Wang Ben spent the next two days between the resonance-tuning notes Elder Hongwei had given him and the archive, where his grandfather Wang Tiexin and Elder Hongwei discussed formation theory and how the design would work in practice.
On the second day, Wang Ben stopped by his father's workshop. Wang Tian was sealing the last of a batch of pills, the air still bitter with the breath of the furnace, and did not look up from his work.
"I have been thinking on the broker Lin Suyin named," Wang Tian said. "I believe we should meet him."
"So have I." Wang Ben stopped at the bench across from him. "I have looked for another way to get the essence and found none. Fang Wei is the only option that remains, and I think we take it."
Wang Tian was quiet a while, and Wang Ben saw the struggle in it. To make good on the one debt already bearing down on them, they would have to bind themselves to a second.
His father set the last pill in its case and looked up at last.
Wang Ben knew his father would not let the broker get the better of them.
...
Later that day they came to the Jade Mist, a tea house in a corner of the southern district where the buildings were older. Its proprietor barely lifted his eyes, waving them toward a room at the back.
Wang Tian led the way to the back without hesitation. Wang Ben followed a step behind, feeling the room as they went: cultivation of every level, from body refinement up to foundation establishment, one or two presences heavier than his father's. Not many of them bothered to look at them as they moved through the tea house.
...
In the back room of the Jade Mist, Fang Wei closed his ledger and slid it under the cloth he kept at the corner of his desk for it. The leather cover was old, the spine cracked in three places he had patched himself.
Only he knew it held no more than a fraction of the favors he had gathered across the years, every one set against the same hope: that one, someday, might buy him the step upward his own body no longer could.
His meridians had become blocked and weak over the years. Cultivating had grown harder as the blockage spread, until even holding his current realm was a struggle, let alone any hope of advancing.
He knew the Wang Clan well. A once-fallen alchemist whose all-but-crippled meridians had somehow healed, now climbing to become a seventh-grade alchemist. A clan that had nearly fallen with him, now prospering, more than a few of its people showing the clear signs of recent breakthroughs.
For a broker like Fang Wei, every major clan was worth knowing, and he had watched the Wang Clan climb these past few years from near-ruin to a power the lesser clans now courted. Only the strange, stalled business with the Crimson Bastion held them back, and he judged that a passing thing. Until Lin Suyin's message, he had found no way in.
Then, a few days ago, Lin Suyin had come to him with a warning: if the Wang Clan chose to use his services, he was to serve them well and bring no trouble to her name. Fang Wei was wary of her; she was strong, and not a woman easily fooled. Still, it was the nearest thing to an opening he had been handed in a long while, and he did not mean to let it pass. He had already spent favors hoarded for years to have the essence ready before they reached his door.
He let out a long, low breath, and settled his mind for the conversation to come. He poured fresh water onto the leaves and arranged two cups he had not yet decided to fill. Then he set his palms flat against the table to still them, and listened for the step in the corridor.
...
Fang Wei was already waiting.
Wang Ben's first impression was of ordinariness worn like a garment. Agreeable features, unremarkable robes, a face that slid from memory the moment you looked away. He was foundation establishment, the same as Wang Tian, and yet his aura ran weaker than his father's. It struck Wang Ben as odd.
Only his hands broke the performance, his fingers tapping the table's edge in a rhythm that never quite stopped, as though some part of him never rested.
[ANALYSIS: The aura runs thin for foundation establishment. The cultivation is likely unstable, whether long stalled or held back by some cause not shown here.]
"Master Wang. Young Master Wang." His bow was precisely correct for their stations. "Thank you for accepting my invitation."
His invitation. They had asked for the meeting. Fang Wei had already turned it into his hospitality.
[OBSERVATION: A practiced negotiator. He has prepared for this meeting more thoroughly than its surface allows.]
"I understand you are looking for something difficult," Fang Wei said, pouring tea no one had asked for. "Void-touched essence. Refined grade. A short list of people need such a thing, and a shorter list knows to come to me for it."
