Han Jiu couldn’t sleep.
He lay on the floor under the window and listened to Qingshuang breathe. She wasn’t asleep either. He could tell by how quiet she was.
’The only way I leave this valley on his paper is dead.’
He kept turning the words over. Yun Hai was the head of the Yun Clan now. He had the seals, the records, and the elders. Nothing in the Yun Clan moved unless he signed it.
But Han Jiu had seen Yun Hai’s name on one paper already. It had been lying on this floor on the first morning, and he had tried to put it in the inventory.
He got up and crossed to the pile of things against the wall. Qingshuang had stacked it there after Han Bo threw everything out into the courtyard. Near the bottom, under the dead man’s socks, there was one folded sheet of paper.
The marriage slip.
He unfolded it by the window. The moon was bright enough to read by.
He had only looked at it once before, on the day it arrived, and he had stopped reading after his own name. He hadn’t wanted to see the rest. Now he read every line.
It was written in the Coldpeak Sect’s hand, with the sect’s seal at the top. Below it, there were two more seals. One was the Han Clan’s. The other was the Yun Clan’s.
By order of the Coldpeak Sect, the ninth grandson of the Han Clan and the fourth daughter of the Yun Clan are joined in marriage.
The Yun Clan will send an elder to witness the marriage for thirty days.
If the marriage holds for thirty days, the bride will be struck from the records of the Yun Clan and written into the records of the Han Clan. From that day, the Yun Clan will have no further say over her.
If the marriage fails within thirty days, the bride will be returned to the Yun Clan.
Han Jiu read it twice.
Then he read it a third time, because he didn’t trust himself.
"Qingshuang," he said.
"I’m awake."
"Have you ever seen the marriage slip?"
She sat up. "No. It came to your clan. My uncle kept our copy. All he told me was that I was married, and when to get on the cart."
He crossed the room and held it out to her. She took it to the window and read it in the moonlight.
He watched her face while she read. She got to the third line, and she stopped moving.
"Thirty days," she said.
"Thirty days."
"That’s why he’s staying exactly thirty days." She sounded like she was talking to herself. "I thought he was here to watch us fail. He is. But he’s also the witness. The sect put it in writing."
"If we get to the end of the month," said Han Jiu, "you stop being a Yun. You’re written into my clan’s records instead. And then your uncle doesn’t have to sign anything. He can’t. You’re not his anymore."
She lowered the paper.
"Then who signs me out of the valley?"
"The head of my clan."
"Your grandfather."
"My grandfather."
She sat down on the edge of the bed. She was still holding the slip. Her hands were steady, but she was holding it very carefully, the way people hold something that might tear.
"That’s why he said thirty days in the hall," she said. "Not thirty days to watch us. Thirty days to break us. If there’s one more incident, the council hands us both to my uncle as a family matter. That’s a failed marriage. And a failed marriage sends me back to him."
"So we don’t give him an incident."
"For fourteen more days." She looked up. "Han Jiu, he knows this. He wrote half of this. He’s known it since before I got on the cart. He isn’t going to sit and wait for the thirty days to run out. Not now that I’ve stopped dying."
"I know."
"Then what do we do?"
Han Jiu thought about it.
Everything came down to the same two men. Yun Hai, who would try to make the marriage fail. And Han Zhengyuan, who would have to sign her out if it didn’t.
He had no power over the first one.
He didn’t know if he had any over the second.
On the day of the wedding, his grandfather had sat on the stage with his hands in his sleeves and let three hundred people laugh. In the ancestral hall, he had looked Han Jiu in the eye for the first time in seventeen years, and then told him not to come to his door, because he would have to say no in front of the council.
In front of the council.
’He didn’t say he wanted to say no,’ Han Jiu thought. ’He said he’d have to.’
"I’m going to see my grandfather," he said.
"Now? It’s the middle of the night."
"The council isn’t awake in the middle of the night."
Yun Qingshuang looked at him. Then she folded the marriage slip and handed it back to him.
"Take this," she said. "And don’t come back with a no."
...
The patriarch’s rooms were at the top of the main courtyard, past the ancestral hall. Han Jiu had never been inside them. When he was small, he had once been sent up the steps with a message for his father, and a servant had taken the message at the bottom and told him to go back down.
Tonight, there was no servant. The courtyard was empty. The only light came from a thin line under the patriarch’s door.
He climbed the steps.
He stopped in front of the door. He lifted his hand to knock. He looked at his hand, pale and smooth in the moonlight, and hoped his grandfather wouldn’t look at it too closely.
Before he could knock, the door opened.
Han Zhengyuan was standing on the other side of it. He was still dressed. There was a cup of cold tea on the table behind him, and a lamp that had burned low, as if he had been sitting up all night.
He looked at Han Jiu. Then he looked at the folded paper in Han Jiu’s hand.
"So," the old man said. "You finally read it."
He stepped back from the door.
"Come in, ninth grandson. I’ve been waiting for you to read it since the wedding."