The interpreter of the wedding procession was in a very difficult position.

He had not expected Princess Baohua’s grasp of the northern tongue to be this good. Not only could she converse in it fluently, but her accent was even more authentic than his own.

What put him in difficulty was the content of the conversation between Princess Baohua and the Ashina Khan.

After Ashina Khan had recovered from his initial astonishment, he was further delighted to find the princess spoke the northern tongue so fluently. After a few conventional pleasantries, the shameless old man said: “I did not expect my new wife to be so beautiful — I cannot wait to spend the night with you and have you bear my children.”

The interpreter turned so red his neck went crimson.

Princess Baohua was as pure as ice and jade — a being like an exiled immortal descended from the heavens. She had not even come of age. She looked both noble and beautiful, and yet as fragile as something that might easily shatter. How could she possibly be subjected to such crude and shameless words!

Though the interpreter knew full well that such was the custom of the steppe, he still felt both mortified and furious on her behalf.

Xie Yuzhang, however, smiled and said: “My nanny told me that if a husband and wife want to have a child, all they need to do is put their shoes side by side at the edge of the bed. If the Khan wants children, then give me a pair of shoes — and when I go to sleep, I will set them beside my bed, and the Goddess of Fertility will send a child right into my belly.”

The picture she painted was one of pure innocence, of a girl who knew nothing of the world.

It made everyone feel that she was beautiful, but still very much a child.

The Ashina Khan and the northern people around him burst into roaring laughter.

Xie Yuzhang kept her expression unchanged, only smiling as she looked at them — and deliberately avoided the eyes of Xia’erdan, who was watching her from within the crowd with a burning, covetous gaze.

Ashina laughed heartily: “Very well! I’ll have the most beautifully stitched pair made for you!”

Xie Yuzhang said: “Wonderful. But they told me — the Khan made a promise to my imperial father that he would wait until I turned seventeen before having children.”

Ashina laughed: “But you are so beautiful — what if this old man can’t wait?”

Xie Yuzhang wrinkled her nose and said: “Oh, that simply won’t do. They say that having children when one is too young is very dangerous and one can easily die. I don’t want to die — I’ve heard the steppe goes on without end, and I want to ride horses and shoot arrows every single day. And I want to watch the Khan draw his bow and shoot the eagle from the sky. They say the Khan is the master of the steppe, and that at the Summer Sacrifice, more than a hundred tribes come to pay tribute. The Khan is so magnificent — when I am the Khan’s wife, will everyone have to respect me and do as I say?”

Xie Yuzhang spoke the northern tongue fluently, her voice soft and warm, her brows and eyes smiling as she spoke, as though she was full of hope and anticipation for the life ahead.

Ashina Khan had honestly expected he might be looking at a woman who, though beautiful, would be all grief and sorrow. After all, the southern people always thought themselves superior to everyone else, and they had always looked down upon life on the steppe.

He had not expected this little princess to be so beautiful and yet also so utterly charming and likable. He was beside himself with delight, feeling that Abazha had truly had a discerning eye this time in choosing a woman for him.

“Splendid, splendid, splendid!” he laughed loudly. “Everyone listens to you — anyone who dares not listen, I, Ashina, will have his head!”

The northern people roared with laughter again.

Xie Yuzhang said sweetly: “Then thank you, Khan.”

The Fifth Prince asked the interpreter: “What is Baohua saying to them?”

The interpreter was conflicted and said vaguely: “The Khan and the princess are exchanging greetings.”

The Fifth Prince said, puzzled: “And yet they chatted on and on for so long just for greetings?”

The interpreter said awkwardly: “The princess has a lively nature, and the Khan is very pleased. They spoke of riding horses, shooting arrows, drawing the bow, shooting the eagle — things like that.”

The interpreter hadn’t lied — those topics had indeed come up.

The Fifth Prince said quietly to Prince Shou: “Baohua’s northern tongue is actually this fluent.”

Prince Shou let out a sigh and said: “Baohua has gone to great lengths.”

From what they both knew of Xie Yuzhang, when had she ever had the patience to learn the northern tongue? She must have started only after the peace marriage was decided upon, and in less than half a year to have become this fluent — the effort she had put in was easy to imagine.

The Fifth Prince fell silent.

The interpreter stole a glance at the lead officials of the procession. The foreign affairs officials naturally understood the northern tongue — the two officials in charge had heard every word of that exchange, and one and all wore strange expressions as they looked at Xie Yuzhang with rather complex eyes.

But none of them chose to explain any of it to the Fifth Prince or Prince Shou.

Ashina then welcomed Xie Yuzhang, Prince Shou, and the rest of the party back to the camp.

Inside the tent encampment there was already a great clamor of activity. Large cuts of beef and mutton were simmering in pots and roasting over fires. The rank, fatty smell that saturated the air nearly made the Fifth Prince sick. Even Prince Shou had to hold his sleeve over his mouth and nose, with a sachet hidden inside his sleeve, before he could barely manage to breathe.

The men were ushered into the great tent. Xie Yuzhang and her maids were led by the northern women to another spacious and lavishly appointed tent to rest.

The maids had always thought the tents they used while camping along the road — which could be partitioned into several layers — were quite large already. They never imagined there could be a tent as vast as a palace.

“This is called a felt dwelling. Though it is called a tent, it is really just their house.” Xie Yuzhang explained, then issued orders: “Go and tell Nanny Xia there’s no need to come yet — have her rest and take care of her illness first. Bring over my personal belongings, but leave the rest — no need to move those. We won’t be staying here long; we may be breaking camp as early as tomorrow. Also, tell Wang Shitou that when he has finished making camp, he should come and see me.”

