Luoyun smiled softly: “You were not eating either. I wanted to wait for you…”

Han Linfeng smiled back and called the stall owner to bring a fresh bowl.

The two of them sat together beneath the glow of a single oil lamp, with a solitary moon at the edge of the sky and a few scattered passersby in the quiet street, eating their bowls of hot lamb offal noodles at a corner stall like any ordinary couple.

When they had finished, they walked back to the Wang Manor on foot.

Once they were back in the room and alone together, Han Linfeng told her about Cao Sheng’s illness.

With anyone else, Han Linfeng’s clandestine past connections to the rebel army would naturally not be something he could reveal. But Su Luoyun had been the one to see through his secret in the first place — and that was precisely what had set the two of them on the path to this marriage.

In front of her, Han Linfeng could speak his whole mind.

Su Luoyun listened with a furrowed brow, and found herself genuinely worried for Cao Sheng.

Commander Cao was the hero her uncle had admired most in the world. To think he was now gravely ill, his situation so precarious.

“Commander Cao had a very high opinion of this man called Qiu Zhen — enough to want to give him his daughter as a wife? This Qiu Zhen has urged Cao Sheng time and again to proclaim himself a king. He is clearly no good sort.”

Han Linfeng was himself no longer entirely clear on the inner workings of the rebel army. Come to think of it, he had not had any correspondence in a long while with Yuan Xi, the person who handled grain procurement for the rebel forces in various locations.

During the grain-gathering effort in Yan County last time, Han Linfeng had actually collected some on Cao Sheng’s behalf as well, handing it all over to Yuan Xi at the time.

Hearing the worry in Su Luoyun’s voice, he reached out and patted her head, saying with feeling: “If you were Cao Sheng’s daughter, I would not need to worry so much about Elder Brother Cao. At the very least, anyone named Qiu scheming and maneuvering against you would find he had met his match.”

Su Luoyun laughed despite herself: “Come now — you be the one to be reborn as Cao’s daughter. If it were you, I expect someone named Qiu would end up sold off and left cheerfully counting the proceeds for you.”

Han Linfeng knew she was alluding again to how he had tricked her through the doors of the Han household, and smiled, taking her hand. He went on: “I did warn Cao Sheng to keep a watchful eye on Qiu Zhen, but he was too generous in his admiration of talent and never truly took it to heart. Now that Qiu Zhen has grown so dominant, from what I can see, a handful of northern prefectures will never be enough to satisfy his appetite. Yet the Wang clan of Changxi cannot see past their own nose — they actually want to abandon Jiayong Prefecture, a position of vital strategic importance. If Qiu Zhen truly takes it, he can strike from a position of strength and defend from a position of security. One after another, the linked prefectures of the north — Liangzhou itself even — would be in peril. And once that happens, the day the Wang family tries to take it back, they will find the task all but impossible.”

Su Luoyun understood little of military strategy and territorial campaigns, but listening to Han Linfeng’s analysis, she could grasp well enough that a catastrophe of immense proportions was closing in.

And yet everyone seemed drunk and blind to it, still scrabbling and scheming over their petty private calculations. While the one person who saw clearly was about to be pushed onto the sacrificial altar as the offering.

When they had washed up and readied for bed, Su Luoyun lay against him and murmured: “At worst, simply give up the post. Find some excuse, have someone break your leg, and resign on grounds of illness…”

Han Linfeng was moved to laughter by her suggestion, and put on a deliberately reproachful expression: “What, you no longer feel for your husband? If I broke a leg and was left crippled, would that not give you the perfect grounds to seek a separation?”

Su Luoyun reached out and touched his face, her voice quiet and sincere: “It would not matter. Whatever happened to you, I would simply support you…”

Han Linfeng’s heart warmed at the words. He murmured back: “Being kept does sound rather appealing when you put it that way. But I ought to do my best not to sink to that, to avoid the day I must actually rely on you for my keep… Then again, I have seen wealthy widows in the capital who keep men like that. Even if the man is provided for and never need worry about food or clothing, he still has certain obligations in the bedroom… Perhaps I ought to start paying my room and board in advance.”

