The patriarch’s room was smaller than Han Jiu had expected.
There was a bed, a desk, a shelf of old record books, and a stool. On the desk, next to the cold tea, there was an ink stone that had been worn down to a hollow in the middle. The walls were bare, except for one scroll with a single character on it. Endure.
Han Zhengyuan sat down on the edge of the bed and pointed at the stool.
Han Jiu sat.
"Show me," the old man said.
Han Jiu held out the marriage slip.
"Not that. I wrote half of that." Han Zhengyuan didn’t take it. "Your hands."
Han Jiu hesitated. Then he held them out.
His grandfather looked at them in the lamplight. He didn’t touch them. He looked at the palms, where two days ago there had been raw pink skin you could almost see through.
"Two days ago," the old man said, "Elder Yun sat in your room and looked at these hands. By the next morning, the whole compound knew what he’d seen. Ruined palms. Skin gone in sheets." He sat back. "I’m not going to ask what happened to them."
"Thank you."
"Don’t thank me. I’m not asking because I don’t want to know what I’d have to deny." He folded his own hands in his sleeves, the same way he had at the wedding. "Did you work out the thirty days by yourself?"
"Yes. Tonight."
"Good." There was something in the old man’s voice that Han Jiu had never heard in it before. It took him a moment to realise it was relief. "If you hadn’t found it yourself, I was going to have to find a way to put it in front of you. And every way I thought of, somebody on the council would have seen me do it."
"Why didn’t you just tell me?"
"Because I’m watched too." Han Zhengyuan looked at the door. "You think Elder Yun only has men outside your room? He has two cousins in my council who tell him everything I say before I’ve finished saying it. If I had called you up here and told you about the thirty days, he would have known by breakfast. And he would have stopped waiting."
Han Jiu thought about the two men standing in the courtyard. He thought about Han Bo, and the Earth-rank technique in his hand.
"So you let me find it."
"I let you find it." The old man nodded. "And you did. That tells me more about you than your two bulls ever did."
Han Jiu looked at the scroll on the wall.
"Grandfather. The day of the assessment is the thirtieth day. If the marriage holds until that morning, she’s written into our records. Then she’s ours, and Elder Yun can’t touch her."
"Yes."
"And when she’s ours, the person who signs her out of the valley is you."
"Yes."
"I want to take her away from here. To one of the sects." He kept his voice steady. "I can’t tell you which one yet. But when the day comes, I’ll need you to sign."
Han Zhengyuan didn’t answer right away. He reached for the cold tea and drank it, even though it was cold, like he needed something to do with his hands.
"Do you know how the eleven died?" he asked.
The question was so far from what Han Jiu had said that it took him a moment to answer.
"On the mountain road. Six months ago. Nobody knows who killed them."
"I know who killed them." Han Zhengyuan put the cup down. "Everybody on the council knows. Nobody can prove it, so nobody says it out loud. Eleven of our cultivators went up that road to meet the magistrate about the mines. They carried our deeds with them. They never came back, and neither did the deeds. Three days later, the Yun Clan showed the magistrate a set of papers that said the mines were theirs."
He looked at the floor.
"My eldest son led them. Your uncle. He was the only one of my sons who was ever going to be better than me."
Han Jiu didn’t say anything.
"The sect ordered this marriage because of those eleven men," his grandfather said. "They were tired of the trouble. So they tied our two clans together with a piece of paper and told us to be quiet. And I sat on that stage and let Elder Yun tell three hundred people that I had begged for it." His hands tightened in his sleeves. "I let him say it, because if I had called him a liar at the wedding, the sect would have taken it as a broken order. And then there would be no Han Clan left to bury anybody."
He looked up at Han Jiu.
"I’m old, ninth grandson. I can’t fight him. The council has nine seats, and he owns two of them, and he’s bought Han Bo, and he’ll buy more. Every day he stays in this valley, he takes something else. But there is one thing he can’t take from me, and it’s written on that paper in your hand."
"Your signature."
"My signature. On the morning of the thirtieth day, that girl stops being his. And if the head of the Han Clan says his grandson’s wife may leave the valley with her husband, then she leaves. The council doesn’t vote on it. Elder Yun doesn’t witness it. It’s mine."
He leaned forward.
"So yes. I’ll sign. I’ll sign it with the same brush I used to sign that marriage slip, and I’ll enjoy it more than anything I’ve done in six months."
Han Jiu’s throat went tight.
"Thank you, Grandfather."
"Don’t thank me yet. There’s a condition."
"What?"
"You get to the thirtieth day." Han Zhengyuan held up one finger. "Without one incident. Not one. No broken wrists. No broken seals. No shouting at Elder Yun in my hall. If the council hands you both to him before that morning, then the marriage has failed, and she goes back to the Yun Clan, and there is nothing I can sign that will change it."
"I understand."
"I don’t think you do. Not all of it." The old man reached under the stack of record books on his desk and pulled out a folded paper. He didn’t unfold it. He just held it up so that Han Jiu could see the seal at the bottom.
It was the council’s seal.
"This came to me this evening," said Han Zhengyuan. "Elder Yun has asked the council for a formal review of the marriage. He wants to present evidence that the terms have been broken."
"When?"
"The day before the assessment." His grandfather put the paper down. "One day before the thirty days are up. Not a day earlier. Not a day later."
"What evidence?"
"He didn’t say." Han Zhengyuan looked at Han Jiu’s pale, perfect hands, resting on his knees. "But he’s asked for the review to be held at the northernmost mine shaft."