Hua Zhi lowered her head with a quiet laugh. “And yet this most pitiable person — the one who has nothing — is the reason my family and I are scattered to the ends of the earth, without any knowing of when we will meet again. Lu Xiansheng grieves for his family. So do I.”

Gu Yanxi had no answer for that.

Hua Zhi walked past him and moved ahead, gazing at the dark red that lingered at the edge of the sky. “Your Imperial Uncle leans on imperial authority to lash out at those beneath him at will. And I lean on the fact that Lu Xiansheng holds no malice toward me to speak without restraint. I wonder whether Lu Xiansheng has ever heard this saying: those who invite pity must carry within them something deserving of contempt.”

Hua Zhi turned around. Her smile was light, but there was something in it — Gu Yanxi could not quite name what — something almost bold. “I will not allow the Hua family to be worthy of pity. Look through the entire recorded history of our family — not once, across all the generations, did the Hua family do anything deserving of contempt. They were scholars, every one of them, who from the time they were young learned the words of the sages and bound themselves within every rule and stricture those words laid down, whether willingly or not. Later, they took on the burden of upholding the dignity of scholars everywhere and became the model that all scholars looked to.”

She thought of the last time she had gone to see them at Yinshan Pass — those hands that had once held only brushes, now chapped and cracked with frostbite — and something caught in her throat. “Lu Xiansheng once said that the Hua family’s Fourth Uncle was the most outstanding of his generation. And yet in the end it was not he who entered government service — not only because he was born last, but because he never devoted himself single-mindedly to the sage’s path the way the others did. My father did. Third Uncle did. Even Second Uncle was shaped by the same measure that the Hua family held its men to. Only Fourth Uncle, the child of his parents’ old age, was different. Fourth Uncle’s life was richly varied — he lived far more freely than the rest.”

Hua Zhi stepped closer, her voice low but unhesitating. “I do not believe my father’s way is better, or that Fourth Uncle’s way is worse. But I cannot discount what those uncles and forebears accomplished — the men who spent their entire lives building the name the Hua family carries. As a person who holds the highest authority in the land, you similarly have no right to dismiss a family that has contributed to your dynasty across every generation, simply because your son failed to rise to what you hoped for him. And so — I do not pity him for how pitiable he is.”

A sudden gust of wind lifted Hua Zhi’s cloak, and the cold of it brought her back to herself. She turned away and pulled her cloak tightly around her.

She thought: her instincts had been right. There were some things that came down to having incompatible views of the world. She was accustomed to equality — or at least to proportional exchange: do this much work, receive this much pay; give this much, receive that much in return. But here, no matter how much good you did, a single word from the Emperor could see you dead. Not only you — your family, the infant still in its swaddling, all of them sent to their deaths together.

Living within a world like this, she could only accept it. But she could not feel any peace about it. And since even the greatest good one might do ultimately meant one’s life and death still rested in someone else’s passing thought — why bother at all? Wouldn’t it be the most carefree life to simply keep your head down and tend to your own days?

If her grandfather ever heard these thoughts, she imagined he would have a great deal to say to her. Which was why, she supposed, she was not truly a proper Hua family member. She lacked that greatness of character. To worry for all under heaven before you worry for yourself, to rejoice for all under heaven after they have rejoiced — that kind of sage’s heart was too distant from where she stood. Working out some good food to share with people felt far more real.

Yet no matter how much resentment she carried within her, when it came time to teach, she still taught that body of values in full. She could live as herself — but the Hua family’s sons had to carry forward the Hua family’s integrity. That, she respected absolutely.

Sometimes she thought about it and felt that she was perhaps not cut out to be a teacher at all. One careless step and she might lead her students entirely astray.

This thought brought her back around, and she looked at him. “Now that you know this is what I think — are you still certain you want to leave A’Jian in my hands?”

Gu Yanxi nodded without hesitation. “What is broken must first be broken further before it can be rebuilt.”

“I hope the outcome is what you are hoping to see.”

