"He’s not just buying Han Bo," Yun Qingshuang said. "He’s buying your whole family."
She was still standing by the shutter. The ice on the floor had melted into a dark patch.
"Think about it. If Coldpeak takes Han Bo as an inner disciple, then the best young man in the Han Clan owes everything to my uncle. Han Bo will know he owes him. And your grandfather will know it too, every time he looks at him."
"And if Coldpeak doesn’t take him?"
"Then my uncle lent out a vault treasure for nothing. He doesn’t make mistakes like that." She turned around. "First he took your clan’s mines. Now he’s taking your clan’s people."
Han Jiu sat down on the edge of the bed. His hands had started to ache again.
"Then let me tell you what I’ve been thinking about," he said. "I’ve been thinking about it since before Han Bo came in."
She waited.
"Whitegrass is nine days away. Coldpeak is only three. So Coldpeak’s people ride in the day before the assessment and leave the day after, the same as every year. But nobody rides for nine days just to stand in a courtyard for one. Whitegrass will come early."
"How early?"
"I don’t know yet. That’s the first thing I need to find out." He looked down at his hands. "When their man gets here, I find him before anybody else does, and I show him everything. Then on the day of the assessment, I stand at the back with the servants, the way Han Bo told me to. I show nothing. Whitegrass picks me anyway, and everyone in the valley thinks they only took me out of pity."
Yun Qingshuang sat down on the floor across from him, with her back against the wall.
"Whitegrass takes people nobody else wants," she said. "Every year. A boy with a cold body and a bad root is exactly the kind of person they’d take. Nobody would think twice."
"That’s what I thought."
"It’s a good plan." She sounded annoyed that it was. "But there’s one problem with it."
"What?"
"What you’d be showing him." She tilted her head at him. "You’re at the sixth stage. You know four folds of an Earth-rank method. That’s about forty-eight bulls, with a Dross root." She shook her head. "That isn’t worth a nine-day ride, Han Jiu. That’s just an ordinary outer disciple with a bad root. He’ll be polite to you, and then he’ll pick some farm boy with a better root, the same as Coldpeak would."
He had known that. He had been trying not to think about it for two days.
"So I need to be stronger than forty-eight."
"Before he gets here. Whenever that is."
...
The kitchens smelled like burnt millet and wet stone. Han Jiu came in through the back door, the way he had since he was nine years old.
Auntie Fu looked up from the rice tubs. She gave him the same look she always gave him, like she felt sorry for him and was also counting how much rice he’d eat.
"No," she said. "Your stipend’s gone. I heard."
"I didn’t come for rice."
"Then what do you want?"
"I want to ask about the guest rooms."
She stopped scrubbing.
"The east rooms are for Coldpeak," he said. "Everybody knows that. But your girls have been airing out the north rooms too. I saw the bedding hanging on the line."
"What do you care about the north rooms?"
"Nothing. I just want to know who’s staying in them."
"Nobody yet." She went back to scrubbing, which meant she was going to tell him. "A letter came from Whitegrass last week. This year they’re sending an alchemist instead of their usual man. He wants to come early and look at the frost pools. Something about the moss." She snorted. "Nine days on a horse for moss."
Han Jiu kept his face still.
"When is he coming?"
"Six days before the assessment. In the evening, the letter said. Why?"
"I cut moss up at those pools for four years," he said. "If a Whitegrass alchemist wants to know about frost moss, I’m the only person in this valley who knows anything about it."
Auntie Fu stopped scrubbing again.
"Ninth young master," she said, "that’s the first smart thing I’ve heard you say since your father died."
...
"Nine days," Han Jiu said.
Yun Qingshuang had the blanket over her knees and her sword lying on top of it. She had listened to the whole story without saying a word.
"An alchemist," she said. "Who wants to see the pools."
"And who will need somebody to show him around the pools."
"Which is you." She nodded. "That’s good. That’s very good. You won’t have to sneak up on a stranger in the guest rooms. He’ll come asking for you by name." Then she looked at him. "But you still only have nine days to become strong enough to impress him. And all you have is twenty pieces of frostmarrow and one pill."
He opened the inventory at the back of his head. Twenty pale stones floated slowly in the grey, with one pill beside them.
The system paid him back fifty times over now, and he had almost nothing to put into it.
Cutting moss earned him one stone a month. Fifty times that was fifty stones a month, which was nothing. The pills were gone. Almost all the frostmarrow was gone too, and most of it had gone into her. Every piece had been worth it.
The system only paid him for things that cost him a lot to get. There was only one place in this valley where he had ever found something like that. It was still at the bottom of a mine shaft, behind a Yun seal.
"I need to go back down," he said.
"No."
"Just once more. Only for frostmarrow."
"You almost died the last time." She said it flatly. "I carried you down that hill with ice in your hair."
"Last time, I was at the third stage. I had four bulls." He moved his Qi, just for a moment, just inside the room. Three iron bulls rose over his head, dark and heavy. Then he made them go away. "Now I’m at the sixth stage, with four folds on top of it. My body can handle the cold for much longer now. I can go deeper than I did before, and I can stay down there longer."
"And the thing in the tunnel?"
"It walked right past me when I showed it nothing. I’ll show it nothing again."
She looked at his hands. His fingers still didn’t close all the way.
"How many pieces?"
"As many as I can carry."
’Thirty would be enough,’ he thought. ’If I give her thirty, the system pays me back fifty times. That’s fifteen hundred pieces.’
She didn’t answer. Instead, she got up, opened the chest at the foot of the bed, and started pulling out every piece of clothing she owned. Two shirts. A winter coat. A spare pair of trousers. A shawl.
She threw them at him, one by one.
"Wear all of it," she said. "And come back before dawn. If you’re not back by dawn, I’m coming down there after you. And I won’t care who sees me do it."