In the dimly lit chamber, fragrant incense drifted in lazy spirals. Only Yan Luo sat at Luowei’s side, holding a fan to shield her — still dreaming — from the rain droplets that spattered in under the eaves.
Luowei clasped Yan Luo’s cool hand and said, in a daze: “It is Qingming again.”
Yan Luo said softly: “Please take care of yourself, Your Highness.”
Luowei roused herself, wiped away her tears, and asked: “Where is he now?”
Ever since learning the truth, she had refused to call Song Lan by his childhood name in private — she was even stingy with “Your Majesty,” and always referred to him by name or simply as “he.”
Yan Luo replied: “Yesterday, Noble Consort Yu was in the imperial garden playing with cats, and a cat scratched her arm. She wept and made a scene. He promised to come keep her company once he left the Council of State hall, and Noble Consort Yu has been clinging to him — he has gone to Pifang Pavilion now, and tomorrow begins the Qingming holiday, so there will be no morning court. He will certainly not go anywhere else tonight.”
Luowei laughed: “Those cats you trained do have their uses. One day I’ll hire one from you to keep me company and chase away the tedium.”
Yan Luo shook her head, smiling, and deftly changed the subject: “Last time, Your Highness said that man is so shrewd he borders on the uncanny — impossible to say whether that is good or bad. Have you come to any conclusion about him now?”
Luowei propped up her cloud-coiffed hair and sat up: “No.”
Yan Luo said: “Then does Your Highness still intend to see him today?”
Luowei said: “See him — why should I not? Now that he has won Song Lan’s trust in this way, if I do not see him and he falls into someone else’s hands, and later becomes a sword that pierces back into my own chest — what would I do then?”
Yan Luo hesitated: “But if there is no way to know his true intentions, a man this clever may not be easy for Your Highness to use. I have already investigated on your behalf — he has suspicious points aplenty, and his coming to the capital is certainly not only for the sake of seeking advancement and recognition. Though it is true that when old General Ye fell in battle that year, he entered the capital, met with Your Highness, and has been unable to forget — but a youthful fondness, is it truly enough to sustain him to this day?”
“My foolish Yan Luo — a ‘lingering attachment’ that you can uncover with a simple investigation: how much of it could be genuine?” Luowei smiled. “What you uncovered amounts to no more than the fact that he made repeated inquiries about me while in Beiyou. If he had intention, all of that could have been arranged in advance. Do you truly believe his willingness to turn to me rather than Song Lan rests on that fragment of youthful feeling — long since forgotten — between us?”
“A man like this is not a man who carries feeling in his heart. He chose me over Song Lan because he can see clearly the cold shallowness of Song Lan’s nature. As for the Grand Councilor—” Luowei toyed with a phoenix-head hairpin at her side and continued with measured significance, “The battle on Youyun River that year was full of suspicious points; he may have put on a clean face, but in his heart he surely has not abandoned the thought of overturning the verdict for his Ye family. Moreover, from what I can see, he carries old grievances against the Grand Councilor. Even if my reading of him is wrong, Song Lan means to promote him, and the Grand Councilor would never permit him to enter his faction.”
Yan Luo was silent for a moment, then said: “In the end, I have thought too little. As Your Highness says, this man curries favor with you — it is no more than a strategy arrived at through the calculation of advantages. That is all.”
“Of course. He and I share common enemies; borrowing him for a use is no problem,” Luowei said. “When it comes down to it, though I have trusted intimates in court, every one of them is a scholar of the pure stream — certain matters that cannot be brought into the light are things they can never do.”
Seeing the anxious expression on Yan Luo’s face, Luowei gently touched her shoulder: “You need not worry. I have it all under control — I will naturally be able to offer conditions that Song Lan and others cannot provide.”
Yan Luo said: “Others cannot provide them — that is precisely what worries me most. Bujiun chose to sacrifice herself not only because of the guilt and grief in her heart, but also because she did not wish to see Your Highness abandon your principles, going against your own nature. Both Your Highness and Bujiun are genuinely good and kind people in this world — to debase yourselves because of the evil of others, I feel is not worth it.”
Luowei paused, then gave a rueful smile: “Bujiun and you — you both think too well of me. From the day I learned everything, I had already abandoned those principles — I could never again keep myself free from the dust of the world. Enough — why bring up such melancholy words? I will only tell you: everything I can offer, including myself, skin and flesh and blood — all of it is just something outside the self. You should understand this better than I do. Besides, he—”
She paused, and did not finish that sentence.
In the hour before the palace gates were locked at dusk, lamps were lit everywhere. Some palace halls had begun serving the evening meal; mist from the rain hung over the imperial city, and palace attendants walked with their heads bowed, their expressions hurried, with no time to notice the scenery elsewhere.
Luowei wove her way through the grove, loosened the cloak at her side, and once again stepped up onto that high terrace.
Ye Tingyan, in his scarlet official robe today, was not playing the role of a guard. He sat with his back to Luowei at the moss-covered stone table on the terrace, his official’s cap already removed, silhouetted against the setting sun.
Luowei completed in her heart the sentence she had not spoken to Yan Luo.
“Besides, compared to Song Lan, he seems to bear more of a resemblance. They share a similar appearance — but only in the way that makes one look like a crude imitation of the other. The true bearing of jade and bone — only that can harmonize the spirit and presence.”
