Eighty strokes and a hundred-tael fine explained themselves. As for "confiscation of the goods in question" — the goods, naturally, were the father and daughter's sale-deeds.
The two constables didn't know Wang Yu, but they most certainly knew Zhao Yingjie — and with a conclusion handed down that the statutes could be squinted into supporting, they stepped in smartly, twisted the slaver's arms behind him, and marched him off toward the East Market office.
The two guards passed the sale-deeds to Zhao Yingjie, then brought the father and daughter before Wang Yu.
The man hit the ground kneeling. "Thank you, master!"
The little girl dropped instantly beside him. "Thank you, master!"
"Up. Talk standing." Wang Yu waved a hand; one guard raised the man, and pulled the girl up along the way.
"You're Dayuan people. How is your Chinese this good?" Wang Yu asked.
"My father was a man of the Central Plains," the man said at once. "As a boy I traveled the northwest road with him. Robbers took the caravan, and I was sold into Dayuan a slave.
Father sickened at heart and died early. My luck was that he'd taught me his trade first — judging horses, raising horses — so I had an art to live by. I took a wife in Dayuan, had my girl. Then some days ago I crossed the master's family, and they sold me to the caravan.
Thirty years gone — and here I stand in the Central Plains again." The man wrapped an arm around his daughter and looked up at Wang Yu, begging with his whole face. "I can judge horses, master. I can raise them. My girl can serve and wait. I beg the master's mercy."
"Well, isn't that convenient. It happens I own a horse pasture." Wang Yu snapped his fingers, then asked, "Your name?"
"Call me Manu — 'horse-slave.' It's what I answer to. My girl's called Lianhua."
"No surname?"
"A slave, master — what would I do with a surname? My father's, though, was Sun."
"'Horse-slave' is an ugly thing to answer to. I'll name you both. You judge horses — xiang ma — so: Sun Xiang. And your daughter is Sun Lian."
"Thank you, master, for our names!" Father and daughter went down and knocked their heads on the ground again.
Wang Yu accepted it without ceremony, then turned to Zhao Yingjie. "Set him up with work at the pasture."
"Done!" Zhao Yingjie agreed at once — then grinned up at him. "Sun Xiang to the pasture — and little Sun Lian into the Manor as a housemaid?"
Wang Yu glared at him. "Where is your humanity? Sun Lian's this small, and you'd split the two of them up!"
Zhao Yingjie: "..."
Qianqian offered gently, "The Manor's a far better life than a horse pasture. Sun Lian would be much more comfortable with us."
Zhao Yingjie nodded away. "Right, right!"
Wang Yu shook his head. "A scrap of a girl who just walked several thousand li in a slave-chain — what does 'comfortable' even mean to her? Being with her father. That's the whole of it."
Qianqian's heart gave one small unscheduled thump, and her eyes flicked across Wang Yu's face, very fast.
"Send them to the pasture together. In a few days I'll ride out and inspect the place, and we'll see from there," Wang Yu instructed. "For now — have someone take them back to the Manor. Baths. Clean clothes."
"Done and done!" Zhao Yingjie detailed a guard, who led the two off toward the Manor.
Father and daughter left thanking him with every third step.
Wang Yu looked up — and not far off stood three familiar figures: the middle-aged couple from the perfume tent, and the girl in green.
Wang Yu nodded to them.
The middle-aged man nodded back. Then the three turned and walked on.
"So that's the famous Zhao Yu?" the woman in violet asked, low.
The man nodded. "Interesting."
"The stories are wrong, then?"
"Not necessarily wrong." He shook his head slowly. "Ignores the Wang family's steward; hammers a Western Regions trader flat with one borrowed statute; hands out names to strangers on a whim; short with his own people too. No — the temper in the stories is real enough.
But." The man's voice stayed level. "He set his own preferences aside and read what the little girl actually needed — not to be parted from her father. That is not a common man's move. On that point he stands above the fat little steward — and above the woman walking beside him."
The woman in violet smiled. "Which is why he's the tree — the great trunk of the Westguard Manor — and everyone around him is vine looking for bark to climb."
"A pity his training was left so late. Otherwise he might not have fallen short of Zhao Zheng at all."
"Why did Zhao Zheng send him to the capital in the first place?"
"Unknown. But the court had something on him — that much is certain. Even his homecoming shipped with a woman Top Scholar attached."
"Will the Manor end up the court's creature?"
"A while ago I'd have said Zhao Yu was no match for Li Yunxiu. Now — I'd not be so sure. Either way, we live in the rivers and lakes; the court's board is not ours to fret over."
The woman in violet laughed. "This trip north, we may yet find ourselves across a table from the Westguard Manor."
The man shook his head, amused. "We won't."
***
Wang Yu watched the three of them go, and the party went back to its shopping.
Besides the Western Regions traders, the East Market held Central Plains merchants in plenty. As the last great market before the west road, Longshan wanted for almost nothing — half the goods scarce even deep in the interior could be had here.
Wang Yu even passed an embroidered silk screen of real workmanship — a rarity by capital standards, let alone out here.
Of course, a thousand li of freight showed up in every price tag. Anything the region produced itself, or wasn't worth hauling, cost only a little over the odds; everything else ran several multiples of its price in the Central Plains.
Silk, porcelain, and tea moved fastest, then paper, lacquerware, ironware, jewelry — even household bronze mirrors, rouge, and soap-beans had their eager buyers.
The smaller and rarer the item, the dearer it sold.
They wandered another two hours. Beyond the perfume, Wang Yu bought Qianqian a white jade hairpin, and picked out a pair of green jade earrings to bring back for Li Yunxiu.
