Qinglan had not expected this: she had come to the banquet to look after her younger sisters, yet when it broke up, every sister had vanished without a trace, leaving just her alone on the training grounds, swept along by the cluster of ladies and young misses into the riding crowd.

Horses were few and people were many. Though she had come down to the grounds, she had no real wish to ride, so she simply stood to one side and watched. She heard someone laughing nearby: “Step aside, step aside — mind you don’t get knocked over.”

It was Madam Luo, who was riding her husband Luo Yong’s western horse, struggling somewhat to control it. Luo Yong was walking beside her, holding the reins, laughing as he went. Over where Lu Wenyin stood, she was chatting and laughing with the other ladies. Yang Qiaozhen was sounding off at length: “Can’t even ride a horse — what kind of well-bred young miss is that? Such shallow roots…” With Madam Wei’s endorsement and Lu Wenyin’s vigorous encouragement, the young misses had long since mounted their respective small stocky horses, each led along the training grounds by a young officer. Pairs of them side by side — quite a warm and pleasant picture.

“Be careful, Elder Sister Qinglan.”

Qinglan heard her name and turned, and found it was Fu Yunrui — worried that Qinglan might be excluded, she had come personally with Yin Hongxuan to offer his services in leading a horse, saying to her: “I’m not well enough to ride, so let General Yin take sister along to get a feel for it — to prepare for the spring hunt.”

Qinglan looked at Yin Hongxuan. She knew he had grown up under Marshal Wei’s command, as close as a fellow disciple to Cui Jingyu. His expression was somewhat stiff, and it was clear he, like Madam Wei, sided with them on the matter of those years.

“Thank you,” she said lightly. “There’s no need to trouble General Yin.”

Fu Yunrui looked startled, and glanced earnestly at Yin Hongxuan. Perhaps thinking it was his manner that had given offense, Yin Hongxuan said unwillingly: “It’s no trouble.”

Qinglan still shook her head gently. She was soft-spoken, but there was a quiet resolution in her. Using the pretense of looking at Yin Hongxuan’s horse, she looked past him — and saw Cui Jingyu standing not far away.

He seemed to have found no young miss to pair with either. Though many young misses gazed at him with hope, he was entirely occupied with stroking his own horse, genuinely indifferent to the situation around him.

A bitterness rose in Qinglan’s heart. She lowered her eyes, just about to decline Fu Yunrui’s couple, when something tugged at her from behind.

She assumed it was Yang Qiaozhen or one of the others playing tricks, but turning around, she found only a horse’s head — it was the small white horse Cui Jingyu had once ridden in the capital, called White Qilin. She did not know who had brought it out today, but it had apparently recognized her, and without any prompting had taken her sleeve gently in its teeth and was nuzzling her with its head in a show of affection.

“It’s you,” she said, not flustered at all, smiling as she stroked White Qilin’s head. Among Cui Jingyu’s horses, this small white horse knew her best — in those days, when she had dressed in elaborate silk brocade for the Flower Season Banquet, the white horse was gentle and clean, and never dirtied her clothing.

Fu Yunrui, thinking the horse had gone out of control, immediately called to Yin Hongxuan to pull it away. White Qilin was stubborn and absolutely refused to budge, planting all four hooves and engaging Yin Hongxuan in a contest of strength. Qinglan quickly urged: “Don’t use force on it — you’ll hurt it…”

From behind came a sharp whistle, and White Qilin at once stopped being obstinate. It broke free of Yin Hongxuan’s grip and trotted toward the source of the whistle. Everyone turned to look, and there was Cui Jingyu, standing behind them. White Qilin listened to him best of all, and kept nudging him with its head.

Bitterness rose in Qinglan’s heart layer by layer, though her surface remained calm as the sea.

“White Qilin was ill-behaved and caused the young miss offense.” That was all he said.

“Not at all.” Fu Yunrui, not knowing the full story, laughed and answered on Qinglan’s behalf: “We’re all our own people — why so formal, Marquis Cui? White Qilin is usually quite well-behaved. What’s come over it today?”

“Horses have long memories. That’s how it is,” Cui Jingyu said, in an even tone.

He knew he should not have said it — yet said it anyway. In the bleak winter afternoon sunlight, the color drained from her face at these words — but very quickly she was composed again, as always.

She had always been the most composed of anyone.

“Is a horse’s memory so much better than a person’s?” came a laughing voice from somewhere. Everyone looked up in surprise — it was Han Yueqi. She and Cui Jingyu had not seen each other in four years either. She had the air now of a well-established young matron of a great house, leaning on her maid’s arm with a smile.

“Madam Shen,” Cui Jingyu also acknowledged her new form of address.

“Speaking of long memories — General Cui still owes me a banquet from four years ago, before he left the capital,” Han Yueqi said, teasing him with pointed meaning: “Now that he is a marquis, I wonder when that tab might be settled?”

