There was a saying that circulated in the criminal underworld of Quecheng: Better to hand yourself in at the yamen than to scale a palace wall.

The meaning being that the palace walls of Quecheng were simply too difficult to climb — layer upon layer inside and out, high in some places and low in others, uneven and treacherous, to say nothing of the risk of being cut down by the Imperial Guards within. Men would sooner turn themselves in than attempt it.

And now, standing at the base of the Tian family’s courtyard wall, Xiao Nanhui found herself thinking that those petty criminals in the capital perhaps had not seen much of the world. Against the wall before her eyes, that palace wall was absolutely nothing.

The Tian family’s outer wall stood a full two zhang high by the most conservative estimate. The wall bore the marks of being patched together and built up again and again. Despite all those additions, the surface had been scraped smooth and lacquered with a coat of tung oil — even a mouse would slide off it, let alone a person climbing up. Looking further to the top of the wall, it was densely studded with iron nails an inch long — not even a bird could land there, let alone a human foot.

The Tian family had truly spared no expense. The last private well that had not yet gone dry in Suyan’s eastern city was guarded to the death behind these walls of iron and bronze. Her lightness skills were not strong enough to risk it.

Was there really no crack to slip through?

Hmph. How could there not be?

Wherever there are people, there are gaps to exploit — that was an eternal and unchanging truth.

Xiao Nanhui found a secluded spot across the street from the Tian family’s rear gate and hunkered down. She spent several hours there, eyes fixed unblinking on that rear gate, not letting a single sound or movement escape her notice.

At last, the long summer day of the Jizhou region neared its end. As the sun set, the rear gate of the Tian estate creaked open a crack.

A quick-looking young manservant peered through the gap in the gate, and after confirming there was no one around, carried a large wooden barrel out from inside and set it on the stone step at the rear entrance. Then he scurried back inside in a flurry and was not heard from again.

Xiao Nanhui waited a while longer, and once she was satisfied that all was quiet, she walked up to the stone step.

Only when she got close did she notice that a string of copper coins was pressed beneath the lid of the barrel — not many, but enough to be a meaningful sum in this impoverished city. Xiao Nanhui was puzzled, and casually lifted the lid, immediately regretting her decision.

A stench hit her full in the face. She hastily replaced the lid.

A thoroughly genuine barrel of “liquid gold,” that was.

The odor was still circling in her nasal passages. Before she could recover, heavy footsteps came from the end of the street, and she quickly retreated to her earlier hiding spot.

Before long, a middle-aged man carrying a shoulder pole hurried up and stopped at the stone step. With practiced ease, he wrapped a cloth around his nose and mouth, poured the entire contents of the barrel into his two large buckets, set the empty barrel back in its place, pocketed the copper coins with satisfaction, and left whistling a cheerful tune.

When he had walked far enough away, Xiao Nanhui returned to her position. She looked left and right, then reached into an inner pocket in her clothing and drew out a string of copper coins, carefully counting out several pieces.

This was the last string of copper coins she had left on her. It was not much, but every coin had been painstakingly hidden and preserved across a grueling journey, and it bore a weight entirely different from the silver that came easily back in Quecheng.

She steeled herself and pried off two more copper coins from the now sparsely populated string.

When something must be done, one must be willing to be ruthless.

Xiao Nanhui put the remaining coins back in the inner pocket and set the ones she had just taken beside the empty barrel. She thought again, picked them back up, hopped off the step, walked a few paces, and scattered them on the ground not far from the rear gate.

The night began to spread through Suyan’s eastern city; a crescent moon climbed into the sky.

The temperature around her had dropped considerably, but the air was still so dry it was like swallowing a blade when you breathed in through the nose.

It was the same young manservant again. As usual, he carried the empty barrel back inside, and was just about to close the gate when his whole body suddenly froze.

In the moonlight, across the street — its surface coated a dark gray by yellow sand — something was glinting.

He hesitated, looked left and right again, then looked back toward the courtyard behind him, finally satisfying himself there was no one, before darting quickly forward to investigate.

It really was money. Scattered across the ground were more than ten copper coins — roughly the same count as those he had set out on the barrel earlier.