*
Ye Tingyan sat before the stone table, somewhat lost in thought. Not until he felt a coolness at his arm did he realize that though the rain had stopped, the water vapor lingering in the cracks of the stone was seeping into his clothes, spreading a deepening patch of crimson across the red fabric.
The sky had cleared and the rain had withdrawn; the haze was dispersing. The setting sun hung half in the air, brilliant and decadent. This part of the palace was dilapidated, and with the late spring dusk upon it — it was truly a lost world within the embroidered imperial city.
The last time they had met at Gaoyang Terrace, it had also been at dusk.
The Archival Hall dismissed at the hour of Shen, but there were always officials absorbed in books who forgot the time and only left in a hurry at the start of You. As long as Ye Tingyan presented his exit token at the palace gates before they were locked at mid-You, he could find occasion to come here and meet privately with Luowei. If anyone asked, he would simply say he too had been absorbed in his affairs — a seamless cover.
The Archival Hall was not far from the grove in front of Gaoyang Terrace, and he knew these small paths extremely well. Even without changing his robe, he was confident he would not be seen. What was more, after the Jintian Guard changed its commander, the evening patrol routes had been altered, and the nearest one was a hundred paces away from the grove. Luowei was cautious — she dared to come meet him because she knew he had chosen a suitable place, and would also arrange matters herself to ensure there was no slip.
Ye Tingyan rubbed his slightly damp sleeve and could not help tracing with his fingertip the character “jian” — “to meet” — again and again, turning it over in his mind.
After Lu Heng died, Ye Tingyan had settled the related matters at the Ministry of Justice and then returned to his residence. After dinner, Pei Xi arrived at his door together with the guard who had accompanied him in searching Lu Heng’s home that day.
This guard was named Yuan Ming. He had originally been a soldier under the Yan family’s army, but had been injured in his left ear and was unable to follow the Yan family forces on their distant campaign to Beiyou. He had withdrawn from service for a time and taken a minor post at the Ministry of Justice.
But the man was meticulous and thorough in everything he did, and quickly won his superiors’ regard. When Song Lan was looking for trusted men at the Ministry of Justice to form the Zhuque Division, his mentor had brought him along, and he was given the robe bearing the mark of the Vermilion Bird.
No one at court knew that in his early years he had received a kindness from the Crown Prince Chengming.
That day, after Ye Tingyan and the members of the Zhuque Division finished searching Lu Heng’s residence together, he said his farewells and boarded his sedan chair. At a turning in the long street where no one was about, he heard the sound of Yuan Ming’s voice outside the curtain, suppressed and agitated: “Your servant Yuan Ming pays his respects to His Highness.”
Ye Tingyan did not lift the curtain to see him, only sighed: “Mosheng — you’ve worked hard.”
Yuan Ming said: “When Your servant first received Your Highness’s letter, I dared not believe it — now that I have seen you in person, I finally know… Your Highness has returned to the capital — why did you not inform your servant?”
“At present, there is truly no need to still call me ‘Your Highness,'” Ye Tingyan said. “My return to the capital was also sudden. That I have delayed until today to meet with you was not my wish. I called you here today because there is an important matter I must entrust to you.”
Yuan Ming said: “I await Your Highness’s instructions.”
Ye Tingyan said: “Although I joined the Zhuque Division in searching Lu Heng’s residence, you and I know perfectly well it was only going through the motions. Tonight, after dark, take the key and go search again, and see whether there is anything amiss.”
Yuan Ming had gone to do so, and was here today presumably to report back.
What Ye Tingyan had not expected, however, was that Yuan Ming found nothing else in his quarters. The only thing discovered was half a sheet of finished paper beneath the bed.
According to Yuan Ming, the paper bore the impressions of writing — there had originally been more, but no one knew who had taken it in advance. Only the corner piece no one had noticed was left, half of a page.
The reason it was only half was that the other half had been burned away.
On what remained of the paper, there were only two characters: “jian” — “to meet.”
Ye Tingyan traced and retraced those two characters, and the more he looked, the more his heart jolted.
If he was not mistaken, it was unmistakably Luowei’s handwriting.
In her youth, she had practiced the slender, elegant regular script known as hairpin-flower small script. As she grew older, she had always felt that orthodox calligraphy did not suit her temperament. She had labored long over the “Preface to the Orchid Pavilion” but refused to copy it stroke for stroke; then, coming across the “flying white” style, she had combined the two and developed her own calligraphic sensibility.
That single stroke of the character “jian” — the downward sweep — was half a fraction longer than the curved hook on the right side, with the barest whisper of white showing through: her most characteristic way of writing it.
But why would the Empress be in written correspondence with Lu Heng?
Before he took over the West Garden murder case, Song Lan had personally gone to the Zhuque Division and questioned them through the night. Then, fearing that Lu Heng in prison might speak recklessly, Song Lan had hastily torn out his tongue and maimed his hands, rendering him unable to answer questions — and had closed the case with a perfunctory “crime of passion.”
Ye Tingyan knew in his heart that even if Lu Heng had still been alive, he would likely not have revealed the reason.
From behind him came the sound of fabric brushing against the ground. His fingertips stiffened. He gathered these thoughts away, turned around, and bowed: “This subject pays his respects to Your Highness.”