As he spoke, he settled his full weight down onto Luoyun’s soft, yielding frame.

Su Luoyun had been sitting in genuine sorrow over their country’s circumstances, genuinely worried for Han Linfeng’s future — and then he had somehow turned the conversation around to paying room and board, and thrown out language fit for a wolf or a tiger.

She was left speechless, half-furious and half-laughing: “Han Linfeng! You and your oily tongue again!”

Han Linfeng pressed his nose to hers and said: “Then why don’t you find out for yourself whether it really is so oily…”

With that he lowered his head and their lips and breath tangled together.

By now the two of them had grown remarkably well-attuned to one another in bed, moving together as though water and milk commingled. Knowing that from tomorrow onward he would be taking up residence at the Qianxi supply camp and they would be separated for some time, Han Linfeng found himself increasingly reluctant to let go.

This room and board had to be paid more than once — he intended to lay in a good reserve of longing and tenderness to last them.

As a result of all this carrying on for half the night, Su Luoyun slept straight through the next morning and completely failed to see Han Linfeng off when he departed.

The Princess Consort was not pleased with her daughter-in-law’s lack of propriety.

Though she could not be bothered to concern herself too much with this eldest daughter-in-law of hers, she would not tolerate violations of household rules.

That morning, when the Princess Consort sat down to breakfast with Prince Beizhen and their daughter Han Yao, she summoned Luoyun to present herself before her, and had her stand at the side of the dining table to receive a reprimand.

“I have heard that back in the capital, you relied on the Shizi’s indulgence and made a habit of sending him off to sleep in his study every few days. And now — on the very morning your husband departs for his military duties — you sleep in without the least consideration for others. This is thoroughly improper.”

Luoyun felt that not rising this morning had genuinely been her own fault, and that the Princess Consort, as her elder, was entirely right to correct her. She listened with respectful deference.

She had been shaped and tempered by the formidable Madam Fang of the capital — a reprimand of this order was nothing to her.

From his seat nearby, Prince Beizhen smoothed things over: “Young people always sleep a little longer. She had no elders to pay morning respects to in the capital and grew accustomed to a looser routine. As long as she is more mindful going forward, that will be sufficient.”

Hearing her father-in-law offer a way down from the awkward position, Luoyun responded at once with respectful courtesy: “Every word Mother has said, I have taken to heart. From now on I will be sure to pay my respects to Father and Mother at the proper time.”

The Princess Consort’s voice remained cool: “Your background is humble — one presumes you were not taught much proper conduct from childhood. When Nanny Xi instructed you in the past, I am told you were quite resistant and unteachable. I wonder whether you intend to be equally willful and unruly here before me…”

At this, even Han Yao, who had been quietly eating her porridge, found she could no longer hold her tongue, and muttered under her breath: “What does Nanny Xi know — I listened to her, and made a complete fool of myself at a banquet. Princess Yuyang herself praised my sister-in-law for her perfect conduct, her tea ceremony, and her exceptional skill at fragrance-blending…”

The Princess Consort fixed her daughter with a slight glare: “You have certainly become bold in the capital — answering back to your elders. Is this also how you behaved without restraint before the Jun Guo Duke’s wife? No wonder they took a dislike to you.”

Seeing her mother’s glare, Han Yao lost her voice immediately. Not having successfully gotten herself married was her original sin in this household, and the Princess Consort brought up the postponed engagement at every third sentence — a banked fire that could send sparks flying at any moment.

Prince Beizhen looked at Su Luoyun, still standing before the dining table observing the household rules, and stepped in again at the opportune moment, interrupting the Princess Consort’s reprimand: “Come and sit down to eat with us. Our Wang Manor has never had the custom of making daughters-in-law stand on ceremony like this. In the future, simply try not to provoke your mother. She is one of those people whose words are sharp but whose heart is kind — a very good person at the core.”

