“Mother sends for her son, how could her son not come.”
Before the words had died away, an elegant figure stepped into the chamber, and the whole room seemed to shine by contrast. The young ladies who had been watching the surging undercurrents between Grand Princess Qianjin and her daughter and the Yang people were dazzled by him. They half covered their faces, and even their whispering took on a certain flustered note.
Unfortunately Yu Nanzhi was certainly not among them.
The girl with her head slightly lowered was rather distracted, considering that for looks alone it would truly be hard to find a second like Cui Zixu in all Chang’an. If one day Nanzhi Que were to draw up a list of the handsome men of Chang’an, if he were not on the roll it would probably lose its authority.
Then… better to keep shelving it.
But Cui Zixu seemed unaware of the whispering and the looks around him. He came straight before Grand Princess Heyang and bowed. “Mother, your son has questioned the common people near the Yang residence. A night watchman mentioned that at the middle of the mao hour today he saw someone come out of the Yang residence’s side gate leading a horse. It was rather far off and he could not see the person’s face clearly, but from the figure at a distance it should have been a young man.”
County Princess Liyang had already put away her tears. Her arms were folded across her chest, and she cut in abruptly. “Sneaking about early in the morning, suspicious in his movements, could that fellow have run off at that hour?”
“That fellow” was of course Eleventh Master Yang.
“Liyang’s guess is not without reason.” Cui Zixu coughed lightly. “I have already ordered the princess’s residence and the Cui retainers to search for him in Chang’an, and have asked my colleagues at the Jingzhao Prefecture office to watch for traces of Eleventh Master Yang. Only, so far nothing has been found.”
“If he is not in Chang’an, then look outside the city.” County Princess Liyang pointed to the female official Huangli waiting outside the chamber door. “Have they come?”
Huangli came in and answered, “In answer to the County Princess, Sixth Master Chen and the others have arrived and are waiting only for the County Princess’s order.”
The Sixth Master Chen she mentioned was a member of the “Lackey Gang.”
“Have them get ready and come with me to look for him. Eleventh Master Yang had better not actually die out there and then have it blamed on this County Princess afterward.”
County Princess Liyang took hold of Grand Princess Qianjin’s cuff lightly and pleaded in a soft voice, “Please lend your daughter the pass tablet.”
Chang’an had a night curfew, and without a pass tablet one could not move about outside freely.
In the end Grand Princess Qianjin of course gave her daughter the pass tablet. Today’s wedding ceremony was also called off entirely, and the guests of the various households offered a few words of comfort and took their leave one after another. What County Princess Liyang did afterward, under the attention of those who cared to watch, quietly reached every household.
With the pass tablet in hand, County Princess Liyang changed into light Hu dress, threw on a fox-fur coat and led her band of followers out of Grand Princess Qianjin’s residence, heads high and spirits up, to take over from the guards of Grand Princess Heyang’s residence and the Cui retainers in searching Chang’an for Eleventh Master Yang. The guards and retainers they relieved went out of Chang’an to search the open country of the capital region.
But there was no sign of him in the whole city, and nothing was found outside it either.
Then, the next day while the thin mist still hung and had not dispersed, the garrison at Mingde Gate found Eleventh Master Yang. He was covered in grime from head to foot and a sorry sight. The hem of his robe was caked with thick mud, only half a sleeve was left, and he looked as if he had been fished out of a mud pit.
Standing behind him were two Cui retainers.
“So Eleventh Master Yang ran out of Chang’an yesterday?”
Inside Zhuyan Book Pavilion, Liu Ruyan followed behind Yu Nanzhi asking without pause, “What place was worth going out especially instead of getting married on the day of his own wedding? Was he going to see a lover? Or is there some other secret that cannot be told?”
“Oh come on, Zhizhi, let out just a little for me, just a little bit.” With gossip at hand, Liu Ruyan put her usual steadiness clean out of mind, linked her arm through Yu Nanzhi’s, shook it lightly and began to wheedle.
“Ayan, you seem to have rather more questions than usual today.” Yu Nanzhi gathered up the somewhat untidy draft papers.
Liu Ruyan snorted. “Whose fault is it that Zhizhi did not put a single word of such important content in the issue we just sent to print? So I can only come and ask you.”
Yu Nanzhi said, “How could I have foreseen yesterday something that happened one double hour ago?”
Disbelief was written all over Liu Ruyan’s face. “As if I don’t know you. Even if you could not foresee that Eleventh Master Yang would turn up this morning, don’t you know perfectly well whether he left Chang’an and where he went?”
“All right, all right, I give in to you,” Yu Nanzhi sighed. “Only, Eleventh Master Yang did not go looking for any lover.”
