Su Luoyun ran an honest business with nothing to hide in her accounts — there were no secrets in those purchasing records. Even with the pages gone, it would only make the bookkeeping more tedious; nothing truly serious had been lost.

So when the bookkeeper finished his report, she simply instructed him to make sure that going forward, the accounts ledger was locked away in the iron strongbox after every reconciliation.

She knew Li Rong was behind this. But two torn pages of paper were not enough to file a case with the authorities. And going out to the countryside to confront Li Rong over it would only set that mother of his rolling on the ground again.

After the bookkeeper left, Su Luoyun was still turning the matter over in her mind, a faint twitch in her eyelid warning her that there was likely more to come from the Li Rong affair.

He had come back to the shop after being let go — someone of higher cunning had almost certainly put him up to it.

She had a feeling she could not afford to spend the next few days keeping her brother company after all. She would need to go and mind the shop herself. Only — early the very next morning, before she had even left the house, catastrophe came knocking.

The siblings were in the middle of breakfast when a sudden clamor of fists hammered against the front gate.

Nanny Tian heard the rough, loud voices outside and did not dare open the door, calling through it to ask who was there.

The voices outside announced themselves as runners from the Prefecture Magistrate’s office, attending to official business — if the door was not opened immediately, they would kick it in.

Nanny Tian peered through the gap and saw that they were indeed dressed in official constable uniforms, and hastily let them in.

Five or six constables filed through the gate, unfurled a warrant document, and announced bluntly that someone had reported the proprietor of Slim Fragrance Studio for purchasing smuggled fragrant materials. They had come to escort the proprietor to the magistrate’s court for questioning.

Su Luoyun’s brow furrowed. Beside her, Xiangcao immediately grabbed some silver and moved to press it into the constables’ hands, hoping to buy a little leniency.

But the lead constable did not even glance at it, raising his hand to block her: “His Majesty has lately ordered strict investigations into smugglers. Anyone found in violation of the law faces exile at the lightest, and immediate execution at the worst. Do not try to implicate us, young miss…”

The constables refusing silver meant the case was serious.

Since there was no reasoning with these men, Su Luoyun had no choice but to change her clothes. She told her brother to stay calm and wait — she would go to the magistrate’s court and sort this out. If she did not return, he need not go back to the Su family home; Nanny Tian would take Su Guiyan by boat to find their uncle Hu Xuesong.

The constables saw that she was a blind woman and felt some measure of pity — since she was only being summoned for questioning and had not yet been convicted of anything, there was no need for shackles or restraints.

When she arrived at the court, Su Luoyun finally learned the full picture. Someone had reported that Slim Fragrance Studio had taken in high-grade frankincense of exceptional quality.

Every year, the quantities of such precious goods entering the city were meticulously recorded at the Trade Supervisorate — which pieces had gone to the palace, which had been distributed as imperial gifts, which smaller inferior fragments had been released to various shops: all of it was traceable.

Even if Su Luoyun had initially purchased some small loose pieces from a merchant, by now — given the quantities used — those should long since have been exhausted.

Yet Slim Fragrance Studio had continued supplying the Prince Beizhen household and the consort’s household with frankincense without any sign of running short.

This informant had evidently been thorough — they had even procured the shop’s purchasing ledger. Every line of the accounts was laid out plainly, and to any outside eye, the numbers simply did not add up.

Su Luoyun finally understood what Li Rong had stolen the purchasing ledger pages for.

He had evidently slipped into the fragrance storage room beforehand and seen the remaining frankincense beads. Convinced she had bought contraband goods, he had stolen the ledger pages and gone to the authorities.

Because Han Linfeng’s reputation was so disreputable, Su Luoyun had told no one about the Shizi’s gift of the beads, wanting to avoid any hint of impropriety. No one at the shop knew the origin of those large frankincense beads.

In ordinary times, it was an open secret that fragrance shops quietly purchased some smuggled goods on the side — some shops had even built their entire business on such dealings. The managers and master craftsmen simply accepted this as a matter of course. What the proprietor did with the shop’s procurement was none of their concern, and they would never have thought to question it.

Someone had clearly received Li Rong’s tip-off and, believing they had a hold over Slim Fragrance Studio, had made their move — reporting her under the charge of purchasing contraband goods.

The magistrate had reviewed the accounts first thing that morning and then ordered the shop to be searched. When he saw the frankincense beads of unknown provenance, he knitted his brow and concluded he had a significant case on his hands. With a stern expression, he asked Su Luoyun where those large frankincense beads in her shop had come from.

Su Luoyun did not lose her composure. She had a clear conscience, and had nothing to fear from the magistrate’s questioning.

The difficulty was that, while the beads had indeed been a gift from the Beizhen Shizi, coming out with that openly would do her reputation as an unmarried woman considerable harm. A dissolute Shizi like Han Linfeng was someone respectable families’ daughters would not go near.

