Su Yuji was just about to ask Su Xingzhi which of the two bolts of cloth looked better when Su Xingzhi suddenly stepped forward, pressed her hand down, and said in a low voice: “Don’t turn around.”
Su Yuji startled, then immediately understood: “Those people are back again?”
Su Xingzhi said nothing. He flipped through the bolts of fabric and asked the shopkeeper: “Boss, the resist-dyed patterns here are too ordinary—do you have anything else?”
The stall owner rubbed his hands together, looking troubled: “Young master, this is the best-selling paired-geese roundel resist-dye of the year. How can it be ordinary? Go ask around outside—the cloth shops all carry the same.”
Su Xingzhi let a look of disdain cross his face and said to Su Yuji: “Let’s go further in and have a look at what the foreign merchants have.”
Su Yuji nodded, set down the fabric, and left. The stall owner called after them a couple of times—accustomed to such things—and cheerfully turned to recruit the next customer. Su Xingzhi pulled Su Yuji around a corner and into a narrow, crowded alley, where a camel caravan came walking toward them from the opposite direction. Su Xingzhi suddenly quickened their pace, and the two of them began to run through the dense maze of small stalls.
The men following them collided head-on with the camels just as they entered the alley. By the time they had struggled through the caravan, all they could see ahead was a tide of people coming and going, vendors calling out one after another—no trace at all of that pair of siblings.
Unwilling to give up, they split up and searched intersection by intersection. But the Western Market was no ordinary place—it gathered rare and exotic goods from across the realm, and the foot traffic never let up from morning to evening. Trapped in the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, they quickly lost all sense of direction.
One of them stomped his foot in frustration and crowded up to the leader: “Boss, there are too many people in the Western Market. What do we do now that we’ve lost them?”
The leader swept his gaze across the Western Market, his expression dark and brooding: “Send more men to keep watch. We must find out where this pair of siblings lives.”
“Yes, sir.”
Su Xingzhi pulled Su Yuji out of the Western Market and threaded through several streets and lanes before finally stopping, gasping for breath. Su Yuji wiped the sweat from her face as she panted and asked: “Elder Brother, are those the same people from two years ago?”
Su Xingzhi frowned and looked back toward the Western Market, then shook his head: “I’m not sure. But they are highly disciplined and numerous. Aside from that group, I can’t think of anyone else it could be.”
Su Yuji was genuinely puzzled: “The Su Family is nothing more than an ordinary farming household—no estate, no possessions of note, and we’ve never had a falling out with anyone. Why are they watching us?”
Two years ago, when Nanny Su passed away from illness and Su Xingzhi was arranging his grandmother’s funeral, he noticed that someone seemed to be keeping an eye on them. Sensing danger, Su Xingzhi took Su Yuji and left their hometown, moving into Taiyuan City. But the group followed close behind—even after they moved twice, they could not shake them.
Left with no other option, the siblings had to run and hide as they went, and by chance they ended up joining the Xuan Xiaowei. With the Xuan Xiaowei as cover, they finally managed to throw off the pursuit. They never expected that after two full years, they would encounter the same people again here in Chang’an.
That someone would pursue them across ten thousand li without letting go showed unmistakably that these people meant them harm.
During their two years with the Xuan Xiaowei, they had changed their names and cut themselves off from the world; they had only just come down from the Zhongnan Mountains the day before, so there was no possible way their whereabouts had leaked out. The only slip they could identify was today, when they had gone to Vermilion Sparrow Street to watch the Empress’s procession.
They had shown their faces watching the spectacle in the street, and immediately afterward someone had followed them. Could this not suggest that the mastermind behind it was also a Chang’an person—or perhaps someone who had returned to the capital today with the Empress?
Su Xingzhi’s expression was very grave. He cast a silent glance at Su Yuji.
The Su Family itself had nothing worth anyone’s attention—but Su Yuji was another matter. The Duke Zhenguo household had also been on Vermilion Sparrow Street today, positioned directly across from them. Could these people have been sent by the Duke Zhenguo household?
Su Xingzhi’s heart was heavy. He gripped Su Yuji’s hand tightly and said: “Let’s go home first.”
Their years in the Xuan Xiaowei had not been wasted. The two of them circled around several times, only returning to their rented residence after confirming no one was following them. After closing the gate, Su Yuji tied a silk thread around the door bolt, then turned to look at the courtyard—still bare and in need of everything—and said indignantly: “We had planned to buy everything we needed at the Western Market. Thanks to those people interrupting us, we didn’t buy a single thing. Those people are utterly lawless. What on earth do they want?”
