Shān Chá did not understand why Ming Huashang wanted to see their living quarters, but with the Jiang Heir behind her, Shān Chá could not afford to refuse. She had nothing else to do anyway, so she took Ming Huashang on a tour.
Ming Huashang went up to the second floor first. She turned off the staircase and sure enough found an unassuming door nearby. Ming Huashang pushed it open; the inside was dim, the contents barely legible as shapes in the dark.
Light came in from behind her, and in the dimness she made out a wooden rack against the south wall with wine vessels, tea cups, and gambling accessories arranged on it. Ming Huashang stepped carefully inside and asked, “Why is it so dark in here?”
Shān Chá leaned against the doorframe with obvious boredom: “Three walls of solid masonry — of course it’s dark.”
Indeed — three sides were all solid walls. On the north wall, near the top, a small ventilation window had been cut, but it opened onto the staircase shaft and served only to circulate air, not to let in light.
Ming Huashang moved around the room. She could see it was in frequent use, but no one had bothered to tidy it; the cups and implements were scattered at random. She paused before the south wall. Behind it lay the Wind Sentiment Longing Garden — where Zhang Zi Yun had died. But no matter how long she studied it, she could find no possibility of passing from this side room into the adjoining room.
Ming Huashang could only leave with some regret. She went to the door of the Wind Sentiment Longing Garden and was immediately confronted by the large, bold characters of the official seal — “Sealed.” Ming Huashang circled around the seals, studying them carefully, and Shān Chá watched her with growing suspicion: “There’s a dead man inside and you don’t even flinch — the way you look at it, you seem almost eager to get in. You’re not actually thinking of going inside, are you?”
Exposed. Ming Huashang gave a cool sniff of disdain and said, “I’m only checking whether you’ve been lying. Did Zhang San truly take his own life? I warn you — the Marquis Jiang’an’s estate is not one to be trifled with. If anything happens to the young master here, the Marquis Jiang’an will make sure you never live it down.”
“Truly,” Shān Chá said. “Zhang San arrived at roughly the hour of You. Yu Qiong said she admired his painting skill, so she privately drank with him in the Wind Sentiment Longing Garden. Around the hour of Xu, customers were arriving in greater numbers, and while I was getting ready to dance, there was suddenly a commotion downstairs. It turned out that a patron who regularly reserved Yu Qiong had arrived and was asking for her by name. The madam went to the Wind Sentiment Longing Garden to fetch her, but Zhang San said the painting wasn’t finished and refused to let her go. The madam had the mute manservant send up a few jars of wine, and he settled down. Hmph — these sour literary types are all the same.”
Ming Huashang asked: “He was sitting there perfectly calmly drinking — how did he come to take his own life?”
“How should I know?” Shān Chá said. “By the hour of Xu I was already in the main hall performing — there were many people there to appreciate my dancing. I wasn’t paying attention to some writer. By the time I finished it was already past the hour of Hai. I was exhausted and had barely rested when the madam downstairs let out a scream. I sent someone to ask, and learned that there had been a death — the bookworm had been so devoted to painting that he had slit his own throat.”
Ming Huashang raised an eyebrow: “Slit his own throat?”
“Yes.” Shān Chá said, matter-of-factly. “After the hour of Xu, the door to the Wind Sentiment Longing Garden was shut the whole time. There were so many guests in the main hall — so many pairs of eyes — and everyone could see clearly. With everyone watching, could someone have slipped past all those eyes and gone inside to kill him? After the hour of Hai, when the madam finally had a free moment, she went to the Wind Sentiment Longing Garden to tell him to leave — only to push the door open and find a dead man. The madam had several people with her at the time; they all saw for themselves that the private room’s doors and windows were sealed tight, the floor clean, and Zhang San was propped against the low table with a knife in his hand, blood at his throat, and even a faint smile still on his face — he had clearly been dead for some time. The table had a painting on it. Everyone said he had given himself over so completely to painting that his spirit had passed into the work, and his soul had entered it to become a god.”
Ming Huashang was silent. If she had not known the valuable map Zhang Zi Yun carried was missing, she might very well have accepted this as a suicide.
She paced outside the Wind Sentiment Longing Garden, measuring the layout with slow steps. Through the gap in the window covering, she could make out the general arrangement: the north and south walls of the Wind Sentiment Longing Garden were solid masonry, the east window faced the street, and the west door and window both opened onto the second-floor corridor.
The east window had Xuan Xiaowei agents watching from the street, who confirmed no one had opened it. The west door had been under Moon Fox’s unbroken surveillance the whole time — he was equally certain no one had approached it.
This was strange. Did the murderer know some art of passing through solid walls? How exactly had they entered the private room, killed Zhang Zi Yun, and made off with the painting?
Or perhaps she needed to shift her thinking entirely. If no one had entered or left the sealed room after the hour of Xu, was it possible that some device had been planted inside beforehand, killing Zhang Zi Yun at a delay? But then how to account for the disappearance of the plan of the Daming Palace?
