Yun Qingshuang was awake when he came back. She was sitting on the bed with the blanket around her shoulders, and she didn’t ask how it had gone. She just looked at his face.
"He said yes," she said.
"He said yes."
She closed her eyes.
He told her everything. The eleven men on the mountain road. The deeds they had carried, which never came back. His uncle, who had led them. The two council seats that belonged to Yun Hai. The signature on the thirtieth morning, which belonged to nobody but the patriarch.
And the review. The day before the assessment, at the northernmost mine shaft.
Yun Qingshuang listened without moving. When he was done, she was quiet.
"Twelve days," she said at last.
"Thirteen, counting today."
"Twelve, because the review is the day before." She pulled the blanket tighter. "Then we have twelve days to make you strong enough that whatever happens at that shaft, you walk away from it. And whatever happens at that stele, you walk away from that too."
"I have twenty pieces of frostmarrow."
"Then you’d better find some more."
...
Master Lu’s workroom was the smallest of the north guest rooms. He had already filled it with jars.
They stood on the floor, on the bed, on the windowsill, and along the wall. Some were full of dried leaves. Some were full of dark liquid. A small iron furnace sat in the corner, and the room smelled like smoke and something bitter.
Master Lu didn’t look up when Han Jiu came in. He was sitting on the floor, cutting the roots off a pale grey plant with a small knife.
"Sit," he said. "Watch."
Han Jiu sat.
"Coldbloom root." Master Lu held one up. It was about as long as a finger, and white frost covered its skin. "It grows near cold veins. Whitegrass needs it for a pill that heals burns. The problem is the cold inside it. If you leave the cold in, it ruins the pill. So we burn the cold out in the furnace." He dropped the root into a jar. "And when you burn the cold out, you burn half the root with it. Every alchemist in the Western Reaches loses half of every coldbloom root they touch."
He pushed the jar across the floor.
"Take the cold out. Leave the root."
Han Jiu picked up the first root.
He did what he had done with the moss, but slower. He let his body pull the cold out of the root and into his hand. It came easily. The frost on the root’s skin melted. The white turned to a pale yellow.
He stopped before the root went dry.
He held it out. Master Lu took it and turned it over. He broke it in half and smelled it. He touched the inside with his tongue.
"Whole," he said quietly. "The cold’s gone, and the root is whole. Not a hair of it lost."
He pushed the whole jar across the floor.
"There are thirty in there. I’ll pay you the same as a pill hall worker. One low-grade spirit stone for each root."
Han Jiu looked at the jar.
Thirty stones. It was thirty months of cutting moss. It was two and a half years of his old stipend.
"All right," he said.
He worked through the morning. One root at a time. The cold from each one went into his hands and up his arms and settled somewhere deep in his chest. His body kept all of it. None of it leaked away.
By the twentieth root, he understood something that made his heart beat faster.
He wasn’t just being paid. He was cultivating. Every root fed his body a little cold, and his body kept every scrap of it. The Qi inside him was slowly getting heavier.
When the jar was empty, Master Lu counted thirty low-grade spirit stones into his hands.
"Tomorrow," Master Lu said. "Same time. I have two more jars."
...
Han Jiu put the thirty stones down on the blanket next to Qingshuang’s knee.
She looked at them. Then she looked at him.
"What’s this?"
"My wages. From Master Lu. I pulled the cold out of his roots."
"You earned these."
"I know."
"Then they’re yours." She pushed them back toward him. "You’re the one who needs to get stronger in twelve days. Not me."
"You’re in Body Tempering now," he said. "You’ll need resources for your next layer. And I need you to get stronger too. You know that."
"Han Jiu—"
"I’ll roll on them."
She stared at him. Then she laughed. It was a short laugh, and she looked annoyed that it had come out.
"You’re impossible," she said, and she picked up the stones.
The world went quiet.
[Genuine Investment Detected.]
[Target: Yun Qingshuang.]
[Investment: 30 × low-grade spirit stone.]
[Acquisition: earned by labour.]
[Base return: one hundred-fold.]
[Rebate issued: 3,000 × low-grade spirit stone.]
[Rebate may be issued in a different form. Conversion available: 10 × low-grade spirit stone → 1 × frostmarrow, unrefined.]
[Specify the split.]
Han Jiu sat very still.
Three thousand stones.
He had stood at the frost pools sixteen days ago and worked out that three thousand stones would take him two hundred and fifty years to earn. It had taken him one morning.
He thought about the split.
Spirit stones went through his root, and his root threw half of everything away. But cold went into his body, and his body kept all of it.
So the choice wasn’t hard.
’Convert all of it,’ he thought.
[Converted: 3,000 × low-grade spirit stone → 300 × frostmarrow, unrefined.]
[Deposited to Rebate Inventory.]
Three hundred and twenty pieces of frostmarrow floated in the grey at the back of his head.
He did the maths.
The seventh stage cost eight hundred stones for a normal root. The eighth cost sixteen hundred. With cold, his body didn’t lose anything, so he paid the normal price. That was twenty-four hundred altogether.
At ten stones a piece, he had three thousand two hundred.
’Eighth stage,’ he thought. ’Maybe more, if Master Lu keeps paying.’
The ninth stage would cost thirty-two hundred more. Then he’d need a pill to break into Body Tempering. Then he’d need time for the Skin layer to set. It still wasn’t enough. But for the first time since the wedding, the numbers were moving in the right direction, and they were moving fast.
He looked up.
Yun Qingshuang was holding the thirty stones in her lap. She wasn’t using them. She was looking at the barred door, thinking hard.
"What?" he said.
"I’ve been thinking about my uncle’s evidence all day." She turned to him. "He doesn’t need a broken seal. He’s going to take the whole council down that shaft."
Han Jiu went still.
"The seams you cut are still there," she said. "The cave where the flower grew is empty. And the thing that lived down there for sixty years is gone."
She put the stones down.
"Han Jiu. Whatever my uncle tells them they’ll find down there, it’s going to be true."