Perhaps the night soil collector had been careless, and the money hadn’t sat steady and fell off. It was a back alley, rarely visited, and now that night had fallen, it was entirely plausible that no one would have noticed.

If you weren’t careful yourself, you can’t blame me.

The manservant congratulated himself on his good fortune and picked up every last copper coin, tucked them into his sleeve, turned back through the gate, closed it securely, and acted as though nothing had happened at all.

What he had failed to notice, however, was this:

In the moment he had stepped off the stoop to collect those scattered copper coins, a shadow that had been pressed flat against the gate’s bracket in the darkness peeled itself free and slipped, without a sound, through that door crack.

~~*

Once inside the courtyard, Xiao Nanhui began quietly memorizing the route she had taken, while taking care not to alert anyone in the compound. She moved cautiously.

Yet as she made her way through, the entire courtyard was dead silent. It was already night, true, but for a wealthy household that could afford lamp oil, it was far too early for sleep. Not to mention the household members and their mistress — she hadn’t even seen a single servant. It was genuinely strange.

Estimating the direction of the water well, Xiao Nanhui began from the outer perimeter and worked her way inward toward the heart of the estate. It didn’t take much effort. But when she actually arrived at the well, she found she had been thinking too simply. There was indeed a rope hanging from the well, but when she pulled it up she found no bucket on the end. Nor was there one anywhere in the vicinity. Xiao Nanhui wasn’t satisfied and went through a few of the unoccupied rooms nearby — she couldn’t find a single vessel that could hold water, not even a flower vase.

This was no coincidence.

On reflection it wasn’t hard to understand the reasoning: the well was right there, and no matter how vigilantly it was watched, there would always be moments of inattention. Far better to control access from the containers themselves — anyone who wanted to draw water each day had to apply for an authorized wooden bucket and bring it to the well. That was the only way it was permitted.

This wealthy household’s life, it appeared, was not much better than anyone else’s.

Xiao Nanhui stared down into the well at the clear, glittering water below, and at the moon reflected in it, and let out a long sigh.

Getting a drink of water was truly not easy.

Fortunately, she had some skills to her name. Troublesome as it was, it was not entirely without a solution.

The rope at the well had already seen some fraying and probably could not bear a person’s weight. Xiao Nanhui set her bag down beneath the stones beside the well, untied the water skin and fastened it to the rope, lowered it down into the well, then backed herself up and descended into the well too — bracing herself with arms and legs against the well walls, inching her way toward the bottom.

The well walls were covered in a fair amount of green moss, slick and difficult to grip. She nearly slipped several times but held on through sheer force. By the time she reached the bottom, her whole body ached all over — more exhausting than an army march by several measures.

The water at the bottom was the clearest she had seen in days. Xiao Nanhui gasped for breath, untied the water skin that the rope end had been tied to, drank her fill greedily, then refilled the water skin to the brim, re-tied it to the rope, and prepared to climb back up before pulling the water skin up with her.

By the time the whole ordeal was done, she looked up at that crescent moon framed by the well mouth — it was already past midnight.

If she ever had to do this a second time, she really wasn’t sure she could manage.

Right as she was thinking this, the rope dangling above her suddenly moved.

Before she could react, her water skin went shooting upward along the rope with a whoosh. She reached out to grab it — and missed.

What — what was happening? Someone had come to the well?

No time to think. Xiao Nanhui immediately scrambled hand and foot up toward the well mouth. The urgency of it meant she climbed up faster than she had gone down, though her already thoroughly holed clothing was further shredded in several more places.

When at last one hand gripped the top of the well and she pushed her head out to look — in the moonlight, a small, round, chubby child, whose plumpness rivaled Bolao’s, was hugging her water skin and draining the last drop of water from it.

Xiao Nanhui said nothing, but her breathing was still audible.

The little chubby figure heard the sound and turned around blankly, only to find a disheveled, terrible-complexioned, indeterminate-in-gender person staring at him with murderous eyes.

The water skin slipped from his hands. He stumbled back half a step belatedly and sat down hard on the ground from fright.

“Are — are you a person or a ghost?”