Wang Tian's face held still, but Wang Ben felt his father's attention sharpen. They had named the essence to Lin Suyin. They had not named it to Fang Wei.
"You are well-informed," Wang Tian said.
"Word is the trade. The materials are a courtesy I extend to those who bring it." Fang Wei sipped, unhurried. "When Lin Suyin sends a name my way, I learn the name before it arrives. When the name is the Wang Clan, I learn everything I can, and come prepared."
"You learned a great deal quickly," Wang Tian said.
"Not quickly. I have watched the Wang Clan a long while, Master Wang, and admired what I saw." Fang Wei set down the cup. The tapping went on. "A clan on the rise, and you a grade-seven alchemist before long. A man in my trade does well to stand near such a clan, so I mean to help where I can." His smile stayed mild. "When your inquiry came, it was the one I had been waiting for."
It was said lightly enough. Wang Ben kept his face even and let the words settle where they fell. A back-room broker had watched the clan for months, admired it, and angled for a place at its side, all before they had ever thought of him.
[OBSERVATION: The broker moved to bind himself to the Wang Clan ahead of need. A rising clan draws such men; others will follow, seen and unseen.]
"Can you supply the essence," Wang Tian said.
"I can supply anything, given reason enough. The only question is what kind of reason." Fang Wei did not reach for the pouch Wang Tian set on the table. "Stones are the least of it. Five hundred mid-grade is a fair start. But void-touched essence is rare enough that I do not hand it to a stranger and call us even. I prefer to leave a meeting with an understanding, not only a sale."
"Name it," Wang Tian said.
"A future consideration. Nothing dramatic, nothing unlawful, nothing that would cost your clan its name. I help you today. Some day I ask a thing of you, and you give the asking honest weight." Fang Wei spread his hands. "It never hurts to have a soon-to-be grade-seven alchemist owing you a favor. Nor a formation clan with a gift for the unseen, one that can, by what I have seen, bring a crippled cultivator back to whole. I am not, as you have surely felt, in the best repair myself." His smile did not waver. "But that is a conversation for another day."
Wang Tian's cup stopped on its way to the table. For a breath he only looked at the broker, and Wang Ben understood his father had not expected such plain talk from a man who dealt in shadows.
"And if we consider, and decline?" Wang Tian asked.
"Then we are two reasonable men who have disagreed," Fang Wei said. "I do not force. I am only in the business of arranging matters so that yes costs you less than no."
Wang Tian was silent, weighing it. Wang Ben had weighed it already, and watched his father arrive at the same answer.
"Ben." His father's voice was quiet. "The weight falls on you as much as on me."
It was a question asked in front of Fang Wei, which made it also a test, of Wang Ben and of the broker both.
Wang Ben met his father's eyes. "Take it."
"Then we take them," Wang Tian said. "The stones for the essence. An open consideration inside the bounds you have named."
Fang Wei's smile widened by a careful fraction. He drew a small jade container from his robes and set it on the table. "Refined void-touched essence. Enough for your array, with a little held back against error. I had it prepared."
"You are very confident," Wang Tian said.
"In my trade, you learn to be." Fang Wei rose, unhurried, and for the first time the tapping stopped. The terms were struck, the essence theirs.
Wang Tian thanked the broker with the easy courtesy of a man closing a deal, and Wang Ben matched him. They took their leave of the back room, the jade container tucked safe in his father's sleeve.
...
When the last step had faded from the corridor, Fang Wei drew the ledger back out from under its cloth and turned to a fresh page. He let himself weigh what he had won. A clan on the rise owed him a favor now, and the door he had watched from the outside for years stood open at last. He had given them an essence and asked, for the moment, almost nothing in return. It was the best work he had done in a long while.
He set the brush to the page and began, for the first time in years, to plan for a future he had started to believe he might yet have.