Wang Yu was a normal young man.
Every need a normal young man has, he had.
Li Yunxiu was out of the question for the foreseeable future, and Qianqian was plainly a master of the long game.
Wang Yu wasn't the type to force anyone — he was not, after all, the real Zhao Yu — and he had no interest in helping himself to the Manor's maids either.
But a pleasure-house — now there was an institution!
Buy out some refined courtesan of the untouched tier — figure, face, and accomplishments all first-rate — bring her home, and one stroke solved his own needs and applied a little productive pressure to Qianqian besides. One move, two gains!
Wang Yu snapped his fingers, drew a deep, righteous breath — and rounded on Zhao Yingjie. "Pleasure-houses? What pleasure-houses! We came out to buy Qianqian perfume!"
Zhao Yingjie: ???
When did I say pleasure-houses?
Then he caught the look in Wang Yu's eye, understood everything, and fell over himself nodding. "Just so! Just so! Entirely my fault!"
Qianqian hid a laugh behind her hand and flicked Wang Yu one bright, teasing glance — then slid her arm through his, soft warmth pressing lightly against his sleeve.
"Brother Yu, do you smell it? The fragrance — it's that tent up ahead!"
Beyond its fixed shopfronts, the market kept a great square parceled into plots where traveling merchants pitched their tents, traded, and warehoused their goods. Ahead, a crowd had gathered at one tent's mouth — most of them richly dressed; people of standing, clearly.
Wang Yu's party moved in, two guards ahead and two behind wedging the crowd open around him, Qianqian, and Zhao Yingjie. Someone in the press recognized Zhao Yingjie — then saw him bowing and scraping beside some young man — and eyes jumped wide as the path cleared itself.
Inside, the tent was one standing cloud of fragrance.
For a foreign caravan a thousand li from home, the place was immaculate: fine Persian carpets on the walls, a long counter barring the entrance, and behind it shelf upon shelf of gemstones, curved sabers, jewelry — and rows of small metal bottles.
Several Western Regions men — deep-set eyes, high-bridged noses, brown curling hair — held up open bottles, rich sweetness pouring out of them, working through their sales patter in determined, uneven Chinese.
"The newest invention from ten thousand li to the west!"
"Carry it with you — a few drops on the body, and the scent holds for two full hours!"
"How is it made? A secret, of course — and also I don't know. I'm a merchant, not an inventor."
"We carry only two waters: lavender, and tulip."
"Ten taels of silver a bottle."
"Hsss—" Wang Yu sucked in a breath through his teeth. "That is obscene. Truly, perfume was born a luxury good and never once changed its nature."
Ten taels of silver would keep an ordinary family of three for months.
And yet — ten taels notwithstanding — the perfume was actually the cheapest thing this caravan carried. The finger-sized cat's-eye stones, the jewelry crusted with blue gems, the curved sabers with gold-washed scabbards inlaid in jade and ruby: each outpriced the last.
Someone beside them slid Wang Yu a look, then caught sight of Qianqian and chuckled knowingly. "Not dear at all, friend. Two or three drops at a time, two hours of scent — more than enough to see the deed itself through in style."
"Richer than a censer, and no smoke," another connoisseur added. "How many did you bring? I'll take all of them!"
The head merchant smiled wide. "Honored guests — we set out with two hundred bottles. By the time we reached your city, one hundred twenty-some remained."
"Koff — that many! Then — ten bottles for me, to start."
"Twelve taels the bottle — we take every one of them!" a voice called from the tent's mouth.
"Who is that? The arrogance on him!"
"Fine, don't haggle, but who bids the price UP? Is your family's money diseased?"
The crowd turned — and saw a middle-aged man in layered silks stroll in, trailed by two lean followers of no visible menace whatsoever.
Every voice in the tent died.
The middle-aged man spotted Wang Yu's party almost at once — paused a beat on Zhao Yingjie — and then turned on Wang Yu a gaze of open study and appraisal.
Then he nodded to him, entirely friendly. "We'll take only one hundred."
Is that... a gesture of goodwill? At me?
Wang Yu looked to Zhao Yingjie. And who is this, walking that large in MY city?
"That's the Jiangnan Wang family's steward in Longshan — buys up Western Regions rarities for them," Zhao Yingjie murmured. "This perfume's never once been seen in the Central Plains. Jiangnan money being Jiangnan money — carried south, one bottle sells at thirty, fifty taels, and gladly."
Wang Yu's eyebrow rose. "THE Jiangnan Wang family?"
Zhao Yingjie nodded. "'The Wangs and Xies of Jiangnan.' That Wang family."
Among the great families of the realm, Jiangnan's ranked first; among Jiangnan's, the Wangs and the Xies wore the crown.
Wang Yu had heard the stories back in the Capital Circuit: two houses coming up on a thousand years of unbroken line — the living embodiment of the old saying that dynasties last centuries, but great families last millennia.
Against the Wangs' and Xies' depth of root and weight of gold, his own Westguard Manor amounted to a nouveau-riche hill fort.
Wang Yu kept his face perfectly still, turned to the merchant behind the counter, and extended a hand. "May I trouble you for one drop?"
