Chapter 8: The Troupe

On the night of the founding banquet, the seating chart was redrawn three times.

Shen had a table of his own at the north end of the Great Hall, behind a low screen.

He had had it for eleven years.

Tonight the stewards had to move forty cushions to give the disciples a view of it.

Nobody would admit that was why.

A line formed anyway along the east wall, of junior disciples with cups in their hands and nothing to toast.

A girl bowed to the screen and forgot which hand held her wine.

A boy waited his turn for a quarter of an hour so that he could say good evening and leave.

Shen stood behind the screen and accepted none of it.

He stood because he stood in every room.

On the south side of the hall, nine and a half paces away at the nearest pillar, so did the Chief Enforcer.

The Master sat on the dais with his brother at his right.

Elder Fu sat below them with a single dish of pickled melon.

The Rain Lord appeared at Shen's elbow with a pot of tea and no escort of any kind.

"Many returns! Forty-one, Zhiheng. You do not look a day over twenty-six."

"I am not a day over forty-one."

"That is what I said." The Rain Lord poured. "It is plain tea. I tasted it. Drink it."

"I take no gifts."

"It is not a gift. It is a pot."

The Rain Lord set it on the table and sat on the empty cushion at the end of the screen.

"I am going to sit here. You may stand over me and be terrifying."

Shen looked across the room at the pillar.

The Chief Enforcer was looking elsewhere, with great concentration, at a spot on the ceiling.

"And now the present begins," the Rain Lord added brightly.

The doors at the south end opened, and a troupe of players came in.

They were a dozen mortals from Cress Ford in cheap bright cloth, led by a short man with a painted face.

They carried a screen, a table and one wooden stool.

The Master leaned forward, pleased.

"The Lord of Rain Peak has found us a treat. Let us see what the town thinks of its own scandal."

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