Su Xingzhi was comparatively calm—they had come through even harder times in the village, and now that they had moved to Chang’an, there was truly nothing they couldn’t make do without. He said: “Those people’s intentions are unclear. Yuji, from now on go out less often. Don’t let them get a fix on you.”
“But next month you sit the imperial examination. The books and brushes and ink aren’t all bought yet—what if it disrupts your studies?”
“It’s fine.” Su Xingzhi said. “At worst I wait a year and sit the next one. It’s not worth risking your life over.”
“Absolutely not.” Su Yuji said. “This examination is one the Empress has arranged especially for the Xuan Xiaowei. Twin Jades, Dangerous Moon, and the others will all use it as a chance to take new identities and enter official service. If you miss this one, next year you’d have to compete against all the other scholars—what if something goes wrong then?”
Su Xingzhi still tried to reassure her: “It doesn’t matter. If I can’t pass with a different group of candidates, then it would mean my skills aren’t good enough, and I could only blame myself. As long as one truly has genuine learning, there is no need to worry about external circumstances.”
That was just self-comfort, of course. In truth, factors outside the examination hall were often decisive. Even the son of a chief minister would not dare to say that as long as he himself was prepared, he could pass regardless of which sitting he took.
Su Yuji kept a cool expression and said stubbornly: “Elder Brother, you focus on preparing for the examination. I’ll take care of things at home. I will make sure you walk into that examination hall with complete peace of mind.”
Su Xingzhi knew her mind was made up, and seeing that he truly could not dissuade her, he had no choice but to give up and plan to keep a close eye on things himself in private. Su Xingzhi went inside to study, while Su Yuji sat in the main hall hugging the money pouch, carefully calculating the coming expenses.
Before they left their hometown, they had sold off the family’s land in the village; afterward, they had spent two years keeping a low profile with the Xuan Xiaowei, during which they had managed to save up a fair sum of silver. But Chang’an was expensive—living there was no easy matter—and just the rent for the residence had already taken the better part of their savings.
After that, Su Xingzhi had the examination to sit, and the costs of social calls and official-circle networking could not be skimped on. When all of this was tallied up, very little remained. Su Yuji watched every coin, wishing she could split each one in two.
Su Xingzhi looked up during a pause in his reading and saw Su Yuji knitting her brow over a single coin, and his heart ached with a complex mixture of feelings. He put his book down and said: “Yuji, stop calculating for now. I noticed that the young ladies of Chang’an are all wearing dresses in the newest styles—different from what we brought with us from Taiyuan. Tomorrow, go to a clothing shop and have a few outfits made. You are a young woman in the prime of your youth; you shouldn’t have to go without. As for money, don’t worry—I’ll think of something.”
Su Yuji glanced sideways at Su Xingzhi in the middle of her calculations and lectured him: “You’re not a celestial being—when money is gone, it’s gone. How are you going to think of something? You still have the examination ahead of you, and there will be plenty of places to spend money after that. You can’t be so free-handed. I have enough clothes already; there’s no need to waste money on that.”
Su Xingzhi stood up, took a string of coins from the money pouch, and forced them into her hand: “How can buying you new clothes be considered waste? Take this money. And if you secretly hide it away, then I’ll go to the clothing shop and pick something out for you myself—and when I buy a pattern you don’t like, don’t you dare blame me.”
Su Yuji immediately got flustered: “What are you doing!”
Su Xingzhi firmly closed her hand around the coins, not letting her put them back: “Whatever the other young ladies have, you should have too. If I can’t even buy my younger sister a new dress, what’s the point of holding this official post?”
The siblings were equally stubborn when they dug their heels in—exactly the same bull-headedness. Su Yuji was forced to accept the money, but was still racked with distress and continued to scold Su Xingzhi at length: “You can’t carry on like this, spending so freely. How will we get by in the future? I spent so long calculating just now, and now I have to start all over again.”
Su Xingzhi sat down beside her and let her lecture him. He looked at Su Yuji’s fair profile in the lamplight and suddenly asked: “Yuji, do you ever resent us—that we haven’t been able to give you a better life?”
Su Yuji looked up and stared at him in surprise: “Elder Brother, what are you saying? You are my family. What child blames her home for being poor?”
Su Xingzhi fell silent at those words. After a moment, he asked: “Today on Vermilion Sparrow Street, so many young ladies from great households and sons of distinguished clans came out. Your appearance and bearing are no worse than any of them. Don’t you feel… discontent?”