The maids, having just arrived in a new and unfamiliar place, were inevitably anxious. Xie Yuzhang assigned them tasks one after another, so they were kept busy and had no leisure to be anxious.

Inside the felt dwelling, there was also a group of northern women — some young, some older. Some were noblewomen of rank, while others were slave women.

Xie Yuzhang cast her eyes over the group. Among them were some she recognized well, and others who were only dimly familiar and whose names she could not quite recall. Her gaze settled on a round-figured woman, her body draped in gems and gold ornaments.

Noticing her looking, the middle-aged woman smiled and spoke: “Beautiful Da Zhao princess — so you really do speak our language?”

The Mobei people were fond of attaching long descriptive prefixes when addressing someone — things like “beautiful,” “brave,” “fearless,” and the like — sometimes strung together into quite a lengthy chain. When referring to the Ashina Khan, for instance, the most common form was: “Brave as a lion of the earth, fearless as an eagle of the sky, flowing with golden blood, with a heart as wide as the blue heavens — the master of the steppe, our Ashina Khan.”

“Yes, I do, gracious lady.” Xie Yuzhang, having barely arrived, at once adopted the local customs.

Though she knew full well who this woman was, she still asked: “How should I address you?”

The woman, hearing her speak with a natural, correct accent — none of the stiffness that Da Zhao people usually had when speaking the northern tongue — warmed to her at once, and smiled: “My name is Zhadayali. My husband, Wuwei, is the Khan’s twelfth son.”

At this point, Wuwei was roughly twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of age, while Zhadayali was already close to forty — more than ten years older than her husband. She and Wuwei’s mother both came from the Yamo’er tribe, one of the major tribes of the steppe. When Wuwei was five or six years old, his mother had arranged for him to marry her own niece, Zhadayali, to further cement the bond between Wuwei and his mother’s clan.

Wuwei had a powerful maternal clan and thus had become the strongest among Ashina’s many sons.

His distinguished standing had always been a source of bitter envy and resentment for the younger brother who depended on him — the nineteenth prince Xia’erdan, whose own mother was of the lowliest rank.

Time and again, Xia’erdan would torment Xie Yuzhang while crowing that he had gotten to her first and made Wuwei regret it. That hypocritical brother of his — clearly seething with jealousy and rage inside, yet always performing a face of magnanimity — it made Xia’erdan deeply satisfied just to see it.

Xia’erdan always assumed Xie Yuzhang had looked down on his background, always suspected she was trying to ingratiate herself with the nobly born, powerful-clanned Wuwei. He would double the torment he inflicted on her. No matter how Xie Yuzhang explained that she had not the slightest feeling for Wuwei, he never believed her.

He was most terrifying when he was drunk. He had no restraint at all, and put Xie Yuzhang through terrible suffering.

Afterward, whenever he got drunk again, Lin Fei would hide her away.

Xie Yuzhang had crouched many times inside a cabinet, listening to Lin Fei’s anguished pleas outside, biting down hard on her sleeve and not daring to let out a single cry.

Later, Xia’erdan died.

There had long been rumors among the women that Xia’erdan had died because of Da Zhao princess Xie Yuzhang. They whispered that it was Wuwei who had wanted Xie Yuzhang, and had deliberately sent Xia’erdan to his death.

When Xie Yuzhang heard that rumor, she had harbored a small, secret hope.

After Xia’erdan’s death, his possessions and women were divided up. This time, no one played tricks to seize Xie Yuzhang first — and she did indeed fall into Wuwei’s hands.

She believed the rumor was true.

Wuwei liked her.

The years after she became Wuwei’s woman were, perhaps, the best years Xie Yuzhang spent on the steppe. Had the ending not been what it was, Xie Yuzhang might even have found herself thinking of him fondly still.

After all, in those years, she had regarded Wuwei as her own support and anchor.

“Zhadayali Princess.” Xie Yuzhang curved her eyes in a smile — a radiant smile that made those who saw it forget all their troubles. “My title in my homeland is ‘Baohua.’ Everyone calls me Baohua.”

Who would not like someone beautiful, with smiling eyes and upturned lips? Just looking at her lifted the spirits.

Zhadayali smiled in return and said: “Then from now on you will be Consort Baohua — you are the Khan’s consort and may call me Zhadayali.”

Zhadayali was Wuwei’s first wife. In the terms of the Central Plains, she was equivalent to the principal wife. But the northern people did not distinguish between a primary and secondary wife — all wives were wives, regardless of the order in which they were taken, and what mattered was whose maternal clan was powerful, whose was weak, and whose dowry was most plentiful — who brought the most cattle, sheep, slaves, and warriors.

As a princess born of a great tribe, given in a political match to a cousin-husband more than ten years her junior, Zhadayali Princess felt none of the simple feminine jealousy toward Wuwei’s other women. She did not care which of them held his favor. What she cared about was only the interests of her own children.

Xie Yuzhang had never had children, and posed no threat to her interests. And she was so beautiful and delicate, her age even a year younger than Zhadayali’s eldest son. Zhadayali was old enough to be her mother, and she found her quite pitiable — she had always been kind and amiable toward her.

In the end, when Xie Yuzhang and Lin Fei were stuffed into a carriage and sent to the Great Mu army camp, Zhadayali had still given her a farewell embrace.

The steppe sun aged women far faster than the Central Plains did, and by then Zhadayali had become a fully elderly woman.

“May the gods watch over you,” she had said with pity. “Poor Da Zhao princess.”

“May the gods watch over you.”

Xie Yuzhang thought: perhaps Zhadayali’s blessing had truly been heard by the gods. Or perhaps it was because she and Lin Fei had prayed day and night before the Bodhisattva afterward. In any case, she had indeed been shown favor by the gods once.

She had been reborn.