The last day of the eighth month, in the thirty-fifth year, happened to fall on a big market day.
In Daxing County town, south of the capital, the sky hadn’t even brightened yet, and already the whole town, inside and out, was bustling with activity. It seemed as though everyone within a hundred li had gathered here all at once, the calls of vendors and hawkers ringing out, each louder than the last.
On the busiest street in town, a woman with a headscarf, her head lowered, had her eye fixed on a shop up ahead that had just had its door panels removed. Taking advantage of a moment when the shop assistant wasn’t looking, she slipped through the gap between the two removed panels.
“Hey, hey, what’s the rush, the shopkeeper isn’t even here yet!” The assistant, turning to see someone had slipped inside, hurried to finish up what he was doing.
One glance told him she wasn’t well-off, nine times out of ten, anyone coming to a pawnshop was here to pawn something for quick cash. Too bad, really, the first customer of the day, and probably not even worth the trouble.
With a clack, the shopkeeper shut the wooden door and climbed up onto his tall counter. Through the wooden grille, he said nothing at first, simply looking the woman over.
“Pawning something?” His tone, when he finally spoke, wasn’t especially polite.
“…Mm.” The woman clutched her bundle tighter, and after a moment, let out a sound that seemed to come more from her nose than her mouth.
“Well, you’ve come this far, might as well show me.” Still hesitating after already walking through the door, perhaps the item wasn’t actually hers to begin with.
This sort of thing wasn’t unheard of, in fact, more than half the time, it probably was exactly that. But so what? Objects couldn’t talk, after all, and it wasn’t as though they came engraved with names. Once it was here, it was fair game, worst case, they’d just be a bit more careful disposing of it afterward.
Something wrapped in gray cloth landed on the counter, and the woman pushed it further in.
The shopkeeper’s sharp eyes caught the weight of whatever was in that gray cloth, the dull, heavy thud it made on landing. Not giving her a chance to change her mind, he quickly reached out and pulled the item toward himself.
Carefully pinching the edge of the cloth, he lifted a corner, and with that single glance, he’d already spotted the object inside.
Well now, real goods. Gold, no less!
He looked up at the woman again. Hmph. Either stolen, or found lying around somewhere. Either way, it clearly wasn’t hers to begin with.
“Dead pawn, or live pawn?” By custom, the shopkeeper asked.
“How much for dead, and how much for live?” The woman’s lowered voice came out rough and gravelly, probably trying to keep from being recognized.
“For a dead pawn, you press your thumbprint and take ten taels, no questions asked.” The shopkeeper weighed it on his scale, coming out just a touch over one tael. “For a live pawn, only eight taels. Come back within a month with nine taels of silver, and you can redeem it.”
“Only ten taels? That’s a gold bracelet, a design I’ve never even seen before!” The woman stood on her toes, gripping the tall counter.
“It’s precisely because it’s a gold bracelet, an unfamiliar new design, that I’ve set the price at ten taels. Think carefully. If you take these ten taels of gleaming silver, this bracelet has nothing more to do with you, ever again.” The shopkeeper wasn’t worried about her impatience in the least.
Whether out of guilty conscience or something else, in the end, the woman took the honest silver and left.
The moment she was gone, the shopkeeper shot a glance at his assistant and bent down to examine the finely made gold bracelet more closely. Unfortunately, before he’d gotten more than a few glances in, a new customer had already arrived.
“This bracelet, I’ll take it.” The newcomer spoke up immediately, demanding the bracelet still warm in the shopkeeper’s hands.
Before the shopkeeper could even respond, a silver note had already landed on the counter with a slap. The banking house named on it was the largest in the capital.
“I won’t shortchange you either. She got ten taels of silver from you, so I’ll give you the same ten. Some bargains just aren’t meant to be had, not by her, and not by you.” The newcomer flashed a waist token. “Hand it over, and save us both the trouble.”
Le’a walked out of the pawnshop with the gold bracelet safely in hand, and several men outside immediately fell in step behind him.