She could not untangle it here, and decided to finish mapping the layout of Tiānxiāng Pavilion first. She did not believe there were ghosts that committed murders or spirits that entered paintings — whatever “sealed room” this was, there had to be a mechanism, one that relied on some feature of the building’s construction.
Ming Huashang said, “Let’s go up to the third floor.”
The rooms the courtesans lived in were all on the third floor. The second-floor private rooms were elegant and luxurious, but they had nothing to do with the women themselves — even a rising star like Shān Chá could only be assigned a small room on the third floor, and eating, sleeping, dressing, and entertaining patrons all happened there.
Shān Chá could not refuse and led Ming Huashang upstairs. The staircase was built of wooden planks, hollow underneath. Ming Huashang’s legs went slightly wobbly as she climbed; she could not help gripping the railing tightly. Distracted, her hem caught in a gap between the planks.
Ming Huashang crouched down with a shudder to free it. She deliberately avoided looking down. She was so close to the planks that she noticed something caught in the wood grain — a thread of red silk.
Someone before her had also caught their clothing here. Ming Huashang paid it no further mind, worked her hem free, and continued up.
They stepped up onto the third floor. Shān Chá said, “So — this is where we live. I have no idea what there is to see up here.”
Before her was a row of doors, packed closely together, lined up in orderly formation. The early-summer night was already close and warm, and most of the rooms had their windows open. From the corridor one could glimpse something of the interior.
Ming Huashang walked slowly, asking about each room in turn as she passed, sketching in her mind a picture of its occupant.
She did not imagine she would be lucky enough to stumble across the murderer at random. She only wanted to understand the environment of Tiānxiāng Pavilion. One place shapes its people, and only by understanding the environment can one begin to understand the people who live within it — how they think, what they want, and by extension, what they might do.
Among the third floor’s rooms — most with doors and windows half-open, their occupants fanning themselves in unconcerned disregard for privacy — Yu Qiong’s room stood conspicuously apart. Her doors and windows were shut tight, her window covered in fine silk gauze. Pressing your face against it, you saw nothing but a pale blur; there was no hope of poking a hole to peek through.
Shān Chá noticed Ming Huashang staring at one of the windows and said, in her customarily languid tone: “That’s Yu Qiong’s room. She has all sorts of peculiarities — won’t let anyone touch her things. If someone enters her room without permission, she gets genuinely upset.”
Ming Huashang said, “Yu Qiong has been top courtesan here for many years. She must have accumulated quite a few valuable things, and of course she doesn’t want anyone handling them.”
Shān Chá let out a short, contemptuous laugh and gave a dramatic roll of her eyes: “You’d think so — but no. If her room were built from gold and jade, I might understand. As it is, it’s like the inside of a snowdrift — all four walls are white, not a thing in it. Walking in there gives me the chills.”
Ming Huashang was surprised: “I wouldn’t have guessed — Yu Qiong prefers such simplicity.”
Shān Chá gave a derisive sniff: “Putting on airs of refinement. That’s all.”
They moved on until they reached Shān Chá’s room. Having come this far, and with nothing else to do that evening, Shān Chá thought she might as well invite this visitor inside.
Ming Huashang was keen to observe the details of life here up close, and accepted willingly.
Shān Chá’s room was, like her character, packed with reds and golds; stepping inside, Ming Huashang felt her eyes ringing with noise. Shān Chá picked up a shawl from the daybed and said offhandedly, “Sit wherever.”
Ming Huashang stood in the middle of the room, confronted on all sides by brilliant red furnishings, and found nowhere that felt like appropriate ground to set her feet. She spotted a lacquered mother-of-pearl box nearby piled full of red silk, and genuinely could not tell what it was. She asked, “Shān Chá, what is this?”
Shān Chá was looking for the tea set and glanced back at Ming Huashang’s question: “Oh, those are my performance sashes.”
Ming Huashang held one up and tried to gauge the length, baffled: “Do you really need sashes this long for dancing? Won’t you trip over yourself?”
Only cold tea was left; Shān Chá poured a cup anyway and brought it over to Ming Huashang. Her almond-shaped eyes angled slightly downward in a languid, half-contemptuous look: “Only fools trip.”
Ming Huashang had the vague sense this was aimed at her. Before she could respond, Shān Chá pushed the cup into her hand, reached in and hooked up the red silk, and in this room where there was scarcely space to walk, she began to spin.
The red silk unfurled like water and cloud, swirling around her on all sides. Deep red waves rolled up and crested over and over, faster and faster, and the full skirt of her underrobe bloomed open like a flower in full burst.
Brilliant, and terrifying. Ming Huashang tensed at every step, certain she was about to catch her hem or be swallowed by the silk — but Shān Chá’s every move landed precisely on the razor’s edge between momentum and collapse. At last, like a conjuror, she gathered all the flying silk into her hands and spun to a stop.
Ming Huashang could not stop herself from applauding: “Wonderful — that was extraordinary dancing!”
Shān Chá tucked the silk away. Faced with this straightforward, unself-conscious praise — not a trace of lust in it — she felt a little off-balance. She touched the stray hairs at her temple and said, “It’s only basic technique. I haven’t shown anything that truly shows what I can do.”