The Princess Consort was not entirely pleased at having her authority so casually dismantled, but now that the Prince had set the hat of a magnanimous household upon her head, she had no choice but to wear it. She lowered her eyes with an expression of indifference and resumed her meal.

When breakfast was over, Han Yao accompanied her sister-in-law on a walk through the Wang Manor’s garden, and as they went she said: “Sister-in-law, Father really does seem to treat you quite well. When Mother scolds me in ordinary times, Father never once speaks up for me. Yet this morning at breakfast, he came to your defense again and again. It is strange — you talked back to him the moment you arrived, so why is he not angry with you?”

Luoyun smiled faintly. Though she could not see, she had heard Han Linfeng speak often enough about his daily life with his father to have formed a sense of the man. To say that the Prince had no love for his eldest son was less accurate than to say that he was a father who did not know how to express his affections to his son.

At the very least — the Prince wrote to Han Linfeng every month. Most of those letters were filled with reprimands and stern instruction. But the tenderness behind the habit of personally writing those letters by hand, month after month, could not be fabricated.

When she had stepped in to stop the father from beating his son, it had on the surface appeared to irritate the Prince. But in reality she had simply given him a ready slope to walk down gracefully.

If he had truly wanted to flog his son senseless, would a few words from her have been enough to stop him?

She had carried some apprehension before arriving in Liangzhou, but now that she had seen her in-laws in person, she felt considerably more settled.

Han Linfeng was not the Princess Consort’s own son, which meant that while the Princess Consort might find fault with her, it was only when she failed to observe the rules of the household and gave the mistress of the house cause to lose face that she would actually be reprimanded in words.

Those words might have gone to another girl’s heart.

But Su Luoyun had never troubled herself over such things. When the Princess Consort reprimanded her, she treated it as a fly buzzing in her ear — she was entirely capable of keeping the smile on her face without letting a single word of protest escape.

Aside from the Princess Consort occasionally putting on the air of a mother-in-law, Luoyun’s days were considerably more leisurely than they had been in the capital.

Back in the capital, she had not only managed the dozen or so shops she had gradually opened, but also handled the household affairs of the Shizi’s manor. There was a steward and an accountant, but many decisions still required the mistress of the house.

Here in Liangzhou, however, the mistress of the household was naturally the Princess Consort. Luoyun, as the eldest daughter-in-law, had nothing to do but wait to be fed and dressed.

Her young brother-in-law Han Xiao was studying at the Huicheng Academy. From what she heard, the young master was everything the supposedly ruined Shizi was not — remarkable literary talent at a young age, accomplished in music, chess, calligraphy, and painting alike, and a source of constant pride for the Princess Consort.

This drew constant comment from the assembled wives, whether in plain speech or veiled implication: to be expected when the child was the Princess Consort’s own — born with natural gifts, beyond ordinary comparison.

These remarks were not entirely flattery. After all, when Han Linfeng — the eldest son, born of a concubine — had been Han Xiao’s age, he had been tormenting cats and teasing dogs, and had even been gently returned to the Wang Manor by his academy’s teacher for making no effort at his studies whatsoever. He had then been sent by the Prince somewhere else for his education, his whereabouts unknown for years, before he eventually drifted back to the household.

Such a sharp contrast only served to demonstrate that the Princess Consort’s own son was the more proper of the two.

The Princess Consort’s match with the Prince had been arranged by a go-between, and married life had not entirely met her expectations. The honeymoon of their marriage had been too brief to sustain any lasting sweetness.

So the Princess Consort had poured all her heart into her son, as though raising a flawless, irreproachable child could compensate for every disappointment she had suffered.

Nowadays, every month, she made the trip in person to Huicheng to see her son, in addition to the tile games she played with the wives of neighboring households in ordinary times.

This mother-in-law of hers was a busy woman, with little time to spare for a daughter-in-law who refused to be taught.

Just as Han Linfeng had said — the Princess Consort’s nature was somewhat cold and removed. After the first few days, when Luoyun had been required to rise early and pay her morning respects, the Princess Consort had gradually done away with the rest of the formalities — the standing at the dinner table and the like.

