“There are people watching outside,” Li Chi said. “On the way here I took a route that avoided most of the eyes, and the prefecture men are all lazy — most of them are asleep. Even so, keep your voices down.”

All three of the Liu family nodded at once.

“You don’t have to say anything like thank you,” said Yu Jiuling. “This is just what Li Chi does. But if you really feel you have to say something, you’re welcome to tell me how handsome I look.”

All three of the Liu family stared at him blankly.

Li Chi smiled and shook his head, then laid out the broad shape of what had happened — brief but clear.

Liu Shanshen rose and cupped his fists in a deep bow.

As he bowed, his wife and Liu Yingyuan quickly rose to give their thanks as well. Li Chi moved immediately to stop them — this was the one thing that made him genuinely uncomfortable. Whenever anyone thanked him, especially with a formal bow, he always felt a little panicked.

“Before daybreak, Jiuling will go out and make some noise — draw the attention of everyone in the area away.”

Li Chi continued: “When that happens, the three of you get into the cart as quickly as possible. The cart is in the courtyard. Once you’re inside, don’t speak. The quieter, the better.”

He turned to Changmei the Daoist: “Master, once it’s light, start complaining loudly that this place is unbearable — too cold, too dry. Say you want to move somewhere else. Then I’ll go out to arrange it, and ask the Xinzhou prefecture people to find us a proper residence. We move as soon as possible.”

“Why not simply leave the city?” Changmei asked.

“Leaving before things are resolved only creates more trouble later,” said Li Chi. “The threat has to be eliminated before we can truly be free of it. Once Liu Wenju’s people discover the family is gone, they’ll send men after them. Even if they wouldn’t dare search our cart, the fact that we chose exactly today to leave would still make us suspicious.”

“If we stay — and even ask to be moved to a better residence — no one will connect us to what happened at Liu Wenju’s compound.”

Changmei nodded. “All right. When it’s light, I’ll go out and complain about you within earshot of everyone.”

Li Chi smiled. “That’s exactly it.”

Liu Yingyuan’s eyes never left Li Chi. Not once, not for a moment. The past year in Xinzhou had been wretched — every day spent in fear. When Li Chi appeared in that doorway, if not for decorum, she would have thrown herself at him and held on.

She had a flood of things she wanted to say to him, and yet couldn’t bring herself to say any of them — there were too many people in the room, and Li Chi had said to keep noise to a minimum.

She was on the edge of losing the struggle when Li Chi looked over at her and asked: “Is there anything you need? I can try to get it for you once it’s light.”

“No, no,” Liu Yingyuan said quickly, shaking her head. “Nothing at all. As long as you… as long as you’re here, that’s enough.”

Li Chi took it for a polite deflection. Yu Jiuling, however, filed it away with satisfaction: his guess had been right all along. There were feelings involved.

He thought briefly that heaven really had no sense of fairness. What did Li Chi have over him, exactly — a little taller, a little broader, a little better-looking, a little better at fighting, a little sharper, a little more commanding — and beyond all that, what exactly?

Why did girls always prefer Li Chi?

The more he thought about it, the more at peace Yu Jiuling actually felt. Quite reasonable, when you thought about it. Very reasonable.

“Right then.”

Li Chi looked around and said: “There’s still a while before dawn. Madam and Yingyuan take the bed. Lord Liu, you’ll share with Mister Yan.”

He looked at Yu Jiuling. “Jiuling, take out my master, then I’ll take you out, and I’ll have a bed to myself.”

“Why don’t you take out your master yourself?” said Yu Jiuling.

“He’s my master,” said Li Chi. “I can’t do that to him.”

“But you can do it to me?!”

“Absolutely,” said Li Chi.

Yu Jiuling had nothing left to say.

—

A short while later, in the inner room, Liu Shanshen’s wife lay on the bed and gently patted her daughter’s shoulder. She assumed Liu Yingyuan would fall asleep, but Liu Yingyuan couldn’t sleep at all. In fact she felt an increasingly uncontrollable urge to go out and say a few words to Li Chi. She didn’t even know what she’d say — she just wanted to see him.

Over this past year and more, she had thought of him only now and then. When she did, there was a faint ache somewhere in her chest, but when she didn’t think of him there was nothing, so she had told herself it wasn’t really longing. Yet now that she had seen him — they had just spoken moments ago — and still the wanting wouldn’t stop. The harder she resisted, the stronger it grew.

“Yingyuan. You’re not asleep, are you?”

Her mother’s voice was gentle.

“No… I can’t sleep.”

Her mother sat up. “Something on your mind? Come, tell me.”

Liu Yingyuan sat up and smoothed her hair to cover her embarrassment, then said in as calm a voice as she could manage: “I think I was frightened earlier. That’s all. I’ll be fine, Mother.”

“Do you think you can fool me?”

Her mother sighed softly. “I can see you’re taken with that young Li Gongzi. Perhaps it really is fate — if he hadn’t crossed paths with those attackers, he would never have come to save us. If he hadn’t come, we might already have come to harm.”

She reached up and smoothed her daughter’s hair, her voice soft. “Your father and I spoke harshly to you before, but you were young then. You’re at the age to marry now. If you care for him, your father and I can set aside our pride and make inquiries on your behalf.”