But that was not her greatest concern.

What worried her most was this: if she named him, the authorities would inevitably send someone to make inquiries. And she had been noticeably cool toward the Shizi on several recent occasions. Though there had been no actual quarrel, her deliberate avoidance had been obvious — Han Linfeng was no fool, and he seemed to have taken some displeasure from it.

Now that she was in trouble, would the Shizi’s household stand aside and refuse to testify?

If Han Linfeng had been guarding against her all along and harbored some intent to silence her, then declining to come forward now would remove a loose end for him without a drop of blood on his hands…

After all, if the Shizi’s household refused to testify, she would have no recourse. And from the magistrate’s perspective, it would simply look like a merchant girl reaching above her station.

But if she said nothing, she had no way to clear herself of the charge of buying contraband…

While Su Luoyun was still weighing her options, Su Hongmeng arrived, drenched in sweat.

News of his daughter’s suspected purchase of contraband had reached the magistrate, who had also sent someone to inquire at the Fragrance Merchants’ Guild and its chairman. Su Hongmeng had been informed at once and rushed over without even finishing his breakfast. Before leaving, Ding Shi had urged him not to wade into murky water.

Su Luoyun was his daughter, true, but their shops were run separately. Even if she had genuinely committed an offense, though the penalty would be severe, it would not extend to the whole family.

So why should Su Hongmeng drag himself into it?

The matter of the Lu family withdrawing from the betrothal had only just settled down. Master Lu had turned out to be a gentleman — perhaps also wary of dragging his son’s name into it — and had indeed held his tongue.

Su Hongmeng had only just begun to breathe easier when this disaster struck on his eldest daughter’s side.

Cursing inwardly at how nothing was ever peaceful, he still wanted to come and smooth things over while there was still room to do so.

Even if it cost some money, he would accept that — he could not simply let his daughter be branded a criminal and thrown in prison.

So he shot Ding Pei a sideways glance with no intention of listening to her, and walked straight out the door.

But just as he climbed down from his palanquin at the courthouse entrance, Ding Pei came hurrying up in another sedan chair and grabbed his sleeve, whispering urgently: “My lord, how can you be so reckless? Have you forgotten your own position? You hold a post at the Trade Supervisorate, and now your daughter stands accused of purchasing contraband. If you say you’re innocent, will anyone believe you? You would be standing beneath a crumbling wall with no way to protect yourself. And you want to pull her out of this? Have you forgotten the severity with which His Majesty struck down the smugglers not long ago?”

At these words, Su Hongmeng’s fatherly concern drained away considerably. He realized with a belated jolt of cold sweat that she was right.

This was no small matter. The Emperor was currently bearing down hard on smugglers evading tariffs — if Su Luoyun were actually convicted, he might well be dragged into it too.

Worse still, he might end up branded as derelict in his own official duty.

With that thought, the cold sweat ran down his spine, and every last impulse to use his connections to smooth things over vanished entirely.

But an unmarried daughter being detained — as her father, he could hardly fail to show his face at all. He steeled himself and went in.

When he saw the magistrate, Su Hongmeng first made a show of berating Su Luoyun at length and then conveyed to the magistrate that it was his misfortune as a father — this eldest daughter had never been easy from the day she was born. Feeling that the whole family owed her a debt because of her accidental blindness, she had been causing trouble ever since. When she made a fuss about leaving home to run her own shop, he had let her have her way — and now she had broken the rules and brought disaster upon herself. He could not escape blame as her father. If she had indeed committed an offense, he asked the magistrate to serve as witness: he would sever the father-daughter bond right here in this court, in the spirit of justice over personal feeling, and would absolutely not intercede on her behalf out of private sentiment.

The magistrate nodded along steadily through this speech, watching Su Hongmeng perform his sorrowful, enraged-by-failure display, and felt a sympathetic stir: a child who brings nothing but trouble is indeed a parent’s curse from a previous life.

When Su Luoyun first heard that her father had come, her heart had stirred with something almost like gratitude — she had thought he must be worried about her.

After listening to Su Hongmeng’s impassioned declaration, Su Luoyun’s expression went blank for a moment, then curved into a cold, mocking smile.

Of course. When his own reputation and career were at stake, what did it matter that she was his blind daughter?

With that, the fists she had been clenching at her sides slowly uncurled.

If she had no one to rely on, her only option was to save herself. Anger alone solved nothing.

With her heart gone cold, many things became easier to bear.

What was a woman’s reputation worth in a moment like this? There was no point in worrying about appearances — clearing herself of the charges came first.

Thinking this, Su Luoyun shed a great many of her hesitations. She took a slow breath, paid no attention to Su Hongmeng’s furious denunciations, and addressed the magistrate directly: “I ask that the honorable magistrate consider the following: if this frankincense was not purchased by me, but was given as a gift by another party — how would the law regard that?”

