Ming Huashang had been watching Shanchá circle around and around without landing, and assumed it was part of her choreography — until the red silk let out a sharp tearing sound and Shanchá, unable to catch herself, fell from mid-air. Only then did Ming Huashang realize something had gone wrong.

The crowd downstairs cried out in alarm. Ming Huashang immediately bolted toward the main hall. She ran so fast, and the staircase was so narrow and dark, that with only a few steps left she missed her footing and pitched headlong toward the floor.

By instinct Ming Huashang squeezed her eyes shut — but a pair of hands suddenly reached out from the side, steady and firm, and caught her cleanly. She looked up in a daze and found herself gazing into a pair of eyes that held clear dreams and a river of stars.

In that moment, Ming Huashang suddenly understood all those scenes in opera librettos where a woman pledges herself to the man who saves her life. Even if his features were plain at this instant, the calm in his gaze, the strength in his hands, and the composed and unhurried air about him offered a solidity that no face alone could match.

She thought of how he might have just witnessed her arguing and making a scene, and felt a rare flush of embarrassment. Ming Huazhang steadied her and set her on her feet, then said softly, “Watch where you’re going — don’t be so reckless.”

A face can be disguised, but a voice cannot be changed. Ming Huazhang’s voice was light yet low, like a thread of lightning passing through her ear, and Ming Huashang’s face reddened against her will. She gave a small nod, too embarrassed to look at him again, and turned her gaze toward the center of the stage.

The stage was already packed with people. The silk ribbon had snapped mid-performance while Shanchá was dancing, and her fall had thrown the whole building into an uproar. The madam, male servants, maids, and the courtesans had all crowded in to look.

By great fortune, Shanchá had not been very far from the floor when she fell, and was not seriously injured — but she kept shrieking in pain, which suggested a bone might have been hurt.

Jiang Ling and Ren Yao also came running down from the other side. Jiang Ling demanded urgently, “What happened? Why did she suddenly fall?”

Shanchá was the madam’s prized new talent, cultivated at great expense; the madam was probably the second person in the whole building who least wanted anything to happen to her. She hovered around Shanchá with loud wails of distress. Ren Yao, her ears aching from the noise of all these women, reached the end of her patience and snapped, “All of you, quiet down and move back.”

Not a single woman so much as glanced at her — they all kept on talking among themselves. Jiang Ling let out a breath, then suddenly bellowed: “Shut up! Move!”

Jiang Ling’s command was devastatingly effective. The main hall fell dead silent at once, and the courtesans, catching sight of him, all obediently cleared a path. Jiang Ling gave a contemptuous “hmph,” then turned and gestured deferentially toward Ren Yao: “Your turn.”

Ren Yao shot Jiang Ling a look of mild irritation, then strode up to Shanchá. Without ceremony she seized Shanchá’s ankle, and Shanchá instantly let out a burst of shrieks.

Shanchá’s voice was sharp and piercing; at such close range, the impact nearly shook Ren Yao’s ears numb. She was already bracing herself to endure it when something warm suddenly covered her ears.

The shock of it was almost enough to make her leap out of her skin. Ren Yao instinctively flung those hands away and whipped around in alarm. Jiang Ling was standing behind her, raising his eyebrows with cheerful audacity. “What? You don’t mind the noise? Then I was just blocking my own ears?”

Ren Yao felt as though she’d been launched into the air and left hanging there, a breath lodged in her chest with nowhere to go. She glared at Jiang Ling with fury and snarled, “Keep your hands to yourself.”

Jiang Ling made a click of dismissal and casually covered his own ears. When Ming Huashang pushed her way through the crowd, she found Ren Yao kneading and pressing along Shanchá’s lower leg while Shanchá erupted in periodic shrieks, and Jiang Ling standing to the side watching the spectacle with both arms wrapped around his head, looking for all the world like a koala.

Ming Huashang gave Jiang Ling a strange look — what kind of posture was that? Jiang Ling noticed and said with mild annoyance, “Why are you staring at me? Don’t you have hands?”

Ming Huashang fixed him with a sharp, warning glare, then turned to Ren Yao. “How is she? Is it serious?”

Ren Yao had practiced martial arts since childhood and was accustomed to falls and knocks; she could set bones for herself with ease. She ran her fingers down Shanchá’s shinbone to her foot and said, “It’s all right — just superficial damage to the flesh and tendons. A few days of rest and she’ll be fine.”

Shanchá asked anxiously, “It won’t affect my dancing, will it?”