"Of course!" The merchant tipped a single drop onto the back of Wang Yu's hand and gestured invitingly. "This scent will carry off your whole person — and hold for two hours and more."
Wang Yu raised his hand to his nose, breathed in — and had the measure of the thing.
"Five bottles will do," he said. "Three lavender, two tulip."
Zhao Yingjie promptly produced a banknote from his robes — a fifty-tael standard note of the Datong Money House — and handed it across. "You know where to change silver?"
"I know it well!" The merchant took the note with alacrity. "The Datong Money House, south quarter — never mind Longshan, they keep a branch even out in Yumen Prefecture!"
The merchant passed five small metal bottles into Wang Yu's hands.
Everyone present could read a room; they had all seen how the Wang family's steward treated this young man, and not one voice was raised in complaint.
But Wang Yu had taken five bottles and the Wang family a round hundred — which left the merchant exactly fifteen. Miss this chance, and who knew what year the next caravan came west?
"Five bottles here!"
"Ten for me!"
"The last fifteen — I take the lot!"
And then a voice sounded — light, unhurried, and yet arriving with perfect clarity in every ear in the tent. "I'll buy two. One of each scent."
The whole crowd wheeled. Three people stood in the tent's mouth.
A middle-aged man, three long strands of beard at his chin, carrying across his back a wooden case four chi long and a chi and a half wide.
At his left stood a beautiful woman of middle years in a violet gown, a stem of purple bamboo — a flute — thrust through her sash. At his right, a girl in jade-green, a light veil across her face, young by every line of her.
The Wang family's steward looked at the three — at the purple bamboo flute at the woman's waist, then at the wooden case on the man's back — and whatever he made of the girl in green, the first two he had plainly recognized.
He stepped back a pace and bowed with deep respect. "An honor to meet..."
The man raised a hand, cutting the courtesy short, and produced two banknotes. "Two bottles of perfume. For the novelty of the thing."
His manner was mild, cultured, wholly unhurried — and the pressure that came off him stopped the breath in every chest in the tent. The crowd stood pinned and silent, watching the merchant hand across two bottles.
***
Outside the tent, Wang Yu asked Zhao Yingjie, "Those three. Do you know them?"
"I don't," Zhao Yingjie admitted, discomfited. "But anyone the Wang steward bows to like that is nobody small — and a famous master of the Central Plains martial world, at the least."
Wang Yu slid him a sideways look. The man had just casually demonstrated voice-projection by internal energy. Yes. A martial master. At the least.
Qianqian gave a pert little laugh — and through her eyes, in quick succession, went a flicker of disdain, a beat of puzzlement, a moment of genuine thought — before the whole face reset to wide-eyed, dewy innocence.
Just then, from somewhere off to the side, came the crack of a whip on flesh, and muffled cries under it — and threaded through both, the high weeping of a little girl, tearing straight through the East Market's decorous hum.
"What is that?" Wang Yu's brow came down.
The man swinging the whip was Western Regions stock — deep eyes, high nose, brown curls. The man under it had the black hair and black eyes of the Central Plains.
Wang Yu frowned harder. Two of his guards were already moving; they caught the whip-arm and held it. The crowd churned and muttered; two market constables pushed through to question the parties.
"They are not your Central Plains people — father and daughter both are slaves I bought in Dayuan, and I hold their sale-deeds!"
"This slave let three of my Dayuan horses die on the road — five hundred taels of silver if they were worth one!"
"The pair of them together aren't worth five!"
The Western Regions man was past reason, whip-arm straining. "They are my slaves and I will beat them to death if it pleases me!"
"Don't— don't hit my papa—!" A little girl in rags, ten years old at the most, had thrown herself over the man's body. "You were the one scared of horse-raiders! You drove the horses on sick — that's why they died!"
Her Chinese came accented but fluent — far more fluent than her master's.
In the watching crowd, a pair of eyes brightened. Their owner studied the girl a long moment, then sidled up with his suggestion. "Friend — the three horses are dead either way. Beat these two to death and all you've bought is the mood. Sell them instead and recover something.
The man I don't want. But the daughter's got a freshness to her, no? Even sold to a pleasure-house she'd only fetch three, four taels. I'll give you eight."
"Sharp eye, brother. Grubby little thing now — but white skin under it. Wash her up and she'd do nicely."
"Oh? Interested yourself?"
"Three at home already. The flesh is willing but the man is spent."
"Hahaha!"
The little girl shook like a leaf in the laughter. Her father forced himself up, dragging her behind him with arms that trembled and gave no cover at all.
Two pairs of eyes, father's and daughter's, black with the same despair — and they met Wang Yu's.
Wang Yu lifted one finger at the Western Regions slaver, and his smile came out through his teeth. "Shrieking and brawling in the East Market. Disturbing the peace. What's the statute say about that?"
The two constables looked at each other. Shouting matches were the market's daily weather; short of rigged scales, doctored goods, cornering and bullying trade, or plain fraud, the standing answer was to talk the parties down and move along.
It was Zhao Yingjie whose eyes rolled once and lit up. "Public commotion — violent assault, disruption of the market, obstruction of lawful commerce! That's bullying trade if anything is: eighty strokes of the rod, a fine of one hundred taels — and confiscation of the goods in question!"