Su Yuji grew quiet at those words. To say there was no sense of contrast would be false. The Su Family had been fairly well-off in the village, and when she was small she had not known what poverty was—she simply thought that was how life was supposed to be. But later, after going to the Taiyuan prefecture and then making her way to Chang’an, she had seen with her own eyes that people in this world did not share the same fate: the gap between rich and poor was like an abyss, and another group of people her own age lived lives she had not even been able to imagine. Of course she had felt low, resentful, and aggrieved.
But then—it was not as though she had any say in being born a country girl. She had a good elder brother who looked after her in every way, and an open-minded grandmother who had let her study alongside her brother. She was already luckier than many of the girls in the village.
Su Yuji shook her head and stopped entertaining thoughts of what could never be. She said: “Elder Brother, with you and Grandmother, I don’t feel it as suffering. In my heart, you are no lesser than those sons of great families. They have done nothing more than choose the right womb to be born into and rest on the achievements of their ancestors. But you are different. I believe your talent will certainly earn you the rank of Presented Scholar. You will make your own way in the world, and in time you will be no worse than any of them.”
Su Xingzhi gazed at her earnest, determined, shining eyes, and the heaviness in his heart only deepened.
When he was small, his parents were not by his side—he had been left in the care of a great-uncle’s family. He often heard the people around him say that his grandmother was in Chang’an serving a noble family, and his parents were working as household managers there too; once he was a little older, his parents would bring him to Chang’an to study. He kept working hard at eating and growing, eager to grow up faster. But then one day, his grandmother and parents came back. His mother had just given birth to a baby sister and was very weak; his grandmother called him into the room to see the swaddled infant and told him this was his little sister, that he was an elder brother now and had to be good to her.
He was still young then and did not understand why his mother was despondent and downcast, or why his father seemed to have something unsaid perpetually on his lips. He had looked up, full of eagerness, and asked: “A’Niang, when I’m grown up, will we all go to Chang’an?”
His grandmother was silent for a long time. Then she said: “We won’t go. From now on, none of us will leave. We’ll stay in the countryside and raise you and your sister.”
Young Su Xingzhi had been very happy. He wouldn’t get to go to Chang’an after all, but he no longer had to live at his great-uncle’s house; he could live with his parents and grandmother, and the family had gained a little sister on top of it all. That was far more appealing than faraway Chang’an.
Su Xingzhi passed what was, up to that point, the happiest time of his life—until one day, while playing by the back window, he overheard his parents talking.
His mother said: “A’Niang is really partial. When I was in labor, she said she had to look after the Duchess of Zhenguo and couldn’t even come back to see me once. If there had been anyone at home, I wouldn’t have been left crying to heaven and earth with no one to answer, and the baby girl wouldn’t have been starved of air and born blue, only to die two days later. I sent word to her, and she still didn’t come back—just a breezy line telling me to rest and take care of myself. I lay in bed for a whole month, had barely managed to get back on my feet, and then she came back carrying a swaddled baby, saying she felt sorry for the loss of our girl and had brought a child for me to raise. I truly have the worst luck in the world, married into your family—I couldn’t keep my own child, and now I have to raise someone else’s.”
There was a long silence inside the room, then his father said: “Enough. She’s worked hard her whole life; let her have her way just this once.”
“I just can’t stomach it. The Duchess of Zhenguo has servants at her beck and call and everything she could ever want—she needs A’Niang’s sympathy? If A’Niang had paid even a little more attention to our own family, our girl wouldn’t have died so young. And now she wants me to raise some wild little girl of unknown origin—where’s the justice in that?”
“Don’t say any more. If you don’t like the girl, just stay away from her. It’s not as though we can’t afford to feed one more mouth. Think of it as accumulating merit for Xingzhi.”
“Ha, easy for you to say—you get to be the virtuous one and I’m the shrew? If A’Niang only wanted a girl to keep her company, would I really have it out with a small child? But the way A’Niang acts with her—that’s no way to raise a granddaughter. It’s more like raising a little mistress. If she’s allowed to hollow out the family’s savings, what will Xingzhi have in the future?”
Whatever his father and mother argued about after that, Su Xingzhi did not hear. His childhood seemed to end on that day. His parents and family had come back—but it was nothing like the warm, harmonious picture he had imagined. His sister was not his blood sister; his mother did not like her, his father was indifferent, and his grandmother was the only one who truly cared for her. But his grandmother was old, and often lacked the strength to do what she wished. The infant girl was already so frail and small—if this went on, would she die?
Even before Su Xingzhi fully grasped the concept of death, he had already understood the feeling of not wanting to lose someone. From that day on, Su Xingzhi stopped running out to play. He was always at the infant girl’s side—afraid she would go hungry, afraid she would fall ill, afraid she would die when he was not there.
