The rear drying yard of Fragrant Cloud Pavilion was quiet, padded from South Canal Street by a ten-foot brick wall topped with broken pottery shards.
Rows of shallow bamboo trays sat tilted toward the pale morning sun, laden with sliced codonopsis roots, bitter sophora bark, and deep red mountain goji berries drying in the crisp winter air. The air was dense with the clean, astringent scent of healing sap and dried earth.
Pei Jing walked through the narrow timber side door, wearing his coarse wool coat over his 3-foot mountain saber.
Under his loose sleeves, the rawhide bracers held twelve high-carbon steel needles flush against his volar forearms.
A small wooden table of dark pear wood sat under the rear roof edge, sheltered by a bamboo screen. On the table rested a celadon teapot and two shallow cups of coarse white clay.
Behind the table sat Su Mei’er.
Today she wasn’t dressed in formal silk. She wore a high-collared quilted vest of dark plum wool trimmed in black otter fur, her dark hair pinned loosely with a carved silver needle-point arrow. A bronze hand-warmer filled with fruitwood embers rested in her lap, giving off a faint, sweet drift of sandalwood.
She poured two cups of hot roasted barley tea.
“Young Master Pei,” she said, her voice smooth and measured. “Your footwork is heavier today. By at least four pounds of contractile mass.”
Pei Jing sat on the split-bamboo stool opposite her.
He didn’t deny the watching. A merchant who evaluated healing potency by the grain could spot body rebuilding in a man’s gait.
“Flesh Forging Tier One,” Pei Jing said, taking the warm celadon cup.
Su Mei’er paused, her dark eyes resting on his hands. She noted the thick, horn-hard on his knuckles, the dense, slate-grey texture of the skin on his wrists. The relaxed stillness of his shoulder blades.
“Sixty days ago, you were bleeding in an alley behind the grain stalls,” she murmured. She lifted her tea to her lips. “Today you lift five-hundred-pound granite troughs in the West Pavilion. My informants in the Pei Manor say Elder Rong hasn’t slept in three nights.”
“Clan gossip is cheap,” Pei Jing said, taking a sip of the bitter tea. “You asked for a private audit, Shopkeeper Su.”
Su Mei’er set her cup down. The playful glint in her eyes dissolved, replaced by the cold, calculating care of a frontier merchant broker.
She reached beneath the table and brought out a box-shaped ledger bound in blue calfskin. She was sealed with an unbroken wax stamp bearing the official seal of the Cloudford Town Tax Registry.
She broke the wax with her thumbnail and opened the ledger across the table.
The pages were filled with columns of fine black ink characters, with red vermilion checks from the county judge’s private seal.
“This came from the yamen’s private archives two nights ago,” Su Mei’er said softly. “Passed through my uncle’s clerk. Read the third register.”
Pei Jing leaned forward.
His careful clerk mind processed the financial registers in three seconds:
Capital Entry: Fifth month of Emperor Yongtai. Payout: Six hundred silver coins from the private treasury of County Magistrate Liu. Recipient: Zhao Clan Foundry Trade ring. Consideration: Thirty percent non-dilutable equity in the new South River high-pressure blast furnaces. Working Clause: Exclusive smelting franchise for Azure Province southern border guard post.
He scanned further down the register. The payments were disguised through three shell accounts: the “River Silting Upkeep Board,” the “South Gate Timber Levy Office,” and the “County Road Dredging Fund.” Each month, two hundred copper cash per cart of commercial ore was skimmed from the town tolls and redirected straight into the private dividend account of Magistrate Liu’s third brother-in-law.
Pei Jing looked up from the page.
“The judge is a thirty percent equity partner in the Zhao Clan’s smelters,” Pei Jing summarized, his voice flat. “The Zhao Clan isn’t merely a commercial competitor. They’re the judge’s private dividend vehicle.”
“Exactly,” Su Mei’er said, tapping the ink with a polished fingernail. “For three years, the Pei Clan’s southern iron vein has been a thorn in their balance sheet. Because your family still produces high-grade bloomery iron for local blacksmiths, you prevent the Zhao Clan from fixing the wholesale price of iron ore in Cloudford Town.”
She turned the leaf to the winter tax check schedule.
“At the winter solstice—forty-five days from today—Magistrate Liu will issue an emergency military supply order tax. An extraordinary levy of two hundred silver coins on all private mining claims in Azure Province.”