Ren Yao answered honestly: “Ordinary dancing won’t be a problem, but performing the way you did today may be somewhat uncertain. Rest carefully for a month — if the ligaments heal well, you may be fine.”

Shanchá’s heart turned to ash at these words. She began to sob, hiccupping with grief: “Why is my fate so bitter? I practiced this dance for three years. I finally perfected it, performed it only once, and now it’s ruined. What will become of me…”

As Shanchá wept, the madam felt like weeping too. Ren Yao had not expected a single offhand remark to cause such a storm. She said awkwardly, “That’s the worst case — you’re still young. You can recover.”

“I’m already sixteen! If I don’t make a name for myself soon, where will there be a place for me in the Tiānxiāng Pavilion?” Grief welled up in Shanchá unbidden, and her tears came harder. The other courtesans huddled around her, but their comfort was perfunctory at best; some even made no effort to hide their satisfaction.

Ming Huashang scanned the crowd’s expressions without letting on, then asked, “Shanchá, when I was watching, you had complete control at the highest point of the performance. Why did you fall when you were coming back down?”

Shanchá said through her sobs, “I don’t know. I was going to land, but today for some reason it was different from rehearsal — no matter what I did, my toes couldn’t reach the floor.”

Ming Huazhang had caught Ming Huashang and then quietly faded into the background. Despite his considerable height, he moved through the shadows in such a way that no one noticed him. While everyone crowded around Shanchá, he looked up without a word at the beam overhead, then walked beneath it and gathered up the great heap of red silk.

His fingers were cool and slender. Pressed against the bright red silk, the tips of those fingers looked like jade. Ming Huazhang searched with clear intent, and in a moment his fingertips gave a slight pause; he carefully traced the edge of the silk.

He had guessed correctly. Someone had tampered with this ribbon. He inspected the edge closely — the threads had been drawn in one direction, consistent with a blade cut.

So someone had shortened the silk ribbon Shanchá used for her performance. When she came down, she naturally couldn’t reach the floor. She was forced to circle in the air for longer than the silk could bear, until it tore under the strain.

Did this have any connection to yesterday’s murder? Was it some arrangement by the killer, or had Shanchá simply made enough enemies to earn herself a straightforward act of revenge?

Ming Huazhang studied it a moment longer, then set the silk back where he’d found it.

The madam and the courtesans — some sincerely, some not — comforted Shanchá, while Ming Huashang used the occasion to observe everyone’s expressions. Their body language and the shifts in their faces were far more honest than anything coming out of their mouths.

Ming Huashang noticed that Yùqióng had come downstairs too, but she stood at the entrance to the stairway watching from a distance and did not draw near. She also noticed that Ming Huazhang had spent some time examining the pile of red silk before setting it lightly back in place.

Had there been something on the ribbon? Ming Huashang was not a diligent person, but she excelled at cutting corners. She quietly drifted to the spot where Ming Huazhang had been standing, picked up the silk, and examined it slowly.

It just looked like an ordinary length of red silk — what had he been looking at?

Ming Huashang knew there was a correct answer here, and steadied herself to observe carefully. After a moment of looking, she thought she’d found something.

Why were the edges of this fabric so uneven? Ming Huashang had watched Zhao Cai cut fabric back at the Duke’s household; when a cutting blade came down, the edge might be crooked, but it would still be a crooked straight line. It wouldn’t have notches like these.

Could it be that someone had used scissors on it?

This was a matter of someone’s life. Shanchá was still wailing on the stage, and Ming Huashang felt she had a duty to tell her. She picked up the silk and walked quickly toward the stage. “Shanchá, last night when you performed, you were able to land on the floor without any problem, isn’t that right?”

Shanchá wiped at her tears and sobbed, “Of course — there were so many guests in the hall. They all applauded for me together.”

“After you went back to your room, did you trim the silk with scissors?”

Up on the staircase, Ming Huazhang gave an inward sigh.

She’d had the clue right in front of her and still got the detail wrong. It wasn’t scissors — it was something short-bladed, like a dagger.

Even Shanchá with a brain like a fish could tell something was off. She looked up with red-rimmed eyes, alert and wary. “What is it?”

Ming Huashang pointed at the edge of the silk. “Look here — it looks as though someone has trimmed this.”

Shanchá stopped crying instantly. She clutched at someone’s arm to push herself upright, and the madam, fearing she’d aggravate her injured leg and lose her future earnings, hurriedly told her not to move.

After a flurry of commotion, Shanchá gripped the silk ribbon, her face iron-grey. The women surrounding her all spoke at once: “It does look like that — the edges are all jagged, like something gnawed at them. Not the way fabric from a cloth shop would be cut.”