“Madam Shen reminds me rightly,” Cui Jingyu said. “I’ll order a banquet sent to your residence tomorrow.”

Han Yueqi was not having it.

“What use is a banquet ordered for me? It’s not as though I’ve never eaten at one. What I want is for General Cui to host a banquet at his secondary residence, inviting us to admire the purple paulownia flowers, view the moon as it slips behind the mountains, and hunt down a white fox for each of us to make into a cape.” Han Yueqi smiled gently as she spoke.

In the middle of a training ground full of people, she was speaking in riddles that only Cui Jingyu and Ye Qinglan could understand. The paulownia flower banquet was the banquet where the two of them had pledged their feelings — he had accompanied Ye Qinglan watching the purple paulownia blossoms, watched the moonlight slipping behind the mountains, and had once searched an entire hunting ground to bring back a white fox that accompanied her through the whole winter.

What Han Yueqi was asking Cui Jingyu to repay was a matchmaker’s banquet — for four years ago, she had also been the one who had brought the two of them together, and had personally witnessed them reach their happy ending.

“There is probably no need,” Qinglan said, before he could answer. She had long since cultivated the skill of showing nothing in her face — even in low spirits, she only lowered her lashes slightly, her voice unchanged: “The Marquis is very busy these days, and may not have the leisure.”

She was always like this — making decisions for two people, all on her own.

Cui Jingyu pressed his lips together. When he pressed his lips together like that, there was always a coldness about him, a killing edge, like a sword never drawn from its sheath — you had not yet touched it, but already felt the cold.

“Then there is no need,” he said immediately, his voice equally cold.

Qinglan felt a sting — yet also experienced a dispirited sense of relief.

But Han Yueqi would not allow her to be dispirited.

“Who said there was no need? The one who is owed has said nothing, and the one who owes is already saying no need — Marquis Cui, are you trying to renege?” She paid no attention to the twisting and turning of these two people, and simply declared: “No better day than today. After the Ruixiang Banquet, let us host a gathering at the Marquis’s residence — I know the Marquis has no mistress of the household, so naturally I’ll bring Qinglan along to help manage things. The Marquis only needs to provide the place. Isn’t that perfectly agreeable? It’s settled, then — no one may be absent, it’s decided.”

In truth, Ye Lingbo had gone to no other purpose than to find Pei Zhao and ask him about Cui Jingyu.

The Northern Frontier Army’s people may not have had comfortable quarters, but their horses were housed extremely well — each horse with its own stall. Pei Zhao was feeding his own horse, that pitiably thin old creature, its manger holding only a shallow layer of wilted grass, with barely any grain to be seen.

Ye Lingbo, upon meeting him, skipped asking about Cui Jingyu and went straight to her first order of business — criticizing him: “Pei Zhao, how are you feeding this horse? Skin and bones, the poor thing. If you’re short of money, just say so. I had Liu Ji look up a recipe just the other day — specifically for putting weight on horses.”

Pei Zhao only smiled: “Green Lion has its reasons for being thin.”

“Green Lion? I’ve never heard of a famous horse by that name — there’s a Dappled Lion, from some dynasty or other,” Lingbo said airily in his presence.

“Tang Dynasty,” Pei Zhao said, stroking the horse’s head. Green Lion was an old horse by now, but its eyes were still bright. Its coat was the color somewhere between blue-green and black, its outermost hairs having gone white and dimmed with age, like the tip-fur of an old fox-pelt brought out from the bottom of a trunk.

Lingbo, seeing this, had a sudden urge to reach out and touch it herself. She hesitated, then started to extend her hand but didn’t quite follow through. Pei Zhao, reading her thought, smiled and gently turned Green Lion’s head to the left — and Green Lion’s head arrived in her hand of its own accord.

“Well? Is it not lovely to pet?” Pei Zhao asked, smiling.

Lingbo naturally had to be disparaging about it.

“Just ordinary.” She took out her handkerchief and wiped her hand, and then, seeing Green Lion watching her with those deeply knowing eyes, worried about hurting the horse’s feelings, and immediately announced: “I’ll have a bridle made for you when I get back — made of gold. Would you like that?”

“Gold won’t do,” Pei Zhao said, speaking for the horse in her own manner. “We don’t want that.”

Lingbo shot him an exasperated glare.

“You don’t better yourself — and now you’re dragging the horse down with you.” She wiped her hands clean and asked him plainly: “Have you found out anything? What has Cui Jingyu been doing these past four years? Any loose ends left behind on the frontier?”

She had no shyness about asking such things even as an unmarried young miss, and “loose ends” fell from her lips without a second thought. Pei Zhao found it amusing and produced a sheet of paper to hand her.

Lingbo took it and scanned it with the speed of someone who managed a household’s accounts: crisp, efficient. Looking it over, she was reasonably satisfied, and said: “Is this Cui Jingyu’s years-of-service record? Enrolled in the military at fifteen, ennobled as a marquis at twenty-four — quite fast, all considered. Where’s yours?”