“Really?” Ming Huashang had never seen anyone dance so brilliantly and was genuinely curious: “And what is your best dance?”
Shān Chá pointed outward, beyond the room: “The Flying Celestial dance.”
Ming Huashang said, “What is that?”
This was perhaps the first time a woman had engaged her about dancing in complete earnest — no lascivious once-over, no sly backhanded cutting remarks, no thinly disguised attempt to steal technique while appearing to praise. Shān Chá found herself interested. She pointed to the ceiling and said, “See those wooden beams up there? Those are tracks built just for me. I came up with a new dance — I loop my silk sashes over the beams, then leap from the third floor and descend, releasing the fabric as I go, and it looks like a celestial maiden descending from the heavens. I practiced for a long time; last night was the first time I performed it for an audience.”
Just hearing the description made Ming Huashang break into a cold sweat: “That sounds terrifying. If your grip slipped for a moment, what would happen?”
Shān Chá gave a light, disdainful sound and raised her chin: “Only people who haven’t mastered the technique have accidents. I won’t.”
And without waiting further, Shān Chá was already demonstrating. She picked up her silk sashes, walked out onto the corridor, and with a throw that seemed casual and yet was clearly anything but, the silk went arching over the beam above and floated down on the other side in a gentle fall. Shān Chá pressed down into a warm-up stretch, gripped the silk firmly, then looked back over her shoulder with a proud smile: “I haven’t practiced in a day — my legs feel a little stiff. Watch carefully.”
And then she gripped the silk in both hands and, like a butterfly alighting and lifting at once, she rose. She pressed her foot lightly off the railing, and her weight carried the silk down — until it snapped taut on the crossbeam in the middle.
Ming Huashang had not expected Shān Chá to leap from the building without a word of warning, and her heart lurched into her throat. She watched Shān Chá plummeting straight toward the opposite railing — then suddenly she tucked the silk, shifted her position, and changed direction.
The scream was already forming in Ming Huashang’s chest — but Shān Chá played the joke out to the last and skimmed the railing with a whisker’s width to spare. The silk carried her like a bird in flight, turning and circling back, sweeping across the open space of the main hall in long, looping arcs.
The sudden spectacle caught everyone off guard. Every face turned upward. Shān Chá’s pomegranate-red skirt snapped in the air, and she controlled her swings by shortening or lengthening the silk — spinning, reaching, posing mid-air — and she was genuinely, breathtakingly like a figure from a temple mural: weightless, sweeping, trailing color through the air, glorious beyond compare.
Ming Huashang breathed out the breath she had been holding for what felt like a very long time and raised her hands in heartfelt, admiring applause.
In the Guanghan Moonlit Courtyard, Jiang Ling and Ren Yao were racking their brains trying to draw out information from Yu Qiong, when they heard a commotion outside. Jiang Ling turned, and saw a crimson-clad beauty flash past the window, accompanied by falling petals swirling in her wake.
Jiang Ling stared: “What just flew past?”
Yu Qiong watched everyone’s attention go to the main hall, and quietly let the pipa fall silent. The madam gave a startled blink, and her first instinct was to wring her hands at the waste of it.
Shān Chá, that little brat — she was told to perform for the first time last night, and she hadn’t even danced this well then. What possessed her to start now? The madam lamented that there were no customers to witness it, and that the one chance to drive up Shān Chá’s market value was slipping away.
Though at least there was still the Jiang’an Marquessate’s Heir. The madam cast a glance toward Jiang Ling and consoled herself — there was still that big fish. Not a total loss.
Two roughly dressed figures stood in the shadow below, looking up at the woman spiraling through the air inside the building. With everyone else staring, they did not look out of place. The slightly shorter of the two nudged his companion and said under his breath with a laugh: “I really didn’t expect it — my younger sister takes to a place like this like a fish to water. First she’s caught in a rivalry with the current top courtesan, and now she has the next one dancing for her. I’m full of admiration.”
The young person in the shadow gave him a cold glance. The features were unremarkable, but those eyes were vast as a starry sky — it was a shame, a pair like that belonging to a face like that.
“Be quiet.” The voice was deliberately kept low and hoarse, as if to conceal its natural pitch. “Go down to the wine cellar and look into that mute manservant who delivered the wine. Stop standing around here doing nothing.”
“How am I doing nothing?” Xie Jichuan said, aggrieved. “You want to go in and see the top courtesan yourself, so you send me to find some old, ugly, deaf-mute man instead. Admit it — you’re doing this on purpose.”
Ming Huazhang would have strongly preferred to go look into the mute manservant as well. But Ming Huashang was inside, creating quite a scene, and Ming Huazhang was uneasy about letting her out of his sight. He gave Xie Jichuan a look of flat, expressionless cold and said, without inflection: “Go.”
Xie Jichuan muttered something about “no fun at all” and turned to drift into the darkness. He was just about to disappear into the shadows when a scream split the air behind him: “Look out!”
Both Xie Jichuan and Ming Huazhang spun around to see the silk sashes snap and break — and Shān Chá, losing her grip, fall.