Shanchá clenched the cloth in her fist and said through gritted teeth, “Who tried to harm me!”

Within two short days, two ugly incidents had occurred at Tiānxiāng Pavilion. The shadow of Zhang Sanlang’s death had not yet lifted, and today the pavilion’s most popular performer, Shanchá, had nearly come to grief.

Male servants brought in seats. Shanchá did not return to her room but reclined on a chaise, while a young maid held a bag of ice against her foot. Jiang Ling announced that watching an interrogation was far more entertaining than listening to music, and had seats brought for himself too. He settled in on one side, his two “beautiful maidservants” on either side of him, observing with undisguised delight.

Shanchá lifted her chin and swept her gaze across the crowd of women below, then said with indignant authority, “Speak. Who cut my red ribbon?”

All the women averted their eyes. None confessed — naturally. Who would incriminate themselves unprompted? Shanchá grew even angrier and slapped the chaise hard. “If no one says anything, you’re all deliberately making trouble for me! Fine — I’ll question each one of you. I refuse to believe I can’t catch this rat hiding in the sewer!”

Shanchá had always been arrogant by nature; now that she had cause to be aggrieved, she considered herself a wronged victim and became more lawless than ever. She actually did call out names one by one: “Dùjuān — was it you?”

“Yíntáng — what are you hiding from? Was it you?”

Finally, one small maid cracked under the psychological pressure and said weakly, “It wasn’t me. But last night, when Shanchá was performing and the guests in the Guanghan Moon Chamber were watching so raptly, Yùqióng was displeased and took her pipa off to the small side room for a while — she came back afterward.”

A barely audible intake of breath rippled through the hall. Ming Huashang, Ren Yao, and Jiang Ling all came alert at once, and everyone turned to look at Yùqióng.

Shanchá felt a surge of triumph. All her shouting earlier had been mostly bluster — she’d had no real evidence. She’d suspected Yùqióng the moment she saw the ribbon, but had been at a loss for how to point the finger at her. And now, beautifully, Yùqióng had delivered the opening herself.

Shanchá narrowed her eyes and said in a sweetly venomous tone: “The Guanghan Moon Chamber has always belonged to Yùqióng’s guests. Last night I stole the limelight — that was truly regrettable for Yùqióng. Elder Sister Yùqióng, could it be that you were nursing a grudge in your heart and hatched a scheme to tamper with my ribbon in secret, hoping I would fall and break my legs so I could never dance again?”

Yùqióng held her pipa, her manner still as serene and unruffled as ever, unmoved by praise or censure. She said quietly, “It was not me. Last night I was irritated when the distinguished guests were too busy watching you to pay any attention to my pipa, and of course I was displeased — but I went to the side room and composed myself after a moment. Guests come to Tiānxiāng Pavilion as benefactors; without them, we would not even survive, much less be dressed in gold and ordering servants about as we do now. Since they are both our benefactors and our lifeblood, we call them valued patrons. If a valued patron favors us, we are grateful; if he does not favor us, that too is our fate — how could I bear a grudge against a valued patron, or indulge in petty jealousy? So I composed my thoughts and went back. After that, I attended to my patron until the hour of hài — that was when the madam discovered the body, and only then did I come out.”

Yùqióng’s long speech was delivered softly, with measured reason, and it instantly silenced Shanchá’s snarling tantrum. What Shanchá hated most was this pretense of Yùqióng’s — they were all women of the pleasure quarters; did she really think she was the daughter of some noble family, spouting all these feminine virtues?

Shanchá said bitterly, “Fine words are easy to speak. Who knows what’s in your heart?”

“What is in my heart is of no consequence.” Yùqióng wiped down her pipa with her handkerchief and said mildly, “All you need to know is that before the hour of hài last night, I never came downstairs. Don’t believe me? Ask everyone — so many people were in the hall last night. Did anyone see me?”

The women looked at one another, and at last said, “It seems… no one did.”

Shanchá had finally gotten hold of something against Yùqióng and was not about to let go so easily. Frustrated, she twisted her body with effort and pointed at the red pillars flanking the stage: “Last night, to suit my performance, the madam had all the curtains let down. You could have slipped downstairs and hidden behind the curtains, avoiding anyone’s sight.”

Yùqióng gave a quiet sigh. “True. But there is no cover whatsoever behind the stage. Let me ask you this — after you landed last night, where did the red silk end up?”

