The moonlight poured out like a river of silver, draping the thirty-eight main streets of Chang’an in a frost-white stillness, as if the city were a palace in the heavens. Then a bank of clouds drifted over, splitting the moonlight apart — and the land below swayed like a lone boat before waves, one moment lifted high, the next swallowed by darkness.
When Princess Taiping’s banquet finally ended, the hour was very late, and by the time Su Xingzhi and Su Yuji made their way back to their small courtyard it was deep in the night. Su Yuji had been unusually quiet the entire walk home, but Su Xingzhi seemed preoccupied with thoughts of his own, and did not notice her silence.
Su Yuji took out her key, unlocked the courtyard gate. The long-unserviced hinges groaned and squeaked, the sound cutting sharply through the still night. Only then did Su Xingzhi seem to come back to himself. With practiced ease he headed toward the kitchen: “You barely touched anything at the banquet today. It’s too late for anything heavy, but I’ll cook you a bowl of flat noodle soup.”
Su Yuji drifted slowly to the kitchen doorway and stopped, watching as he rolled up his sleeves, baring his arms, and began at the stove — kneading dough, cutting vegetables.
They had come from a lavish banquet moments before, where the cloying, sweet perfumes of the princes’ wives and princesses still seemed to linger at her nose — and yet this scene before her reminded Su Yuji, in utterly plain terms, that that world was not hers.
Even dressed in the most costly silk ensemble, she might look outwardly no different from those noble-born young ladies. But they would never know what it was like to come home still hungry, wondering what to do with the kitchen, fretting over the dirt on the hem of a skirt, calculating how much of their savings had gone toward the outfit worn today.
If she had never been shown the clouds above, she might have gone on living contentedly on the ground. But they had told her — you were born in the clouds; you only fell by accident. Now accept your fate and live quietly as a common person.
After their parents passed away, most of the household duties had fallen to the two of them. Both Su Xingzhi and Su Yuji had learned to cook early on. Though Su Xingzhi rarely let her do the work — first because she was small, and then simply because the habit had formed.
Once, Su Yuji had not thought twice about any of this. If Su Xingzhi cooked, she swept the rooms — the household chores were shared between them, that was all. But now she began to turn it over in her mind: why did he shield her at every turn, always taking the heaviest and dirtiest work for himself?
Out of obligation? Out of pity? Or out of guilt?
Su Xingzhi moved quickly. Before long the noodle soup was done. He sprinkled scallions on top and drizzled a ring of hot oil over it — the aroma spreading through the air at once. As he tidied the flour and vegetable scraps from the stove’s surface, he said over his shoulder: “Take the bowl to your room and start eating. I’ll come when I’m done cleaning up.”
Su Yuji glanced at the pot. “Why is there only one bowl?”
“I ate at the banquet — I’m not hungry. Hurry up and eat before it gets cold.”
Su Yuji carried the steaming bowl of flat noodle soup away in silence. By the time Su Xingzhi had tidied the kitchen and came into the room, he was surprised to find two sets of bowls and chopsticks on the table. He sighed: “I really am not hungry. Go ahead and eat.”
Su Yuji poured half the bowl into his, and said evenly: “I can’t finish it all. The rest is yours.”
Su Xingzhi could only sit down. He picked up his chopsticks and moved the egg over to Su Yuji’s bowl. He claimed he wasn’t hungry — yet he finished eating well ahead of her. Su Yuji, on the other hand, was sipping her soup one desultory spoonful at a time, looking very much like someone with no appetite at all.
Su Yuji watched Su Xingzhi across the table. His sleeves were still rolled up, his forearms unselfconsciously exposed to the cool air. In the censor’s uniform he looked lean, but now that his sleeves were pushed back one could see that his forearms were thick and solid, his hands roughened with calluses — hands that had done farm work.
Young men who grew up in Chang’an or Luoyang would not have hands like these. Even those who practiced martial arts constantly — like Ming Huazhang, for example — had calluses that sat at the web of the thumb, thin ones left by sword-grip and bow-drawing, entirely different from the hands of someone who had labored in the fields.
But those pampered hands would never know how to knead dough — how much water to add, how much flour, to get the noodle skin thin without falling apart. Su Yuji swallowed a mouthful of noodle, feeling the warmth travel down her throat and into the hollow of her stomach, where it caught like a match and spread its heat through her entire body.
With something warm in her stomach, her emotions seemed to ease somewhat. Su Yuji wiped her mouth with her handkerchief and asked: “What poem did you write today, that even the young ladies of the Duke Zhenguo household gave you their flowers?”