He put his “little sister” before himself, always making sure she had finished her milk before he felt at ease enough to eat. Though just a child himself, he stumbled along helping her change clothes and doing up her hair.
Su Xingzhi often noticed his grandmother standing and staring blankly at Su Yuji’s back, her gaze guarded and unreadable, complicated and impossible to put into words. At first, Su Xingzhi thought it was guilt toward the granddaughter she had not properly cared for. But two years ago, in the final moments before his grandmother passed away, she had deliberately sent Su Yuji out of the room, called Su Xingzhi to her bedside, and, with tears streaming down her aged face, revealed Su Yuji’s true identity.
As it turned out, Su Yuji had been carried out of the Duke Zhenguo household—the family of Wang Yulan, A’Niang to Madam Wang—by his grandmother herself. His grandmother had not mentioned the full story; she only said that the inner chambers of great households were a battleground where even siblings turned against each other, and she could not bear to watch, so she had taken the child out and raised her herself.
She had once sworn before heaven that she would never reveal this to a third person, but she was about to die, and this matter could not go to the grave with her. In the last hours of her life, his grandmother entrusted the secret to Su Xingzhi and pressed him to make a vow: he must swear never to reveal it to Su Yuji. Only after she had heard Su Xingzhi’s vow with her own ears did his grandmother finally close her eyes and pass away.
Su Xingzhi finally knew who his sister truly was—but he felt not the slightest happiness. Before, he could at least deceive himself into thinking she was an infant abandoned by her family, and that staying in the Su Family was better than wherever she had come from. But after hearing his grandmother’s words, every time he saw Su Yuji, his heart was tormented by guilt and a sense of inadequacy.
She was wholeheartedly on his side, and always saw the best in him—but how could Su Xingzhi not know that passing the imperial examination was merely the beginning of an official career, and that one’s rank proved nothing, really? An official from a humble background had no kin to support him; everything depended on his own efforts. How could that compare to the great clans of distinguished ancestry? Leaving aside all else, in terms of living conditions alone, there was no comparison.
She was a star that had fallen by chance into the Milky Way—a fleeting reflection of a wild goose that did not belong to him. If she were to return to her original family, the standard of living she would enjoy might be what Su Xingzhi would have to strive a lifetime to reach.
She should have never known hardship or poverty. She should never have had to worry about not having enough money. And her future husband should be someone like Ming Huazhang, Jiang Ling, or Xie Jichuan—sons of great families, raised from birth amid heaped gold and accumulated jade, carrying naturally about them a bookish air and an ease with the world. Not like him—born in poverty, raised in poverty, unable even at his utmost to reach the height that Ming Huazhang had been born to.
And Ming Huazhang still had further to climb. With his family’s backing and the Empress’s favor, Su Xingzhi feared he would spend his entire life unable to catch up. How could he dare to say he could give Su Yuji a better life?
Su Xingzhi gazed into Su Yuji’s eyes, and nearly let the truth slip out. But then he remembered his grandmother’s deathbed instructions, and in the end he held it back and smiled at her: “All right. From now on, I will be twice as good to you.”
·
After the capital was moved back, Chang’an was noisy and bustling for a long time. The old noble families were busy renewing connections; Prince Xiang and Princess Taiping, long absent, had to reconnect with old acquaintances; and new figures who had risen to prominence in Luoyang, like the two Zhang brothers, also needed to find footholds. Amid all the commotion, the ninth month arrived, and the first grand national event after the Empress’s return to Chang’an—the imperial examinations—began on schedule.
Because this was a specially added sitting, the number of registrants was far fewer than the regular examinations, and most were from the capital and its surrounding region. On the day of the examination, the entire Duke Zhenguo household turned out. Ming Huashang watched Ming Huazhang walk into the Ministry of Rites examination hall, then slipped away from the elders’ sight and quietly left to go to another part of the grounds to see Ren Yao off for the military examinations.
Ren Yao had slipped out without letting the Marquis Pingnan household know. The only ones who had come to see her off were Ming Huashang and Jiang Ling. Ren Yao gripped her red-tasseled spear, waved it at them, and with great strides walked into the examination grounds.
Ming Huashang and Jiang Ling both inexplicably felt a pang of something bittersweet. Jiang Ling said: “Ming Huazhang, Xie Jichuan, and Su Xingzhi are sitting the Presented Scholar examination; Ren Yao is sitting the military examination. That just leaves the two of us as idle people with nothing to do.”
Ming Huashang shot him a cool glance: “If you have nothing useful to say, you’re welcome to say nothing at all.”
Did she not know this already? Why did he have to say it out loud?