Her reasoning had been: “If you were a good sort, you would naturally wait upon your in-laws and fulfill your filial duties. But given your eye condition, if I were to dismiss your attendants and make you do it yourself, I would come across as cruel. You need not present yourself each day — the first and fifteenth of each month will do.”

Luoyun took her meaning at once: I find you tiresome to look at.

And so she dutifully stayed away from her mother-in-law’s courtyard on every day that was not the first or fifteenth of the month.

The Princess Consort’s intentions were plain — she would not make the new daughter-in-law’s life a misery, but neither did she want her drifting in front of her eyes and giving her a headache.

Liangzhou might be a modest place, but tea gatherings among the wives of the garrison commanders and local officials still happened regularly.

Whenever the Princess Consort invited guests to the Wang Manor for tile games, no matter how lively the front hall grew, the Princess Consort never called for her eldest daughter-in-law to come out and meet them.

Eventually even Han Yao began to sense something was off and quietly asked her mother why she never invited her sister-in-law to meet guests — was that not somewhat inappropriate?

The Princess Consort heard her daughter’s question and said nothing. She simply spooned up sweet glutinous lotus root soup from her bowl, sip by small sip, her gold-threaded silver spoon moving steadily.

It was Nanny Xi at her side who spoke up: “Young Princess, what has come over you? Do you want to give those wives even more to laugh about behind the Wang Manor’s back? Remember — after the Commander Wang’s daughter broke off her engagement with the Shizi, there were several suitable families in the area who sent out feelers about a match with our household. You have no idea how much effort the Princess Consort put in, carefully selecting two suitable families from the lot, preparing to let the Prince make his choice. And then came this imperial grant of marriage from the capital. When word got out that the Shizi had married a blind woman who trades in goods, there was not a household large or small in Liangzhou that was not laughing at us on the quiet. It is thanks entirely to the Princess Consort’s composure and steadiness that we have held our heads up at all — anyone else in her position would not have been able to show their face outside.”

In the past, Han Yao would have heard these words and thought them perfectly reasonable — that her new sister-in-law simply was not presentable in company.

But now, having seen something of the world in the capital, she found Nanny Xi’s disparagement of her sister-in-law thoroughly grating.

“Sister-in-law may have trouble with her eyes, but her bearing and appearance are both exceptional, and her mind is sharper than anyone with full sight. Besides — in the capital, she was a regular guest at the households of both Princess and Duke, and she was even received in the Empress’s own palace. How is it that she suddenly cannot be seen in Liangzhou?”

Hearing her daughter answer back, the Princess Consort actually looked up: “Yao’er, is this what you have been learning at your sister-in-law’s side — how to sharpen your tongue? If she were as impressive as all that, how did she manage your marriage so badly, and let the Jun Guo Duke’s household put off the engagement?”

When it came down to it, what the Princess Consort resented most was that Han Linfeng and his wife had failed to see Han Yao’s marriage properly arranged.

Which only proved that Su Luoyun’s cleverness was all concentrated in the tip of her tongue.

Not wanting her daughter to be corrupted by the example of such a sharp-tongued sister-in-law, the Princess Consort fixed Han Yao with a pointed look: “Was there no truth in what Nanny Xi said?”

With her mother having spoken, Han Yao had no further recourse. She could only lower her eyes and submit meekly to her mother’s cold and measured lecture.

Having failed to marry promptly, she had earned herself the perpetual chanting of the scriptures — the golden headband pressed tight against her temples without relief.

As for Luoyun, she was well aware that her mother-in-law was deliberately ignoring her. Sometimes, when the laughter and liveliness of the front hall drifted back to her, both Xiangcao and Ji Qiu felt the injustice on the Shizi’s wife’s behalf.

This kind of pointed exclusion was genuinely humiliating.

It seemed her mother-in-law was the mistress whom Nanny Xi had served and shaped — their ways of cutting a person down were identical.