Su Xingzhi paused in clearing the bowls and chopsticks. He had known she must have seen. He had no desire to lie to her — but he had just given his word to Ming Huashang that he would not, for now, tell Su Yuji about the child-swapping. For Su Yuji’s safety, he had no choice but to keep it from her a little longer.
Su Xingzhi said in a light, dismissive tone: “You mean Second Young Lady Ming? She didn’t know who to give it to and happened to see me nearby — she gave it on a whim. Nothing meaningful.”
Su Yuji fixed him with a steady look and asked: “Is that so? Ming Huazhang wasn’t far away. She could have given it to Xie Jichuan or Wei Zi, people she is close with — yet she gave it to none of them, and to you instead?”
Su Xingzhi looked away, and said: “It was purely coincidence. She’s still young — no need to read anything into it.”
The emotions Su Yuji had just managed to calm flared up again at these words. Before, she had only felt the unfairness of being toyed with by fate. Now she felt the anger of being deceived by someone close.
Su Yuji’s lips curved as if she meant to smile — but no smile came. Her gaze was sharp as ice, and fierce as fire. “I’m reading too much into it?” she demanded. “She offered her flower in goodwill; you’ve been shielding her at every turn. You are both upright and honorable people — and I alone am the malicious, jealous one?”
Su Xingzhi froze. He finally realized something was wrong with Su Yuji’s mood. He stepped toward her, reaching out. “Yuji, what’s the matter?”
“Don’t touch me!” Su Yuji’s voice rose sharply. She threw off his hand. Her gaze blazed as she fixed him with it. “After the poetry, you disappeared for a long time. Did you go to meet her?”
At the banquet, when Princess Taiping had proposed giving flowers to whomever each woman considered “Chang’an’s greatest talent,” her first instinct had been him. Whatever happened, he was always the finest person in her eyes. She had been about to go straight to him with the flower — and then she had seen him speaking with Ming Huashang, and watched as Ming Huashang quietly left a flower on his writing desk.
Su Xingzhi had picked it up, looked at it, then discreetly tucked it into his sleeve.
At the sight of that, Su Yuji’s heart twisted with a blend of indignation, resentment, and jealousy. Su Xingzhi was supposed to stand unreservedly on her side — how dare he show partiality toward another woman?
Su Yuji shot Su Xingzhi a cold look, unwilling to hear another word from him, and turned to leave. She knew no one at the banquet and had had no option but to sit alone and stew. In the end, not knowing what to do with the flower in her hand, she had walked back to the men’s hall, intending to simply toss it to Su Xingzhi.
What she found instead, to her surprise, was that Su Xingzhi was not there. She saw his poem — written in a style cold and principled and incisive, just like him. She waited beside it for some time, and he did not come back.
The longer Su Yuji waited, the more agitated she became. At some point she stopped caring about propriety and just threw the flower outside the hall. She did not know when Ming Huashang had gone out, but she had noticed that not long after Ming Huashang came back in, Su Xingzhi had returned too.
Su Yuji had never wanted to believe the servants’ whispers. She had faith that Su Xingzhi’s feelings for her were genuine — that talk of him concealing things for the sake of a biological sister was just the servants stirring up trouble. But at this moment, Su Yuji wavered.
A woman’s instinct told her something was wrong. Yet she still could not bring herself to believe that the older brother who had held her hand through childhood could have deceived her so thoroughly.
After asking the question, Su Yuji kept her eyes on Su Xingzhi and watched his reaction. Su Xingzhi unconsciously looked away, and dropped his gaze to the table as he continued clearing it. “Yes. The Jing Zhaoyiin office and the Censorate have overlapping duties — she wanted to discuss some case files.”
Su Yuji saw his reaction, and felt herself go colder inside. Su Xingzhi had never been a convincing liar. If he felt he had nothing to hide, he would simply sigh with exasperation and let Su Yuji question him all she liked — he would never sidestep. But today, he had dodged her eyes.
Su Yuji stared hard at him, and pressed: “You’ve never been one for accommodating people — or for private meetings at someone’s request. Why is it that when she asks, you went? Do you truly have no hidden feelings where she is concerned?”
Su Xingzhi was not the sort of person who deferred to social pressure. In the time since coming to Chang’an, many people had invited him to expensive dinners — every one of them declined. Yet when Ming Huashang asked him to discuss case files, he had gone without a second thought.
That was unlike him. Was it because he somehow knew Ming Huashang was his sister — and that was why he indulged her so?
Su Xingzhi’s fingers clenched around his chopsticks. An explanation was all but on his tongue — but when he thought of the Duke Zhenguo’s strange manner, the third child of uncertain origin, he bit it back and said: “No. I am nothing more than a poor scholar. She is the daughter of a ducal household, raised from birth in silk and gold. What place would my hidden feelings have there?”