Xiao Nanhui was already climbing out, and she couldn’t be bothered to deal with him at all. She walked straight over, picked up the water skin, turned it upside down and shook it — completely empty.

The water she had gone through so much effort to draw had just gone into someone else’s belly.

Xiao Nanhui closed her eyes from sheer aggravation. One hand reached out with unerring precision and grabbed the little chubby figure by the ear.

“The water. Spit it back out for me!”

The chubby child had already determined that Xiao Nanhui was a person, and moreover a person who did not belong in this courtyard, and screwed up his courage to call for help.

“Someone come here, there’s a—”

He had only gotten out a few words before Xiao Nanhui’s hand of doom moved to his throat. His voice jammed and went silent.

“It’s the middle of the night. Shout if you want — see whether people arrive faster, or whether you die faster.”

The chubby child’s face turned red. His eyes brimmed with tears and began to roll back. Xiao Nanhui, not at all keen on having to dispose of a body shortly thereafter, released her hand.

The chubby child, having recovered access to air, knelt on the ground coughing, and even managed to keep up commentary while doing so: “You miserable thief, you break in to steal water, I’ll tell the master and have people come tie you up.”

Even when bullied to this degree, he wasn’t kneeling and begging for mercy. Xiao Nanhui found the person somewhat interesting, and deliberately made things difficult: “You are a manservant in this courtyard. You came to steal water without the master’s permission — if the master were to come, you wouldn’t fare well either.”

“Will the master believe me or believe you? I just need to say you drank all the water and I happened to catch you in the act — naturally no one would stand on your side.” The little manservant, knowing he couldn’t run, adopted a reckless attitude, plonked himself down on the ground, stiffened his neck, and assumed a dead-pig-unafraid-of-boiling-water expression. “Hmph. That water is already in my stomach anyway — what can you do to me?”

Playing the scoundrel, were we?

Xiao Nanhui drew the dagger from her boot with a sharp hiss, and wiped it on her sleeve.

Ahh, it had been a while since she’d handled a weapon. The grip felt so good.

“What — what are you doing?”

Xiao Nanhui tossed the blade in her hand up and down and looked over the chubby child’s belly with an expression that was not entirely wholesome: “The water is in your belly. If I just cut you open, won’t it be right there?”

The manservant swallowed. Xiao Nanhui’s face, unwashed for quite some time, was rather frightful. She looked completely like a destitute female bandit at the end of her rope. People in this city had been half-crazed with thirst for too long now — there was probably nothing she wouldn’t stoop to.

“You — you’d better not try to frighten me. Water goes into the stomach — can it still be sitting there waiting?”

“Then what’s to be done? I’m terribly thirsty, there’s no other way. I’ve heard that under this thin layer of skin, people are mostly water — all of it is in the blood. If I just make one or two random stabs in you, I could manage a drink, and that ought to keep me going a day and a half.”

As the saying goes: a quick death is better than a slow torture. Stabbed here once and sliced there once — what if in the end you were gutted and still couldn’t die? That would truly be too awful.

“Elder sister! Honorable aunt! Dearest ancestor! Spare me, please, I had no idea what I was doing when I drank your water!”

The chubby manservant lunged forward and threw both arms around Xiao Nanhui’s legs, and while he was at it, wiped his dry-cried snot on her. Xiao Nanhui hooked her fingers under his fleshy double chin and, with a look of distaste, pushed him to a safer distance.

“I will ask one question. You will answer one question. Any evasion, and we return to where we were a moment ago.”

The manservant swallowed hard and managed a labored nod. Xiao Nanhui put the dagger away.

“What is your name?”

“Wu Xiaoliu.”

Xiao Nanhui’s dagger came out again with a flash. Wu Xiaoliu looked as though he might cry: “Honored lady, I know my name sounds casual, but it’s absolutely real. My parents had no learning, they gave it to me randomly—”

Xiao Nanhui gave him a look and began wiping the blade at leisure. “What’s the hurry? I didn’t say anything.” She looked at him. “How long have you been working at the Tian household?”

“It’ll be five full years soon.”

“How many people are there in the Tian household in total?”

“One family master, three young masters, sixteen female members of the household, fewer than thirty maids and manservants.”