“Don’t!” Liu Yingyuan said at once. “I only… I’m grateful to him. Grateful for saving our lives.”

Her mother smiled. “You think your little feelings can fool anyone? It’s true that Li Gongzi saved us, and that gratitude means something — but gratitude and feeling are two different things. If you force yourself to call them the same word, you’ll miss the chance right in front of you. And once it’s missed, you’ll regret it.”

Liu Yingyuan’s face was deeply red. She just shook her head.

“If we can get back to Jizhou and settle down,” her mother said, “your father and I will speak on your behalf. Though of course it also depends on what Li Gongzi himself feels.”

She remembered something and lowered her voice: “Before you left Jizhou — didn’t you give Li Gongzi a sachet? When the time is right, you could find a way to ask him whether he still has it. If he carries it with him, or has kept it somewhere safe, that would tell you something about how he feels.”

Liu Yingyuan pulled the blanket up over her head and said in a muffled voice from underneath: “I’m not asking him anything. If someone wants to ask — you go ask.”

Her mother shook her head with a fond smile. “This child. Truly hopeless.”

—

In the other room, Changmei the Daoist, Yu Jiuling, and Li Chi were wedged together on a single bed — a decent-sized one, at least.

Yu Jiuling asked with genuine curiosity: “When you’re getting ready to sleep, or when nobody’s around — do you both not scratch your feet or have a bit of a scratch generally? You two being so proper about it makes me feel awkward. If I don’t scratch, I’m uncomfortable. If I do, it seems like I have no manners.”

“Scratch away,” said Li Chi.

“Or, to be polite about it,” Yu Jiuling said, “what if I scratched yours and you scratched mine? That way we’d both seem dignified.”

Li Chi told him to get lost.

Changmei the Daoist suddenly recalled something. He asked Li Chi: “That sachet the girl gave you before she left Jizhou — where is it now?”

Li Chi paused. “I… forgot where I put it.”

Changmei the Daoist raised his hand and began rapping Li Chi on the head, one knock after another.

“You idiot! You fool! That girl obviously has feelings for you, and you can’t even be bothered to take care of a simple sachet? If you’d been carrying it on you right now and she’d seen that you kept it close, she would have been even more taken with you — you might have had the betrothal arranged before you even made it back to Jizhou!”

Li Chi looked at his master and pulled a face. “Master, you do love a bit of drama.”

“Good heavens, you’re going to be the death of me — Jiuling, give this hopeless creature a good talking to!”

“I’d rather not,” said Yu Jiuling. “He’d just hit me back, and I’m not sure I can outrun him anymore.”

He changed tack: “But Li Chi, you really are thick. If that girl had no feelings for you, why would she give you a sachet?”

“Giving someone a sachet means you have feelings for them?” Li Chi thought about it. *Then why hasn’t Gao Xining given me one?*

He thought further. *Then why haven’t I given Gao Xining one?*

Right.

Li Chi slapped his thigh — and connected with Yu Jiuling instead.

Yu Jiuling yelped.

“I’ll make one when I get back!” Li Chi said.

Changmei the Daoist looked at him with the expression of a man watching his slow-witted son fumble away a perfectly good marriage prospect — the kind of expression that said the boy was so hopeless that even when a girl clearly liked him, he assumed she just wanted his corn cakes.

What the Daoist hadn’t noticed, not consciously at any rate, was just how differently he thought about the two situations. When it came to Gao Xining, his instinct was that Li Chi, as hapless as he was, simply wasn’t worthy of her — that even if something came of it, the mismatch in family standing would only bring his student grief and disrespect.

But Liu Yingyuan was different. Her family had been officials, yes, but they were reduced now. In his mind, that made her a suitable match — at the very least, his student wouldn’t be looked down upon for his origins, wouldn’t be made to feel small.

And then there was the simple fact that such a beautiful girl had taken a liking to that fool of a student. That was eight lifetimes’ worth of accumulated fortune.

He glared at Li Chi, who was already mentally working out the steps involved in making a sachet.

Step one: it had to smell good.

Li Chi turned to his master. “Master — what do they put inside sachets to make them smell?”

Li Chi knew a great many things, but this particular gap in his knowledge had never once given him pause before.

Changmei the Daoist said: “Never mind what’s in the one that girl gave you. Go find it when you get back and carry it on you whenever you might see her.”

Li Chi nodded — but kept thinking about the sachet he planned to make for Gao Xining. How many steps would that take?

“Daoist,” said Yu Jiuling suddenly. “Have you ever had a woman you cared for?”

Changmei the Daoist paused. Then fell quiet.

A woman. The mortal world.

Would anyone truly choose to retreat from the world if they had already severed every attachment? He had spent most of his life never quite managing to withdraw from it, and so never quite finding peace.

Not finding peace — wasn’t that because the severing had never actually been complete?

Changmei let out a long, slow breath.

She had put on her wedding dress and become another man’s wife. He had put on his Daoist robe and wandered to the ends of the earth.

“No,” said Changmei.

He smiled. That girl’s face had surely grown blurry in his memory by now — certainly it had — the way she laughed, the way that one small, pretty tooth showed when she smiled — that was all gone from him now, wasn’t it?

“Someone like me is better off without,” he said, still smiling. “I was a wanderer of the rivers and lakes. Entanglements of the heart were never my style.”

—