“Then what did he flee the wedding for?” Liu Ruyan was baffled. “Surely it wasn’t simply that he was dissatisfied with County Princess Liyang as a betrothed?”
“Not that either.” Yu Nanzhi shook her head and, leaning back against the cushion, told it out at leisure. “At the middle of the mao hour yesterday Eleventh Master Yang wrapped himself all in black and left the house. Then, while the night had not yet cleared, he slipped out through Mingde Gate under cover and rode all the way toward Mount Li.”
“Mount Li?”
“Mm. There are hot springs at Mount Li. In the depth of winter quite a few places there are even as warm as spring, and the flowers and trees are lush all four seasons. So there are many flower farms around it, raising flowers especially for the rich of Chang’an to enjoy,” Yu Nanzhi said.
There, in summer one could enjoy the wintersweet of deep winter, and in winter one could see the tree peonies of spring. The several peach branches set out in Cuiwei Hall, where the Grand Madam of the Duke of Zhenguo’s household lived, had been bought from one of those flower farms.
“So Eleventh Master Yang went looking for flowers?” Liu Ruyan suddenly realized something and slapped her forehead. “I remember there was back-channel news that County Princess Liyang loves peonies best. In the dead of winter not one peony in the city could possibly bloom, so Eleventh Master Yang took some sort of fit on his wedding day [1]caught a convulsion (chōu fēng, 抽風) (Slang), to behave in a wildly irrational way jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3253964_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3253964_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); and ran off to Mount Li to find flowers for his bride?”
Yu Nanzhi nodded, which counted as tacit agreement with Liu Ruyan’s guess. “One correction, though: it is not that there are no peonies in bloom in Chang’an. There are, in Grand Princess Qianjin’s residence.”
She had seen them with her own eyes yesterday, only a few steps from that pink cherry outside the corridor of the princess’s residence. Their color was rich, fine enough to count among the best of what still bloomed.
Liu Ruyan said, “Since it was to be given to County Princess Liyang as a wedding gift, he certainly could not use flowers from his mother-in-law’s house. Looking at it that way, Eleventh Master Yang had no choice but to find another road.”
Yu Nanzhi took it up. “Besides that, there is another reason. The Lin family’s flower farm at Mount Li has newly raised a strange butterfly-love flower. The outer petals lean toward purple-red and the inner are pinkish white, shaped like fluttering butterfly wings. There is a saying that if this flower is given to someone, one may pray for a marriage of perfect accord [2]zither and lute sounding together in harmony (qín sè hé míng, 琴瑟和鳴) (Idiom), a husband and wife in complete concord jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3253964_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3253964_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); and for a life never spent apart. This is the flower Eleventh Master Yang wanted.”
“Who could have imagined there was such an inside story,” Liu Ruyan sighed over it. “Now every street and lane says that Eleventh Master Yang broke his promise and abandoned his word, a thoroughly faithless man [3]a man with a turned-back heart (fù xīn hàn, 負心漢) (Slang), one who betrays the woman who trusted him jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3253964_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3253964_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); who has made County Princess Liyang very unhappy. Wait—”
Liu Ruyan paused. “Riding to a flower farm near Mount Li, at speed, one could get there and back in half a day at most, and even going slowly one should have been back before the wedding. How did Eleventh Master Yang take a whole day and night?”
“He was unlucky,” Yu Nanzhi answered. “They say he took a shortcut to save time, and the horse’s hoof came down on nothing and he fell into a hunter’s trap. That he was not frozen to death is already heaven’s protection.”
Liu Ruyan smacked her lips and did not know how to pass judgment on Eleventh Master Yang’s damnable luck.
She did not stay quiet long. Liu Ruyan came up close to Yu Nanzhi again, looking to the left and to the right, her eyes rolling about without stop.
“Is Boss Liu very idle today? Leaving properties like Zhuyan Book Pavilion and Hua’e Tavern unattended just to circle around one small writer here?” Yu Nanzhi lifted her eyes from the pages and looked at Liu Ruyan.
Liu Ruyan smiled brightly. “Zhizhi, you are the one the whole of our Zhuyan Book Pavilion rests on. If I do not look after you, who else would I look after? I only saw that you seem to have some shadows under your eyes, so I came especially to ask whether you did not sleep well last night.”
“Perhaps a little?” As she spoke a wave of weariness rose over her, and Yu Nanzhi covered her mouth and yawned.
“Could it be you were out getting up to no good?”
“What nonsense are you talking! Hmph—”
There was no telling which sensitive nerve of Yu Nanzhi’s Liu Ruyan’s words had pricked. She instinctively folded her arms across her chest and turned her face aside and stopped looking at her, but her thoughts drifted without her noticing to last night.