"For your mother. Hold onto it." He put a bracelet into Zhao Yingjie's hands, then added a bottle of the lavender perfume on top.
Zhao Yingjie froze one full second, then clutched the bracelet, beaming from ear to ear. "My thanks, Brother Yu! From this day, one word from you and your little brother climbs the mountain of blades, wades the sea of fire, charges the front, dies nine deaths without regret, wraps his corpse in horsehide..."
Wang Yu deliberately let him run. Zhao Yingjie poured out upward of twenty four-character idioms without one breath drawn, ran entirely out of air, and closed, gasping, on "—and repays you in the next life!"
"Throat dry?" Wang Yu asked.
"Dry," Zhao Yingjie admitted.
"Then let's water it. It's dinnertime anyway."
Wang Yu looked up. Not far ahead stood a wine-house a full three stories tall, guests streaming in and out at the door, the clink and roar of a good evening carrying tens of zhang down the street.
The Wanghai Tower.
One of Longshan's most famous houses — kitchen run, the story went, by a Lu-cuisine master out of the Wanghai Circuit, whose sweet-and-sour carp was the dish the caravans had carried word of into the Western Regions.
Wang Yu skipped the third-floor private rooms and picked a window table on the second.
They had barely sat down when he spotted, across the floor, the middle-aged couple and the girl in green — far side of the room, by their own window, several square tables between.
"Sweet-and-sour carp. Red-braised mutton. Steam-powdered beef. Smoked mountain pheasant." Zhao Yingjie fired off the four like a man reciting scripture. "Seasonal greens and fruit besides — and the wine is Lanling. The good Lanling, from the Wanghai Circuit. Watered, and I'll know."
"Never, sir, never!"
The waiter knew a regular when he saw one; nobody was fobbing off this table. Tea came at once for the thirst, and the man pattered downstairs to fire the order.
Wang Yu let his eyes wander. Apart from that one table, the second floor was nearly full: merchants for the most part, a sprinkling of local money, and a few armed escorts and jianghu men off the caravans.
"You two came late by a few days. The Westguard Manor's memorial for the old prince — now that was a spectacle."
"Prince Zhao was a hero of the age, say what you will. Rode the whole northwest in his day — and Heaven gave him barely past fifty. Dead of illness. A waste."
"Zhao Zheng was an Innate. Since when does an Innate die at fifty of illness? Depend on it: he took some terrible wound in the early years, the roots of him were rotted through, and it caught him at last."
"With Prince Zhao gone, the Qishan Bandits' tails are up. Word is Poison-Hand Weituo and the Black Wind Old Monster have both sent it down the mountain: if the Manor's troops come sweeping again, they'll pay a visit to the Westguard Manor themselves."
"Listen to them talk. The old prince dies and they think the Manor's out of masters?"
"Well — the new prince certainly isn't one. Whatever else Zhao Yu is, he's no match for that crowd."
"Mm... true enough."
"Ten years in the capital, they say — songs, silks, wine sunup to sundown, the best vintages and the prettiest women. Frankly, arriving home with his marrow intact would be the surprise."
"Heh. And you'll have heard what else they say — drugged the Southern Sea sect leader's own daughter, and the girl was betrothed to the Lin family's eldest in Guangnan besides. Two great houses of the martial world offended in one night's work. Say this for him: the boy has nerve."
"With that thing inheriting, I give the Westguard Manor one generation. It ends with him."
Wang Yu didn't move a muscle. Qianqian's cheeks had puffed round with fury. Zhao Yingjie's eyes went sidelong, and his voice dropped to a pleasant murmur. "Shall I arrange a program for them, my lord?"
Wang Yu sighed. "Killing men over table talk. That's excessive."
Zhao Yingjie: ???
I never said kill?
"Break two legs apiece," Wang Yu said mildly. "Let them meditate on where misfortune enters: by the mouth."
Zhao Yingjie's teeth flashed. "Yes, sir!"
Across the room, the middle-aged man shook his head. "Heavy-handed. As advertised."
And in the next moment, the happily oblivious table rolled downhill onto a new topic.
"Ah, but young Zhao's still green, that's all that is. No palate yet."
"Sixteen, seventeen — girls that age are unfinished. They don't know anything. Where's the sport? A man wants a woman grown — ripened — one who knows her business and yours. That's being served properly."
"Heh heh. They say the martial world keeps Four Great Beauties among its married flowers. If a man could steal one spring night there, now — that would be..."
The middle-aged man's face went dark. From his nostrils came one cold breath of sound.
"Hmph!"
A low grunt rolled through the wine-house — ordinary to every ear it passed... except three. The three gentlemen in question, two cups of wine deep and mid-snigger, felt something like an iron staff swing full-force through the inside of their skulls.
"Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!"
Three mouthfuls of blood sprayed in unison. Three bodies went over backward — chairs, table, wine and all — and lay in the wreckage clutching their heads, rolling, twitching, and howling like scalded dogs.
The room jumped out of its skin — then settled comfortably in to spectate.
The manager and waiters came pounding upstairs, assessed the scene with the ease of long practice, extracted from the three writhing gentlemen the cost of their meal plus damages, and hauled them off downstairs toward the nearest physician's.
Wang Yu waved a hand. "Go do your job."
Two guards nodded, rose, and followed them down.
Grave internal injuries or no — the leg-breaking portion of the evening's program remained in force.
Zhao Yingjie worked his jaw, awed. "Now that is a sound-attack art. I do believe that fellow hits harder than my old man."