The magistrate frowned. “Given as a gift?”

Su Hongmeng frowned as well. This foolish girl — even if she was going to fabricate a story, she ought to make it plausible. Frankincense was too precious a thing for anyone to give away so casually, let alone a bead of that size — a grade befitting tribute goods. There was no way its provenance could be clean.

If he had known she would bring disgrace on the whole family like this, he should have sent her off to a convent long ago.

Su Luoyun continued calmly: “The frankincense beads that were seized bear a seal stamp, Your Honor. Whether or not they are contraband is something you can determine at a glance…”

When she had used the beads, she had kept her wits about her — deliberately preserving the face of the frankincense bead that bore the seal stamp of the Shizi’s household storeroom.

Wealthy and noble households stamped items of this caliber that entered their private stores as a safeguard — if a servant had light fingers and sold something off secretly, there would be evidence to trace.

All she needed to do was prove the goods had passed through the Shizi’s household, and it would be established that they had not come from a smuggler.

Once the magistrate recognized the seal, he would naturally construct a narrative of private gifts exchanged between a man and a woman, concluding that this was the amorous Shizi bestowing a favor on a pretty merchant girl. A magistrate who understood the ways of the world would likely stop there — or quietly send someone to inquire of the Shizi in private.

If the Shizi acknowledged it readily, so much the better — it would simply be a matter of consignment, a commercial arrangement, payment settled between the two parties.

If the Shizi refused to acknowledge it and chose to let her face some embarrassment — that was fine too. She could weep with grievance, affect the air of a woman who had seen through the vanities of the world, and tell the magistrate that whatever the Shizi said was the truth, she would not argue, and accepted everything as stated.

That way, people would likely conclude the Shizi had seduced and then abandoned her.

All things considered, that outcome would serve her even better. As long as she was cleared of the charge of trafficking in contraband and avoided prison, she did not care if people assumed she had bought stolen goods from a thief.

Under the laws of Great Wei, anyone found in possession of stolen goods would have the goods confiscated and be fined three times the value.

That fine, she could pay even if she had to sell her house and land.

If money could resolve this, she had no wish to trouble the Shizi with coming to testify, and no intention of expending effort to defend her good name and prove her innocence.

Once she was entangled with the Beizhen Shizi, her name was unlikely to come out clean in any case. Her father would feel he had lost all face, naturally — but his daughter was rather too preoccupied with her own survival to worry about the face of Warehouse Keeper Su.

Fortunately she did not need to marry. She had no future husband’s dignity to protect. She would pay the fine, close out this farcical case, move house at the first opportunity, and sever every last tie with the spider’s den next door.

The magistrate, on hearing this, took up his tortoiseshell magnifying lens and examined the frankincense resin closely.

And there it was — the seal of the Beizhen Shizi’s household.

The magistrate set down his lens and looked again at the delicately lovely young woman kneeling at the foot of the dais. Everything became clear: goods this precious were not casually given to anyone. What had begun as a case of contraband had apparently uncovered a private romantic affair. The Beizhen Shizi truly had no discrimination at all — he would not even leave a blind woman in peace.

Though one had to admit — this young woman was remarkably beautiful. If the Shizi had a dalliance with her, it was not entirely incomprehensible.

Only… the magistrate glanced toward Su Hongmeng, whose complexion had taken on the color of a green turnip, and sighed inwardly.

Su Hongmeng had some standing in this city, yet his legitimate daughter had apparently been carrying on this sort of business behind his back.

That Beizhen Shizi was a worthless rake — how could he ever have any sincere feeling for a blind girl from a merchant family? To be his wife was out of the question, and even as a concubine it would be near impossible. Now that this had all come to light, if the Shizi’s household refused to acknowledge it, Su Hongmeng was going to have rather a lot of difficulty keeping his face…

Su Hongmeng had not expected that his seemingly prudent eldest daughter had apparently become entangled with a dissolute young lord like the Beizhen Shizi.

Had she attached herself to the son of any other wealthy noble household, one might at least credit her with some cunning. But what could she have been thinking, getting involved with a useless wretch like Han Linfeng?

Had she not heard about the embarrassing farce Han Linfeng had made over the Duke of Lu’s daughter?

The thought of it made Su Hongmeng’s head swim with fury. Not waiting for the magistrate to send someone to make inquiries, he surged forward, intending to deliver his kneeling daughter a sharp slap across the face.

What a disgrace to the family! If he did not beat this wretched girl, there was no relieving the rage in his heart.

But his hand, raised high, never came down — an iron-grip hand caught his arm and held it fast.

Su Hongmeng cried out in pain and turned around — only to find a young man of striking handsomeness standing behind him, heavy brows and a straight nose, his hand clamped around Su Hongmeng’s arm like a vice.