But for Luoyun, this leisurely idleness was something she had rarely known in her life. Perhaps only during the two years she had spent in the countryside had she known anything close to such quiet.

In the capital, she would have been spinning like a top — managing her dozen-odd shops, handling the endless round of banquets at the households of princesses and nobles that she could not refuse, exhausting herself in social obligations.

And the shops would have been funneling all their affairs back to her for decisions.

Now, here in Liangzhou, far from the capital and its reach, she had handed the businesses over to the stewards to manage as they saw fit. She would simply collect the accounts at year’s end.

Now that she had leisure time, she could practice the guqin, which she had not touched in a long while. She could also write letters in her own hand to her younger brother.

Before she had left the capital, Han Linfeng had arranged for her brother Su Guiyan to take up a post as county magistrate in Maolin County, a place well away from the capital. It was not too far from their uncle’s naval garrison, so there would be someone to look after him.

Maolin was on the poor side, but its people were honest and simple — good conditions for a young man to temper himself. And Director Li Guitian had made a sincere effort on behalf of his young protégé, even personally acting as matchmaker, arranging for a young woman named Qian Xiaoyu — the niece of his own younger sister — to be introduced to Su Guiyan.

His younger sister had married Qian Boyong, the regional governor of Huaishan. Though Qian Boyong had come from modest origins himself, by his generation the household was a proper official family. The young Miss Qian was fifteen years old, close in age to Su Guiyan.

She was said to be well-read and well-mannered — she had been reading histories since the age of ten — though reportedly of unremarkable appearance, without the beauty of a particularly striking face. When Director Li had first proposed the match, he had not expected much to come of it.

After all, the Qian family’s official fortunes were doing reasonably well, and they might naturally prefer a match at a comparable standing. Su Guiyan’s qualifications, considered plainly, were not particularly outstanding.

But the Director felt some obligation toward Han Linfeng, who had saved his life — and so he felt he had to at least make a genuine effort to find a respectable match for Han Linfeng’s young brother-in-law. Whether it succeeded was not for the matchmaker to determine — doing his sincere best was enough.

When Han Linfeng had relayed this to Su Luoyun at the time, she had been full of worry — afraid that her brother, who was handsome and well-featured, might look down on a girl of plain appearance. Equally afraid that his youth and forthrightness might lead him to turn the proposal down without the grace to do so tactfully, and in his directness inadvertently give offense to Director Li, his own benefactor.

To her surprise, once Su Guiyan had looked at Miss Qian’s portrait, he had then asked to see some verses she had written. After reading two poems, he had walked several small circles on the spot, exclaiming in admiration, before finally bowing deeply to Director Li and solemnly expressing that he had long admired precisely this kind of woman — accomplished and richly learned. To be matched with such a person would be the fortune of a lifetime. He then respectfully asked the Director to also present his own writings, poems, and portrait to Miss Qian for her consideration.

This kind of sincere admiration, radiating from within outward, struck Director Li Guitian as exactly right — he was gratified that his niece’s literary talent had earned the household credit, and equally impressed by the young man’s discerning eye.

And so what had begun as a perfunctory favor between acquaintances suddenly became a matter of genuine weight. Director Li invested seven parts of his full attention into it.

When Su Guiyan’s reaction was relayed, word for word, back to Miss Qian herself, she looked again at the portrait of the fine-featured young man — and understood that this was a young man who did not judge by appearance alone. She felt that here, at last, was someone who would truly know her across the distance of a thousand li, a perfect companionship of kindred souls.

From that point on, Su Guiyan’s origins as a merchant’s son, his family’s chaotic history, and the scandalous reputation of his brother-in-law — none of it mattered anymore.

Miss Qian made it unmistakably clear to her hesitant parents: in this lifetime, she would marry this young man, or she would marry no one.

In the end, this match that had seemed ill-suited in every measurable way was concluded with startling swiftness.

When Luoyun received her brother’s letter saying that they had exchanged marriage contracts, she felt a surge of feeling — and still could not quite put aside her worry, asking him in her reply whether he was truly certain, having never met her in person, that he would not find himself unhappy after the wedding.