To be keeping such a large household fed and alive in a place that couldn’t squeeze out a single drop of water — this Tian family was no simple matter.

“Has this Tian family ever had dealings with people from the western city?”

At these words from Xiao Nanhui, Wu Xiaoliu paused noticeably, and shot a quick glance at Xiao Nanhui: “Before, there was none. Recently—”

Xiao Nanhui raised an eyebrow. She had been born in the southwest of Jizhou, and her features naturally leaned toward a sharper cast. In ordinary times, when she grinned and horsed around, she came across as simply upright and unassuming. But now, with even the faintest edge of authority, she looked quite formidable. Wu Xiaoliu struggled with himself, and in the end told the whole thing faithfully.

“Recently I’ve heard that the western city is also unsettled. People have come from Bijiang saying they want to borrow land for a war, and everyone figures that once lent it won’t be returned — that Suyan will just become the Bai Family’s territory from then on.”

Wu Xiaoliu spoke in a low voice. Xiao Nanhui listened beside him, her face still showing no expression — but her heart was already racing.

The Bai Family knew of Tiancheng’s intentions, and was going to strike first. Suyan, however impoverished, was a strategic stronghold, fought over bitterly since antiquity because of its harsh terrain. With two sides now competing, the Sun Family was caught in the middle — sooner or later they would have to choose which side to stand on. Better to decide early and avoid being swept up in the fallout.

“I only overheard it secondhand. Apparently the Tian family is going to marry a daughter into the Sun family in the western city — it’s happening any day now.” Wu Xiaoliu finished speaking and raised his eyes to steal a glance at Xiao Nanhui.

“The Tian family is marrying off a daughter? Why hasn’t there been any stir in the city about it?”

Wu Xiaoliu shook his head, looking sorrowful himself: “She’s going to be a concubine. What face is there to make a grand show of it? They’d rather no one knew. Pitiful girl — a young age, said to be quite beautiful too, and she’s walking into a tiger’s den.”

A wedding procession, no matter how subdued, still needed a whole group of people to make the journey from the east side to the west.

She had been worrying about finding no way past this triple checkpoint, and now it seemed the heavens were lending her a hand.

“To think that even the Tian family has come to marrying off daughters to save themselves and throw in with the western city — I’d say the way the wind is blowing couldn’t be clearer.”

Wu Xiaoliu did not follow the meaning of Xiao Nanhui’s words, and was merely working out whether he might be allowed to go now. He squeezed out a smile: “Honored lady, if there’s nothing else you need to ask, can I go?”

Xiao Nanhui did not nod. Instead she looked him up and down until he was beginning to squirm, and then came out with a sentence that quite alarmed him: “I think you’d better not go. Come with me to the Sun family.”

Wu Xiaoliu stood rooted to the spot as though he had been struck dumb. “Go to the Sun family?”

“Of course. Neither of us in this eastern city has enough to eat or drink. Why not go west and try our luck? Who knows, perhaps we’ll prosper from it?” Xiao Nanhui said with a bright smile, though her eyes held precious little room for negotiation.

Wu Xiaoliu, with the look of someone who had drawn the short straw, opened his mouth with difficulty: “Honored lady, I think — prosperity and all that aside, a person does need to stay alive first. The eastern city may be suffering, but it’s still better than walking into that den of wolves and tigers to be tormented at another’s whim. A person living in this world likes to feel in command of their own life. If it comes to the point where even one’s own death isn’t in one’s own hands — that would be too awful.”

Xiao Nanhui tucked the dagger back into her boot, bowed her head in an attitude of deep reflection. “What you say does make sense…”

Wu Xiaoliu hastened to nod in agreement. “Right, think it over carefully—”

“No need to think any further. It’s settled. Since the Sun family is so dangerous, all the more reason for you to come with me — because if it truly comes to the worst, at least there’ll be someone to finish the job for me. And of course, if you end up in the same half-dead state, I certainly won’t hold back my hand for you either. How about it? Not a bad proposal, is it?”

Wu Xiaoliu said nothing. He knew there was nothing he could say now that would matter in the slightest. He cast one resentful glance at that flat, deflated water skin lying on the ground, and cursed his own decision to drink that bag of water.