“Chief, should we take her now?”
“What’s the rush, let her enjoy herself a little longer.” Even as he said this, Le’a’s gaze followed the direction the woman had gone.
Fortunately, it was a good thing he’d looked, or else the very person they’d been ordered to apprehend would have met her end right under their noses.
Ten taels of silver, for an ordinary family, spent carefully, could cover a whole household of five or six for a year. But for someone desperately in need of cash, it could be the one lifeline that kept them afloat.
The woman hadn’t even made it out of the street with her silver before she was stopped by someone. It was none other than her own husband, the very man she’d gone to such lengths to escape.
Le’a had stepped in at the last critical moment and saved the woman. In the process, he’d also let slip that he was heading back toward the capital, prompting the still-shaken woman to beg him to let her travel along with him.
How convenient, the very person they were meant to apprehend willingly agreeing to come along. No need to wait any longer, then, time to hit the road.
By the time the day was drawing to a close, Le’a’s group had already reached a spot not far from Changchun Garden. At first, the woman had kept her mouth tightly shut, saying nothing, only focused on the road ahead. Later, during a rest stop along the way, Le’a offered her some water, and she finally broke down, sobbing and cursing that heartless husband of hers.
People tend to lose themselves in their emotions when cursing someone out. And sure enough, in a careless slip, the woman let it out that she’d fled after stealing her own daughter’s gold bracelet.
As luck would have it, her so-called “daughter” had, during a visit back to her parents’ home, shown off the gold bracelet her husband’s family had given her. So while the “daughter” stayed the night, the woman had taken the bracelet and run.
A story full of lies, every word of it.
Le’a found this woman rather impressive, in her own way. To Li Rongjing, she’d claimed the little girl was her niece from the south, passing the girl off in one transaction for a tidy twenty taels of silver. Now, to him, she’d invented an entirely nonexistent daughter.
If it weren’t for the fact that her gambling-addict husband had blown through those twenty taels within days and then come looking for her, the one who’d taken the little girl’s gold bracelet, finding her in this sea of people would have been genuinely difficult.
Still, what he ultimately learned only gave Le’a a worse headache.
Once they’d apprehended the woman, she was so terrified she confessed to everything.
A little girl, all alone, fine-looking and well-dressed, with not a single soul accompanying her. And she happened to have a son at home who couldn’t find a wife, bring the girl back, raise her for a few years, and a fat grandson would be all but guaranteed.
If Li Rongjing hadn’t shown up, dangling bright silver right in front of her, she probably wouldn’t even have been willing to trade the girl away for money.
Tsk, tsk, truly, no one more venomous than a scheming woman.
“She said the little girl didn’t seem lost, exactly, more like she had no idea how she’d ended up on that road in the first place.” After hearing Le’a’s full report, Emperor Kangxi pulled out this one particular detail from the woman’s confession.
“Reporting to Your Majesty, that’s exactly what the woman said.” Combined with what nearby locals had told them, that was more or less the whole of it.
There was nothing further to be uncovered on their end for now.
Le’a thought to himself, none of the families in the surrounding area had reported a missing daughter of a similar age. If it came down to it, the fastest path forward would simply be to ask the Eleventh Prince’s secondary consort directly.
On the first day of the ninth month, the emperor returned once more from Changchun Garden to the palace.
Yin Cheng didn’t think much of the news, since his father’s comings and goings between the palace and Changchun Garden had become routine by now. So when the errand eunuch from the Palace of Heavenly Purity appeared before him once again, he still couldn’t quite make sense of it.
By the time he’d taken the palanquin to see his father, he still couldn’t guess the reason. Could something have changed regarding his secondary consort’s situation?
“Eleventh, I notice you’ve put on a bit of weight lately, your appetite must be good.” The emperor said nothing of the previous matter, instead simply studying his son before him. Sure enough, he had indeed filled out somewhat.
“Reporting to Father, your son has indeed put on some weight recently.” Yin Cheng answered honestly. Gaining weight, for him, was a genuinely good thing.