It could hardly get worse than it already was, Gu Yanxi thought, and felt a bitterness at the back of his throat. Even he — never mind Imperial Uncle — had never thought that far ahead.

He had known the Hua family had been wronged. Yet it had never struck him as particularly wrong that Imperial Uncle had done what he did. That was simply how things were for subjects of the great Qing dynasty — thunder and rain alike were the Emperor’s grace. Had it not always been so?

But then — they had never stopped to think about it. The Hua family had given the dynasty their loyalty across generations, and they had been cast out because the Emperor needed someone to take his anger. Would they not grow cold toward the throne? Would other great families and clans not grow cold? What about the scholars and students across the realm who had looked to the Hua family as their guiding light — would they not grow cold as well?

When the Hua family’s younger generation grew up — would they still offer the Emperor the same loyalty their forebears had? And if they could not — whose fault was that?

Those who entered government service having watched what had happened to the Hua family — would they still be willing to give their lives for the great Qing dynasty with that same fire in their hearts?

Without generals who were willing to die for the cause. Without scholars who were willing to bleed for their country. How many more years could the Gu family’s dynasty hold together?

History had buried too much of the truth about what happened to a dynasty’s imperial house when it fell. Imperial princes and princesses reduced to playthings — that was ordinary. The humiliation of it was beyond imagining, that it might one day fall upon the descendants of the Gu family. And if yet another foreign people rose up to found a new dynasty —

The cold wind swept past him, yet Gu Yanxi felt his back grow damp with sweat. The fall of a dynasty was never the work of a single moment. Could the Hua family’s exile be the first step in the decline of the great Qing dynasty?

He looked at A’Zhi, tucking a strand of wind-tossed hair back behind her ear. He thought — it must be that the great Qing dynasty still had its fortune intact, to have given the Hua family a descendant like A’Zhi. To have let him cross paths with A’Zhi. And to have let the Sixth Prince, with nowhere left to turn, climb onto A’Zhi’s carriage.

And so — between him and A’Zhi, there was perhaps something of fate after all.

Gu Yanxi lifted his outer robe from his own shoulders and settled it around A’Zhi’s. “The Hua family will be reunited.”

It was a promise. Hua Zhi knew it. She gave a quiet, respectful dip of her head, and watched the man swing up onto his horse. Lin Ying rose up on its hind legs with a long, clear cry and vanished from her sight in an instant.

“Young miss.” Ying Chun came hurrying over. “It’s late — we should head back.”

“Mm.” Hua Zhi gathered around her the cloak that was a size too long and turned back the way they had come. “Fu Dong — starting tomorrow, prepare two portions of the meals and have Dong Zi bring them into the city.”

“Yes.”

The sky was growing steadily darker. The group quickened their pace and made their way back into the courtyard. Nanny Su watched the young miss’s retreating figure and quietly turned something over in her mind — and in the end said nothing at all, only made a note to herself to be more attentive from here on.

“Dong Zi, come with me.”

The others were sent off to their own matters. Hua Zhi led Dong Zi to the main room, poured herself a cup of tea — hot enough to scald — and held it to warm her hands before looking up. “When you arrive in the city, someone will come to take the food box from you. Hand it over directly.”

“Yes.”

Hua Zhi turned the teacup slowly in her hands. “Keep a careful eye on how things look in the city. If anything seems off, come back and tell me.”

Dong Zi hesitated slightly. “Young miss — when you say something seems off, do you mean…?”

“Anything that strikes you as not right. Rumors, unusual movements — that sort of thing.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“That’s all.”

Hua Zhi sat alone in the room for a long while. She trusted what Lu Xiansheng had said — but she was not the kind of person who placed all her hopes in someone else’s hands. She preferred to keep the initiative her own.

She also wanted to see what more might unfold in the capital. And whether, having heard what she had said today, Gu Yanxi would do anything with it.

She did not like this system of monarchs and dynasties. But she liked being a person caught in the chaos of a changing era even less.