Shanchá was stumped. A young maid spoke up quietly: “After Shanchá came flying down from above, the madam was afraid the silk would trip the backing dancers, so she asked me to put it away. I was in the middle of serving wine and couldn’t free my hands, so I just stuffed the silk over there behind the curtain.”

Ming Huashang followed the maid’s pointing finger. That was the east side of the stage — but the Guanghan Moon Chamber was on the west.

The east and west walkways were not connected. To get there, Yùqióng would have had to come downstairs, cross the stage or the guests’ seating area, and retrieve the silk.

To do all that in plain view and not be seen was simply impossible. Yet according to what Shanchá had revealed, last night during the performance the curtains had been lowered in the hall — perhaps the sight lines had not been as clear as they were now.

Ming Huashang said, “Why don’t we recreate it exactly as it was last night and see what the situation actually looks like.”

Shanchá, determined to expose whoever had done this to her, gave her full and enthusiastic support. Shanchá had just injured her foot, and the madam was reluctant to openly embarrass her; beyond that, she also wanted to take this opportunity to strike a warning note among the girls of the house. She gave her tacit consent.

These girls were always scheming against each other and poaching each other’s patrons — the madam had turned a blind eye to that — but she would not allow anyone to openly harm another person under her very nose. Every one of these girls was a source of her income; if this sort of thing took root, all the losses would ultimately come out of her own pocket.

Besides, there were no patrons today. Let them make a fuss for a while.

Everyone who had been there the previous night was present, and they reminded each other of the details until they quickly restored the hall to its appearance from the night before.

Ming Huashang surveyed the scene. The ground-floor hall of Tiānxiāng Pavilion was impressively spacious. To support the height of the building, two rows of great red pillars ran down the center of the hall, bearing the balcony boxes on the east and west. Now, to highlight the stage, red curtains had been drawn behind those pillars, concealing both staircases on either side.

Standing at the front entrance of Tiānxiāng Pavilion and looking in: the stage was in the center, with two curtains to the left and right obscuring everything extraneous, and the area behind the stage was an open space. Against the back wall stood a landscape folding screen, which visually deepened the space — even with the curtains down, the hall did not feel cramped.

The spot where the young maid had stuffed the silk was behind the east-side curtain. Ren Yao, playing the role of Yùqióng, came out of the Guanghan Moon Chamber, crept quietly down the stairs, and hid behind a pillar. “Can you see me?”

Ming Huashang and Jiang Ling, seated in the ground-floor guest area, both shook their heads. “Not if we’re not paying attention. Now try getting to the east curtain.”

Ren Yao tried every approach she could think of — crawling on hands and knees, dashing across quickly, threading through the guest seats — and none of them worked.

Jiang Ling propped his chin on his hand, sitting in front of the bright and open stage. “Unless everyone in the hall closed their eyes simultaneously, there’s no way she wouldn’t be seen.”

Yùqióng stood to the side, pipa in arms, her tone still unhurried. “I told you it wasn’t me. Now, perhaps, you’ll believe it.”

Shanchá was deeply reluctant to accept this — yet no matter how hard she thought, she simply could not devise a method by which someone could cross the stage, pass through the audience below, and reach the other side without being noticed.

She was the lead dancer that night and knew the formations well; the choreography had no gap where the backing dancers stood in a row that would allow someone to pass behind them unnoticed. And even if such a gap existed, to slip past while the performers were on stage without drawing anyone’s attention was the stuff of fantasy.

All that commotion for nothing, and she still had to rest for a month and could not take clients — Shanchá was white with fury. Ming Huashang saw her expression and let out a soft sigh. “You have an injury, and your whole future depends on that leg. Healing is what matters most. Stop being angry — go back and rest properly.”

Shanchá agreed reluctantly, shot a venomous look at Yùqióng, and had someone carry her upstairs.

In order to keep the Young Master of the Jiang household entertained, everyone at Tiānxiāng Pavilion had been run ragged. By now the night was deep, and all of them were worn out. The madam could barely hold herself together anymore, and said with an ingratiating smile, “Young master — it’s already the hour of hài. Shouldn’t you be retiring for the night?”

Jiang Ling said with lingering reluctance, “All right, that’s enough for today then. Have hot water sent to my room — I want to bathe.”

The madam answered cheerfully, then asked with hopeful anticipation, “Young master — which room shall we send it to?”

Jiang Ling had requested a bath out of sheer habit, but the madam’s question jolted him back to awareness. He blinked, and only then realized the problem.

He was not at the Marquis of Jiang’an’s residence, nor at his own villa. He was at a pleasure house. And what was worse — he had two women with him.