“Ow — let go! You — who are you?” Su Hongmeng was in considerable pain, and the tall man had him in such a grip that he was up on his toes trying to pull free.

Before the young man could speak, the magistrate rose to his feet in startled recognition: “Shizi — you… how did you come to be here?”

Su Luoyun could not see the man, but her nose had already caught the fragrance of the powder she had personally blended for the Shizi alone — and she was equally astonished.

He… how had he come to be here?

At that moment, Han Linfeng released Su Hongmeng’s arm, snapped open his folding fan, and said with an air of casual indifference as he fanned himself: “I heard there is a new regulation in the capital — gifts to others must first be registered with the authorities. I had nothing to do today, so I thought I would come sit here a while, share a cup of tea with the magistrate.”

The magistrate was rather familiar with this royal family wastrel, having dealt with him on several occasions of public drunkenness and disturbance of businesses. He had little personal regard for the man, but appearances had to be maintained. He turned to Han Linfeng with a cupped-hands bow: “Shizi, you are too kind — though in fact I did have something to confirm with you. Since you have come yourself, that saves me the trouble of sending someone. Someone, bring a chair and tea for the Shizi!”

Han Linfeng made himself comfortable in the chair that was brought, and said with unhurried ease: “My household’s steward had some frankincense beads left in storage at Slim Fragrance Studio. As I understand it, those beads have caused some trouble. I was actually on my way out this morning when the young Su brother came to my gate in tears, saying his sister had been wrongly accused, and asking our steward to come testify. I happened to cross paths with him directly, listened to the whole story, and came along. I could have stayed out of it entirely, but my steward worried that if just a steward showed up, he might be judged as having colluded with a merchant to steal goods from the household stores and sell them off — so he begged me to come as a witness, to save everyone the subsequent trouble.”

The magistrate smiled and replied: “The steward need not have worried. If the goods genuinely belonged to your household and had simply been left at the fragrance shop, a letter of confirmation from you would have sufficed — there was no need to come in person.”

Han Linfeng took a sip of tea and glanced sideways at the slight figure kneeling on the floor.

He knew perfectly well he had not needed to come. But after listening to Su Guiyan’s tearful account that morning, he had thought it over — and come anyway.

When he had stepped through the door just now, he had caught the tail end of that Su Hongmeng’s impassioned speech about severing the father-daughter bond in the name of justice.

The young woman kneeling alone in the middle of the hall had clearly felt the impact of those words. Though she held her head low, her spine was drawn straight, maintaining whatever dignity remained to her.

And when the man who called himself her father had declared in that theatrical tone that he was cutting her off, the fists clenched at her sides had been trembling almost imperceptibly.

Was it fear? It did not feel like fear. Which left only grief, and fury.

In that moment, a single silhouette, kneeling and alone, conveyed more unspoken sorrow than words could hold.

On his way here, Han Linfeng had actually begun to regret it, thinking the whole trip unnecessary. The young miss had no great desire to see him — why should he come and press himself on her cold indifference?

Yet the moment Su Hongmeng raised his hand to strike without so much as asking what had happened, Han Linfeng felt nothing but relief that he had come — because otherwise, who would have been there to care about that cold indifference?

With that thought turning through his mind, he had caught Su Hongmeng’s raised arm. Han Linfeng had put no effort into restraint — had in fact deliberately applied force — enough to make Su Hongmeng cry out.

With Han Linfeng’s arrival, the scene had taken on a peculiar quality.

He was an idle Shizi, true, but he was also an imperial descendant who could enter and leave the palace — a son of the late Holy Virtue Emperor’s line. The current Emperor bestowed gifts on him from time to time, as a gesture of reverence for his predecessor.

That the Shizi’s household might have high-grade frankincense beads in its stores was entirely unremarkable.

Ding Pei had come in with Su Hongmeng and had been standing near the entrance of the court, watching the proceedings unfold.

When she first heard Su Luoyun invoke the Beizhen Shizi, Ding Pei felt a leap of delight in her heart. If the stupid girl had been foolish enough to actually fall for the empty charms of a worthless rake, that was simply wonderful.

But the girl was young after all, and did not understand how men thought. A secret gift of this sort had no place in polite society. Would the Shizi’s household really testify on her behalf? If they did, it would be as good as publicly confirming that the Beizhen Shizi had taken a fancy to a blind merchant girl — how humiliating. As long as the Shizi had any sense left, he would not come forward to acknowledge it.

Ding Pei had concluded that even if Su Luoyun managed to clear her name, she would still lose her reputation. And if Su Hongmeng found the whole business shameful enough, the girl might well be sent back to the countryside, or even packed off to a convent with her head shaved.

What she had not remotely anticipated was that the Beizhen Shizi, apparently bereft of all sense and indifferent to his own dignity, had come trotting along in person to testify for Su Luoyun.