Wang Yang had barely returned to his tent when gifts arrived from Zuo Youhaye, the Village Elder, and several headmen.
Eight jars of fruit wine, three tubes of cinnabar, three crocks of honey, ten jin of dried meat, four powerful bows, a pair of silver-handled daggers, one white fox pelt, two deer hides, two wolf pelts, three oil-soaked oxhides (soaked in oil to make them waterproof), two each of pigs, cattle, and sheep, along with medicinal herbs such as coptis root, Solomon's seal, mountain ginger, and asparagus root.
These were the items Wang Yang had actually heard.
His palm was currently buried in the soft fur of the white fox pelt. Watching the snowy tips well up between his fingers, he grew distracted and paid little attention to the gifts the messenger listed afterward.
He was reflecting on a flaw in his earlier conversation with the Old Chief: the part where he had sworn on the Langya Wang clan.
Strictly speaking, it was hardly a flaw; he had simply handled it less than perfectly. As an exalted envoy of the imperial court and a young nobleman of the highest pedigree, swearing on his clan had not been out of place under those circumstances, but it had still seemed rash. A textbook failure to hold steady! He really should not have slipped up there. But the other man had sprung his challenge too suddenly, seizing the initiative and striking straight at his weak point. His position had been utterly firm, impossible to divert, leaving Wang Yang a little uncertain. And he had been fast-not in how quickly he spoke, but in how quickly he changed tactics. One move followed another, a barrage of rhetorical ploys, soft and hard interwoven, feints and substance reinforcing each other. Though Wang Yang had held his