Su Xingzhi had meant this to set Su Yuji’s mind at ease — to tell her there was no romantic feeling between him and Ming Huashang. But when the words came out, Su Yuji went quiet.
Su Yuji fixed him with an unmoving stare. Su Xingzhi gradually began to feel uneasy beneath it, and quickly set everything down and moved toward her. “Yuji, what is it?”
Those words had struck her exactly where she was most raw. Su Yuji had held herself together the whole journey home — now she finally broke. She shoved Su Xingzhi away with both hands, gave a laugh of bitter self-contempt, and said: “I see. She was raised in silk and gold and cannot be expected to endure hardship. I can. Su Xingzhi, you have truly disappointed me.”
Su Xingzhi was taken aback — he didn’t understand how those words had caused offense. While he was still trying to work out what had happened, Su Yuji had already pushed open the door and walked out in long, rapid strides. Su Xingzhi finally grasped the seriousness of the situation and rushed after her: “Yuji, the curfew is in effect — where are you going?”
But by the time he reached the doorway, the alley outside was empty, with no trace of Su Yuji anywhere. Su Xingzhi locked the gate quickly and searched the nearby area one dwelling at a time. Su Yuji, concealed in the shadows, gave him one cold glance, turned, and walked off in the opposite direction.
·
At the same hour, in the resplendent halls of Princess Taiping’s residence, the grand banquet had come to an end — and amid the scattered remains of the evening’s excess, an emptiness had settled over the place. A woman in magnificent robes stood before the window, gazing at the full moon for a long, long time.
In all these years, Princess Taiping had never once longed for Xue Shao, for Second Brother, for the days when her father was still alive — not as she did in this moment. If her father had not died, or if Second Brother had not died, would she now be standing in moonlight with someone she loved — composing poems together, or teaching their children, or lost in each other’s arms?
In the warmth of wine and feeling, she might even have teased him: your nephew bears such a resemblance to you in your youth, yet is more beautiful and refined than you ever were. He would have stroked a beard by now, I imagine — and with a feigned air of wounded dignity would say: “The bloom of youth is gone. You must make do with what you have, Your Highness — do not go seeking younger beauty.”
Princess Taiping burst out laughing — and when the laughter ended, there was only endless grief.
He was dead. Second Brother was dead. And her first husband had been replaced by another man. The world outside spoke of her as fortunate, this Li Lingyue — her first husband the most celebrated noble beauty in all Chang’an, and though he had been swept away in a treason case, even her second husband was a man of remarkable talent and striking looks, who had abandoned a childhood sweetheart just to be her consort because she had singled him out in a crowd.
But if Xue Shao had lived, she would never have needed another husband, and she would never have had to endure Prince Ding’s hollow sentiments. All these years, no matter how close the two of them grew, he had always kept another woman in his heart. She, Li Lingyue, was a woman of immense pride — what right had she to play second place to anyone?
Even to a dead woman.
Princess Taiping reached out, cupping in her palm a handful of moonlight that would never be held. Her thoughts drifted without warning to Ming Huazhang.
That child had been raised well in the Duke Zhenguo household — upright, forthright, sharp-minded. His looks took after Xue Shao, who was acknowledged as the finest-looking man of his time; yet his bearing was a striking image of Second Brother.
But he was far colder than Li Xian had ever been. When he had looked at her and said “until one of us is no more” — the light in his eyes had been so absolute that Princess Taiping almost saw, for a moment, her mother: the woman who had wept and knelt at the foot of the steps, and yet still, without flinching, had ordered Xue Shao’s death.
Princess Taiping laughed at herself with bitter fondness. He had certainly inherited well — only the best qualities of his elders found their way into him.
She sighed, and let her thoughts drift back on that tide of moonlight, unchanging across the ages, to the autumn of the thirty-second year of the Yonghui reign.
The times had grown tense from the sixth month onward. It began when Empress Wu wrote “The Standard of the Young Sun” and “Biographies of Filial Sons” for Li Xian, reproaching the Crown Prince for his lack of filial devotion. Shortly afterward, Empress Wu’s trusted confidant Ming Chongruo was killed by bandits. The Empress suspected Li Xian’s hand in it — and so was set in motion the incident that shook the realm: the Eastern Palace treason case.
When Li Xian was entangled in that accusation of rebellion, everyone, from Emperor Gaozong down to the common people, believed him innocent. Only their mother — as though she had forgotten this was her own son — pressed him step by step, without mercy. Li Xian, with no recourse, composed “The Verse of the Yellow Terrace Melons”: “Under the yellow terrace I planted melons; when ripe, the gourds were many. To pluck one leaves the vine fair; to pluck again leaves it sparse; to pluck a third time barely sustains; but to pluck all is to return with only the bare vine.”