“Now that your health has improved, it’s time to catch up on all the studies you’ve fallen behind on these years.” Never mind his older brothers, even the Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Princes had likely learned far more than this Eleventh by now.
His painting alone made that plain enough, the boy had probably never even held a brush properly before.
“Yes, Father.” So this was what his father had summoned him to say.
“All right, that’s settled. Now, let’s talk about your secondary consort.” The emperor shifted the conversation, and the ease Yin Cheng had just begun to feel tightened right back up.
“Father, has her identity been—” Been figured out?
The emperor raised a hand, cutting off Yin Cheng’s question.
“You already know how Li Rongjing found your secondary consort. Now, that woman who fled has been brought back, and she’s confessed that your secondary consort isn’t her niece at all, she simply dragged the girl off the road outside somewhere.” The emperor spoke while watching his son closely.
Listening to his father’s account, Yin Cheng sensed there was more to come.
“She says your secondary consort was walking alone on the road at the time, and didn’t resist at all when the woman grabbed her, she seemed almost dazed.” Had it not been for that, the woman probably wouldn’t have traded the girl away so readily.
The twenty taels she’d received had been more than enough to buy herself a daughter-in-law to her liking.
“Didn’t you say before that she couldn’t speak the official dialect? Is she any more fluent by now?”
“Reporting to Father, your son wouldn’t say fluent. On the listening side, your son must speak slowly and plainly for my secondary consort to understand. As for speaking, my secondary consort still needs to gesture at times, and her accent occasionally slips. If your son speaks too quickly, even I can’t follow her at all.” Given that Ajiu was there, his father surely already knew all this.
“Indeed, from what Ajiu tells me, your secondary consort’s accent resembles her own. Ajiu spent many years in the Yuhang region, and has encountered people trained by those factions there before, yet even she says she’s never seen anything quite like your secondary consort.”
Ajiu’s presence there had, in fact, been to investigate those cells that had gone underground.
“Eleventh, I’ll speak plainly with you.” The emperor rose to his feet. “If she was indeed raised by the forces from Yuhang, then she couldn’t possibly have come to the capital entirely alone. And if she isn’t one of them, then her origins remain, ultimately, a genuine mystery.” He gave Yin Cheng’s shoulder a pat.
Liang Jiugong saw Yin Cheng out.
“Eleventh Prince, His Majesty isn’t being unreasonable about this. It’s simply that the palace has no shortage of loose tongues, and the matter of your secondary consort will inevitably leak out sooner or later.” So, while everyone was still at Changchun Garden, best to settle the matter now.
You should know, Consort Yi has been holding back quite a bit of frustration. All that back-and-forth with the gift of thanks, plenty of eyes saw it happen. Once everyone’s back in the palace, there’ll be no shortage of gossip.
“My thanks, Eunuch Liang.” With Liang Jiugong’s gentle nudge, Yin Cheng finally understood.
His father wanted him to go ask her himself. After all, he was, for now, the person his secondary consort trusted most. There was no one better suited to bring this up than himself, in person.
He, too, wanted to know his secondary consort’s origins, of course. But what if there was something she couldn’t bring herself to say?
The candle was blown out once more, and Wang Xiaohai closed the door behind them in the dark.
On the bed, Yin Cheng still hadn’t worked out how to begin.
“Every time you come back from seeing your father, you don’t seem very happy, is it because he has so many sons?” For once, Zhao Xiaojin wasn’t thinking of sleep, and struck up a conversation instead.
She’d come to notice, by now, that whenever that eunuch from before showed up, the little monk had to go see the emperor. And after seeing the emperor, the little monk always spoke less, and spent more time lost in thought.
“What makes you think that?” Yin Cheng played along.
He’d once guessed that someone with his secondary consort’s temperament was probably destined never to get much attention, there had to be someone else in her own family more worthy of notice than her.
So, was this how his secondary consort saw him too?
“My family’s like that too.” Zhao Xiaojin said it calmly.