And Su Guiyan’s letter had told his sister the honest truth. The Su family’s disgrace was too well-known to conceal from anyone. Miss Qian had known all of it and chosen to come regardless — who was he to turn around and be fastidious about her?

Besides, her handwriting was graceful and fine, her poetry and prose delicate and perceptive — clearly a woman of gentle and virtuous character.

The most beautiful face, without the character to match it, only becomes a source of weariness over time. He had suffered too much under his stepmother Ding Shi to ever again endure a woman who traded on her looks, spoiled and shallow and unkind. He would sooner take the example of Zhuge Kongming and marry a plain-looking woman of virtue.

Luoyun had always thought her brother inexperienced in the ways of the world. But in a matter like the choice of a marriage partner, what she saw proved that he was considerably more mature and clear-sighted than she had given him credit for.

With that, Su Luoyun set down her worry and simply waited for the years to pass, until she could welcome her sister-in-law into the household.

These days, receiving her brother’s letters was one of her great pleasures. Though such letters were precious and rare — he managed about one a month.

Letters from the grain supply camp, on the other hand, came with considerably more frequency.

Han Linfeng rarely came home now, so the two of them maintained their daily connection through letters passed back and forth via page boy, each reporting on the small events of the day.

Stripped of the idle, dissolute persona Han Linfeng had worn like a mask in the capital, his true nature was in fact steady and contained.

But in private with Su Luoyun, he was a man of few words and considerable mischief — able with a handful of sentences to set the tips of her ears burning.

And so his private letters, though written with genuine literary elegance, carried an undertow of the same teasing spirit characteristic of his former companion Guo Yan.

Since Luoyun’s eyes could not see, she generally had her attendants read her correspondence aloud.

But these letters were clearly not suitable for reading aloud. Han Linfeng had found a solution — he ground fine sand into the ink before writing, so that when it dried on the paper, the texture of the ink strokes could be felt with a fingertip, tracing the direction of each brushstroke.

In this way, Su Luoyun could read his letters herself, using the tips of her fingers.

Each time she read one, she would feel her way through a few lines, then burst out laughing, toss the letter to one side, and after a moment pick it up to continue reading.

Daily idleness in the Manor was apt to grow tedious, however, so on the fifteenth of each month — beyond the obligatory visit to pay her mother-in-law’s respects — Luoyun had also been granted permission to go and wander through the town market.

On the fifteenth of every month, the town held its large market day. The customs here were entirely unlike those of the capital. Sitting in the palanquin, she could smell the distinct fragrance of northern flatbread baked in hanging clay ovens wafting through, mingled with the sound of haggling voices in a dozen different regional accents.

Luoyun wanted to visit the local aromatics stalls. On her previous visit she had noticed that this place actually carried high-quality myrrh — a tree resin ordinarily found only in foreign lands, rarely seen outside the great markets of the capital.

This myrrh, beyond its use in incense-blending, was also well-suited as a treatment for rheumatic and bone pain. Old Cui, the cook, suffered from chronic cold-weather knee trouble, and Luoyun had been looking up an old formula, intending to compound an aromatic remedy for him.

Though she had come out in a palanquin, she had been confined to the Wang Manor for too long. Once through the gates, she stepped out of the palanquin and walked along the main street, her face veiled beneath a long gauze hood.

Fragrance layered upon fragrance drifted through the air. Luoyun strolled with her attendants, pausing here and there, trying to guess what each stall might be selling by its smell alone — a small pleasure all its own.

She had been wandering pleasantly along when a group of riders came galloping down the street, scattering pedestrians in all directions.

Xiangcao caught a glimpse of the riders and murmured under her breath: “Young Mistress — there is a man who looks every bit as handsome as the Shizi!”

Luoyun blinked in surprise. Xiangcao herself seemed to feel the description was not quite precise, and added: “That is — the brow and eyes and the line of the nose on that rider just now — they resemble our Shizi’s, and there is also something of a foreign air about him.”