He compared their mother, Empress Wu, to the one who plucks; the four brothers to four gourds hanging by threads, hoping she would stop before the vine was stripped bare. But their mother was not only a woman — she was a politician. Empress Wu remained cold-headed, dispatched her trusted subordinates to investigate the treason case against the Crown Prince, and in the end had hundreds of sets of armor found in the Eastern Palace stables.
Emperor Gaozong wished to minimize the matter and forgive it. Empress Wu was unmoved, declaring: “Li Xian’s treachery demands justice for the greater good, regardless of kinship. It cannot be pardoned.”
Gaozong had no answer. He could only strip Li Xian of his rank and reduce him to a commoner. When the news reached Li Xian in the palace, he gave a long sigh and said: “A Crown Prince who plots treason — faithless as a subject, unfilial as a son, without principle as a lord. A man of such failings has no face left by which to remain among the living. My death is the only way to set my sovereign’s heart at ease. I only hope that my dying will cool my mother’s fury, and that she will spare my virtuous wife and children, the attendants of the Eastern Palace.”
When he had said this, Li Xian drew his sword and cut his own throat — so swift and decisive that he did not offer even one soft word to the messenger who had come to him. When news of his death spread, the grief of the entire court and population was immense, and Emperor Gaozong wept openly with sorrow. Having rid herself of her greatest political adversary, Empress Wu’s long-absent maternal feeling returned somewhat — she did not pursue charges against Li Xian’s consort or eldest legitimate son, instead sending them into exile in Puzhou. The scholars, generals, and advisors who had followed Li Xian were stripped of their posts, but not one of them was harmed.
At the time, Li Xian’s virtuous reputation had spread throughout the court and the realm. He had been the legitimate heir in name as well as by nature. Though Empress Wu had already governed for over a decade, she remained, in the end, only an empress consort — had Li Xian given everything to resist, his chances would not have been negligible. But Li Xian was unwilling to raise a blade against his own mother, and equally unwilling to let his silence cost the lives of those around him — and so he had chosen his own death, to preserve both loyalty and filial devotion in the same act.
Prince Zhanghuai had lived and died openly, with virtue and benevolence until the end. And yet he had lost — precisely because of that open, benevolent heart. In the immediate aftermath of his death, the Eastern Palace family was indeed spared — but only four years later, Empress Wu sent word and had them driven to their deaths.
Seventeen years had come and gone. How many towers had risen and fallen, how many flowerings had returned to dust — and yet the court still carried Prince Zhanghuai in their thoughts without rest. Even his own younger brothers and sisters could not release the grief: their most brilliant, most devoted, most magnanimous elder brother was gone, just like that.
At least he had left a son. The child was still very young, not yet wise to the cruelty of the human world — which was why he had not been able to bring himself to let blood flow. Let him grow a little older, and he would understand: a man who cannot bear to kill will never become a skilled politician.
Princess Taiping felt certain that once he had come into his knowledge, he would be grateful to her.
She stood leaning at the rail, lost in thought, and did not notice that Prince Ding had been standing at the far end of the corridor for some time, watching her. The maidservant stood with hands lowered and asked quietly: “Your Highness the Prince Consort — shall I go and call for the Princess?”
Prince Ding glanced through the window and saw, behind her, an ink portrait on the writing table. Having lived in this residence for twelve years, he recognized it without effort: it was a keepsake left behind by the first Prince Consort, Xue Shao.
That it should occupy the Princess’s thoughts for this long — that she had not even noticed someone approaching — there was no need to wonder any further about who held her heart.
Prince Ding made no sound. He turned, stepped away without a backward look, and said in a level voice: “No need. Do not tell the Princess I came.”
At last the moon broke free from the clouds, and its silver light fell without favor upon the world below. The imperial guards made their rounds along the streets; some, slipping past their notice, scaled the neighborhood walls and went off to seek pleasure in the entertainment district; others hurried through the lanes with a lantern, looking for someone; others stood by a railing and gazed at the moon; others had curled under their quilts long since, crying quietly in the dark.
Yet in the end, every sound fell away to stillness. The moon drifted west, its light gradually fading to a thin transparency. A fiercer brilliance was gathering itself in the east.
Dawn was approaching. Just as the moon has never paused for any single person, no matter the grief — the sun would always rise on schedule. Life would always go on.
The second year of Shengli, the twelfth day of the second month. Three days until the Flower Festival. Sixteen hours until the Empress’s deadline for solving the case.