Chang’an at night: the dark spread over the eaves, and a waning moon hung in the middle of the sky. Inside the wards the lamps were as bright as day, but on the long street outside the wards ripples rose for no reason and ground the original silence to pieces.
More than ten men in dark grey side-slit lined robes with ear-covers on their heads suddenly appeared on Zhuque Avenue, and the ward patrolmen on their night rounds looked straight past them. It was Sixth Master Chen leading a party. They had just come out of Kaiming Ward and were about to head for the neighboring Changle Ward, and had shown the pass tablet County Princess Liyang had given them from a distance.
This was already the ninth ward they had searched and questioned.
Eighteenth Master Fu dawdled up beside Sixth Master Chen and complained under his breath, “When is this ever going to end? I am dead tired.”
Sixth Master Chen glanced at him and said with a cold laugh, “If you were afraid of being tired you should not have agreed to the County Princess, and then you could be sleeping your great sleep at home.”
Eighteenth Master Fu’s tone turned sheepish. “I was only muttering a few words. To be able to serve the County Princess is the very highest honor for our ‘Lackey Gang.’ It is all that Eleventh Master Yang’s fault! To be so bold as to dare flee the County Princess’s wedding!”
In and behind his words he seemed to wish he could trample Eleventh Master Yang into mud.
“Let’s go.” Sixth Master Chen could not be bothered to say more to him and led the group into another lane.
The burning torches gradually went further away, and a figure in a black gauze veiled hat appeared from behind a roof ridge in Kaiming Ward.
“Gone at last. I wonder whether I can catch up with the party that left the city.” So Yu Nanzhi thought.
By the latest news Xiaoguai had brought back, Eleventh Master Yang was trapped in a snow hollow and already showed signs of losing his warmth. By the time this crowd found their way there, hunting a needle in a haystack [4]fishing a needle out of the sea (dà hǎi lāo zhēn, 大海撈針) (Idiom), a search all but impossible to succeed at jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3253964_1_4').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3253964_1_4', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, Eleventh Master Yang’s corpse would probably be as cold as a corpse could be.
That was why Yu Nanzhi was willing to be seized by a fit of charity and go out to deliver a piece of news.
With Xiaoguai leading the way in front, Yu Nanzhi swept swiftly across several wards and at last caught up, in front of Yanzuo Ward, with the Cui retainers who were about to leave the city.
Xiaoguai’s chatter gradually died away into nothing, and all that was left at her ear was the “cheep, cheep” of a bird’s cry. Yu Nanzhi guessed at once that Cui Zixu must be among those leaving the city.
Sure enough, Cui Zixu rode a black horse at the head of the party, and where they passed great sprays of snow flew up.
That was just as well. With the acting Prefect of Jingzhao there, they would certainly find him sooner.
Yu Nanzhi stepped lightly up to the top of a three-story wooden tower, took out the sheet she had written in advance and waited for her chance to act.
“Your Highness, look out! An assassin!”
Cui Zixu was talking with the garrison at Mingde Gate when there was a sound of wind. The guard behind him cried out urgently and threw himself in front of him, and a streak of silver light broke the air and drove with a clang into the post beside the city gate.
The guards did not dare relax in the least. They drew their blades and closed around Cui Zixu in the center, but a good while passed and there was no further movement anywhere around.
Cui Zixu looked closely and saw a silver hairpin stuck in the post, half its length buried in the wood. That was enough to show how precise and forceful the thrower’s strength had been. Had it been a person’s head, it would most likely have been split wide open [5]it would have burst into flower (kāi huā, 開花) (Slang), of flesh laid open by a heavy blow jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3253964_1_5').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3253964_1_5', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });.
“Your Highness, beware a trick.” Seeing that Cui Zixu meant to pull the pin out himself, the guard beside him immediately tried to stop him.
“It is nothing.” Cui Zixu waved a hand and pulled the pin out cleanly.
It was a perfectly ordinary single-shaft silver hairpin, plain-faced and without pattern, no different from the style most commonly used by the women of Chang’an. There was no tracing any origin from it at all.
“So it is a kind-hearted informant.” Cui Zixu read what was on the paper and could find no clue in the handwriting either. He handed it offhandedly to an attendant. “Go and look for Eleventh Master Yang at the place written on it.”
“Then… should the person who sent this be investigated?” The guard held the sheet, hesitating a little.
Having just sent a hairpin to the city gate, Yu Nanzhi should not move rashly, and stayed hidden on the wooden tower.
Suddenly a grey rat sprang out of a crenel in the city wall. Yu Nanzhi could not stop him in time: the little owl Xiaoguai, his eyes bright, shot out with a whoosh.
References[+]