Pei Jing evaluated the balance sheet.
Two hundred silver coins was twice the total liquid reserve of the entire Pei Clan.
“If the tax is unpaid?” Pei Jing asked.
“The royal commercial statute is clear,” Su Mei’er replied. “Default on an extraordinary military levy results in immediate asset seizure. The South Iron Vein deed will be auctioned on the courthouse steps to satisfy the unpaid debts. And the only trade ring in town with two hundred silver coins in liquid cash...”
“...is the Zhao Clan,” Pei Jing finished.
The trap was elegant, legal, and total.
A private merchant house colluding with the executive judge to manufacture a rule-book tax crisis, forcing the bankruptcy and forced payout of a weaker competitor.
His floating sight screen activated in cold slate monochrome:
“A classic hostile squeeze,” Pei Jing said quietly.
“Can your father produce two hundred silver in forty-five days?” Su Mei’er asked.
“No. His monthly smelting profit is less than eight silver coins after charcoal and transport. Liquid reserves across the three branches don’t exceed twenty silver.”
“Then the Pei Clan loses the mine,” Su Mei’er said. She leaned back against the bamboo screen, her otter-fur collar brushing her chin. “Unless you change the balance of power before the solstice arrives.”
“You didn’t bring me this ledger out of filial piety, Shopkeeper Su,” Pei Jing noted. “What’s your commission?”
Su Mei’er laughed—a low, melodic sound that held the sharp edge of a razor.
“If the Zhao Clan corners the iron market, Magistrate Liu will use their monopoly to squeeze the independent apothecaries next. They want thirty percent of my Fragrant Cloud Pavilion. I prefer dealing with independent miners who don’t have royal soldiers at their beck and call.”
She reached into her lacquer box and placed two heavy baked-clay jars on the table.
One jar was sealed with green wax, labeled Refined Tiger-Bone Paste. The other was sealed with red wax, labeled Deer-Horn Gelatin Essence.
“These are top-grade bone-strengthening tonics,” she said. “Made from monster beast marrow in the country capital. In the front shop, they retail for three silver coins. To you, two silver flat.”
Pei Jing placed two royal silver metal bars on the wood. The metal clicked with crisp finality.
“In exchange,” Su Mei’er continued, leaning forward until the scent of sandalwood and bitter pine-resin wrapped around him, “I need raw ingredients you can’t buy in town.”
“Specify the asset,” Pei Jing said.
“Three days ago, a mountain ginseng digger spotted a Two-Tailed Wild Boar in the deep crags of Mount Cang, seven li north of the Black Pine timberline,” Su Mei’er explained. “It has been driven down into the rocky ravines by the heavy snows, rooting for frozen wild acorns. It’s a Tier One mutant beast, weighing at least six hundred pounds. Its hide is heavy with dried pine pitch and stone gravel, its skull crest is four inches of dense bone, and its twin fourteen-inch ivory tusks are curved like scythes.”
She tapped her fingernail against the table.
“My master jade carver in Azure City pays top price for unchipped mutant ivory. Bring me the two tusks intact, and I’ll pay twelve silver coins in liquid coin. Deliver the gallbladder unbroken, and I’ll trade you three weeks of high-grade bone-strengthening medicine.”
Twelve silver coins in liquid revenue. Plus three hundred pounds of mutant monster beast meat to fuel his Flesh Forging progression.
Pei Jing picked up the two jars of medicine, slipping them into his heavy pack.
“Contract accepted,” he said.
He stood up, bowed his head slightly to Su Mei’er. Then he walked out through the bamboo drying racks into the cold winter wind.
As he walked back toward the West Pavilion, his mind reconciled the working schedule. Forty-five days to the winter solstice. Before Magistrate Liu’s tax officers arrived at the gate, he needed to advance through Flesh Forging Tier 2 and Tier 3, gather thirty silver coins of liquid reserves, and ensure that any counter-party attempting an asset seizure met with impossible to climb physical pushback.
He tightened his grip on the handle of his mountain saber beneath his coat. With his other hand, he felt the outline of the Black Mountain Whetstone resting in his side satchel. He ran his thumb over the dished dark rock through the rough cloth to measure the edge preparation he would need before facing mutant boar hide.
The clock on the ledger had begun to tick.