“Lost.”

Lingbo knew this person never spoke a single truthful word, so she paid it no mind and pressed on: “What else did you find out? How has he been these past few years, and what has he been doing since returning to the capital? I hear Lu Wenyin, through the Chen family name, has banqueted her way through every officer in the Mountain Battalion one by one. How many of those gatherings did he attend, and was anything notable said at the table?”

She asked one long string of questions, and Pei Zhao only smiled pleasantly: “I don’t know — I didn’t go to any of them.”

Lingbo wanted to smack him with the years-of-service record.

“Then at least you know about the Minsha River — what has happened these four years? I only feel that his personality has grown much colder.” She frowned, limited as she was by her life as a sheltered young miss, and could only reason from there: “Was that battle a brutal victory?”

“A victory is a victory. What is brutal or not about it?” Pei Zhao said.

“That’s nonsense — didn’t you send all five thousand of your men to their deaths there? How could it not have been brutal?” Lingbo gave him a warning look. “Don’t try to brush past this. Tell me in detail — exactly how did Cui Jingyu earn his marquisate?”

Pei Zhao went back to stroking Green Lion’s head. Just as Lingbo was beginning to think he would not speak, he said, unhurried and even-toned: “Nothing more than this — the northern barbarians set an ambush upstream on the Minsha River. Knowing the Northern Frontier Army would be crossing downstream, they planned to release a flood to drown the entire force. I discovered it, fought for half a day without being able to break it, and then Cui Jingyu arrived, seized back the Dragon-Breaking Lock, and made possible the great victory at the Jade Gate Pass afterward — which led to recovering the northwest. And so the Mountain Battalion’s two men were ennobled.”

Lingbo listened, feeling that he still glossed over a great deal — but she understood the gist, and knowing there was nothing shadowy about any of it, she was reassured.

“Then I know what I need to know.” She put the years-of-service record away, handing it to Xiao Liu’er: “Liu Ji.”

Liu Ji came forward immediately. He put a brocade pouch in Pei Zhao’s hand. Pei Zhao took it and weighed it, found it to be silver, and smiled.

“Many thanks to Second Miss Ye for her generosity.”

“Stop playing around,” Lingbo warned, watching him: “The silver is not for your personal use. It’s to outfit yourself in two proper sets of clothing and attend the Flower Season Banquet on my behalf. Anyone who approaches Cui Jingyu, or any young miss who shows interest in him — you are to report it all to me.”

She gave Pei Zhao a thorough look up and down, said in a voice of profound disdain: “In the capital, people are judged first by their clothing. Dress like this, no matter how fine-looking you are, it counts for nothing. At the Flower Season Banquet, everyone is there to arrange a match. You spend all day playing with a horse — what good will come of it? At the next banquet, the Ruixiang Banquet, you are to present yourself properly and attend. Did you hear me?”

Pei Zhao only smiled: “Understood.”

Ye Lingbo had said “no matter how fine-looking” — but that was a falsehood. With his looks, even if he walked into the Flower Season Banquet without brocade, he would still be enough to set the hearts of the capital’s noble young misses fluttering. Many of the noble young misses matched themselves strategically through family alliances, it was true — but there were also those pampered darlings and apple-of-their-fathers’-eyes who asked only for a talented and handsome man and cared nothing for family background. Some were even known to stake out the top examination candidates and carry off the new graduate on the spot. Pei Zhao was handsomer than many a top examination graduate — it was not as though no young miss would take notice of him.

Even if Lu Wanyang had a fixed target and would not fall for a pretty face, stirring up the waters of the Flower Season Banquet a little would still be useful.

When Lingbo returned and heard about Han Yueqi’s arrangements, she was pleasantly surprised, but also a little worried.

“I fear it may not be so simple,” she said. “Elder Sister Han, you know how these two people are — both have a kind of stubbornness in them. You can’t make a cow drink by force. Forcing them together like this won’t work unless you gradually untangle the knot in their hearts.”

“What knot is there when both parties are willing?” Han Yueqi thought about it quite openly. “Young man, young woman, neither yet married — to pair off early and not waste their youth, that is the right thing to do.”

Lingbo could not persuade her, and could only feel vaguely that something was off. She let it go for the time being. Looking over at the training grounds, Wei Yushan stood apart like a brooding presence, and no matter how many times Lu Wenyin tried to prompt him to go accompany Lu Wanyang on horseback, he ignored it.

“That boy has at least some sense,” Lingbo said.

“What sense? He’s just a stubborn ox,” A’Cuo said disapprovingly from beside her.

Lingbo laughed.

“You’re still holding a grudge over the time he stopped you and Yanyan?” she said, entirely unaware, still in the dark: “All right. You’re not strong enough for horseback riding — mind you don’t catch a cold. When Biwei comes, let her show us her archery.”