Chapter 16: The Debt

The feast hall held two hundred disciples and every elder of Qingming.

Lanterns hung from the beams, and the long tables groaned with food, and Lan Zhenghe sat at the head in his best grey robes.

Su Meiqing sat at his left in her pale blue shawl, thin and glowing, with a cup of warm tea she had barely touched.

Wanning sat at his right, as ordered.

She wore her red sash and her iron sword, and she ate nothing.

Yuxi sat three places down, in the white and pale blue of the heir, for the last time.

When the soup was cleared, Zhenghe rose and lifted his cup.

"My friends," he said, in his gentle voice. "Tomorrow at dawn my daughter by oath, Wanning, will be bound to us forever."

"She will be one of us, with her mother, and her sister, for all her life."

The elders murmured approval.

Meiqing smiled, uncertain, and coughed into her hand.

Yuxi stood up.

The scrape of her bench was loud in the quiet.

"Father."

"Sit, Yuxi."

"Elders. I have a pledge to make under the ninth clause of the Book of Debts."

Zhenghe's smile stayed where it was.

It was the only part of his face that did.

"This is hardly the moment."

"It is the eve of renewal. It is the only moment the clause allows."

A murmur ran down the tables.

The senior elder, a bent woman with a staff, lifted one hand for silence.

"Let the heir speak."

Yuxi walked to the middle of the hall and knelt, and put her sword flat on the floor before her.

"I am a sworn disciple of this sect."

"I take up the adoption debt of Su Wanning, nine thousand taels."

"I give up the heir's seat, and I pledge ten years of my sword to the border posts, to pay it."

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