for a few copper cash. The ginger balm was an inexpensive topical rub used by carriage drivers to warm frostbitten fingers.
“You have a sharp pencil, Young Master Pei,” she said softly. “Too sharp for a boy who was declared barren eight years ago.”
“Arithmetic doesn’t need spiritual roots,” Pei Jing answered. “Only honesty regarding assets and liabilities.”
Su Mei’er laughed—a low, quiet sound that smelled of bitter dried orange peel.
“Agreed.”
She reached beneath the counter and brought out a set of delicate brass scales balanced on a carved sandalwood stand. She opened a small iron-bound lacquer box, pulled out two box-shaped metal bars of cast white silver. Then she placed them in the left pan.
Each metal bar bore the official royal assay stamp: Azure Province Treasury, One Tael Fine.
She set the balance weights in the right pan. The brass needle hovered dead center between two engraved ivory notches.
“Two silver coins,” she said, pushing the metal toward him.
She called an apprentice from the back room. Five minutes later, the boy returned carrying a coarse burlap sack containing five tightly bound bundles of dried, stringy herb cuttings—roots, woody bark, and dried leaves that gave off a dense, spicy odor of earth and medicine—and a small baked-clay pot sealed with wax.
Pei Jing picked up the two silver metal bars.
He tested their thickness in the palm of his right hand. The weight was precise: seventy-four grams total. The silver was cold, heavy, and solid.
His floating sight screen flickered with a quiet chime:
Pei Jing slipped the two silver metal bars into the secret seam of his inner sleeve, secured the burlap sack of herb waste scum under his arm. Then he placed the small pot of ginger balm in his belt pouch. As he settled the jar, his fingers brushed the Black Mountain Whetstone resting in the corner. His thumb traced the dished dark rock hollow, grounding his focus against the busy market noise.
“A pleasure doing business, Shopkeeper Su.”
“If you harvest more mountain beasts with unbroken hides,” Su Mei’er said, watching him turn toward the threshold, “bring them directly to my back door. The Zhao Clan has been buying up the lower furriers along the dock to corner the guard post contracts. I prefer dealing with sellers who know how to keep their books clean.”
Pei Jing paused at the door.
“The Zhao Clan?”
“Their third guard, Zhao Bao, was promoted to warehouse overseer yesterday,” she said casually, picking up her counting frame again. “He’s looking to consolidate all commercial debt in the southern quarter before the first snowfall. Watch your outer edge, Young Master.”
“Noted,” Pei Jing replied.
He stepped back out into the cold drizzle of South Canal Street. His pockets were heavy with silver, his mind already calculating the compounding returns of the medicine in his hands.