Ever since she was old enough to remember, Su Tan’er had, step by step, made her way forward by mimicking the way men handled matters of business — an effort plenty of people within the Su family had witnessed for themselves. Though most people, seeing a woman push herself this hard, tended to call it either restlessness or delusions of becoming some latter-day empress, once Su Tan’er finally took the reins of the household’s affairs, matter after matter, on top of the tremendous weight brought by her role in settling the imperial-merchant affair, there was hardly anyone left in the Su family now who truly dared to dismiss her.
Since her return this time, though she said little within the family, the influence she had quietly built up already rivaled that of her own father, Su Boyong. Ten years from now, twenty years from now, it was already plain to everyone that the whole of the Su family might well be run by her hand.
Of course, there were certain hidden factors — the extent of what Ning Yi had accomplished, the levels he had reached — that lay beyond what most people could touch or grasp. Should he, some years down the line, suddenly decide to seize control himself, taking the power currently in Su Tan’er’s hands for his own, it wasn’t impossible — though naturally, no one would welcome such an outcome. Or again, before all the elders who currently held sway over Su Tan’er had passed on, should her eldest son grow to maturity and prove himself exceptionally capable, the family might well prefer to see a man take the lead instead. But even allowing for such possibilities, Su Tan’er’s undeniable competence was more than enough to secure her, for many years to come, a position not unlike that of an empress dowager ruling from behind the curtain over the Su family.
It could be said that, even now, at least in the handling of all external affairs, Su Tan’er had already effectively become the head of the Su family. And yet, even so, there remained a great many things still beyond her reach, things she had no power to shift. The clan patriarch of the Su family remained Su Yu, and after him it could only pass to men like Su Boyong or Su Zhongkan — matters such as compiling the clan genealogy, entering the ancestral hall, and preserving the Su bloodline were things that, however much prestige she might accumulate over another thirty years, her status as a woman would never allow her to interfere with. This was, in all likelihood, a line she would never be able to cross in her entire life.
It was precisely because she now held that kind of standing that she was able to bring the matter before her father in this way, and even had it cushioned first by having her mother pass the word along. And yet, even so, she was still met with refusal.
“Having your mother speak to me first — that’s precisely because you know your mother doesn’t understand what matters and what doesn’t. Do you even know what you’re asking for? What have we spent our whole lives working for, if not for this very Su family? You think your husband is a fine man — fine, I think so too. But there are things you must not think of touching. The first child taking the surname Ning — how would that look to the family, how would it look to outsiders? A matrilocal husband climbing right over our heads? I know Liheng is capable, but he married in, and that’s what he is — a man who married in. People are already gossiping about how you had Xiao Chan join him, saying you clearly can’t keep him under control at all. Wouldn’t it be better to promise him the second child instead? A matrilocal husband is a matrilocal husband — he’ll never set foot in the ancestral hall his whole life, and there’s nothing you can do about that, nothing I can do about that either… What were you even thinking.”
Ever since his legs had been crippled, Su Boyong’s temper had grown increasingly short. Though his tone toward his daughter remained level as always, there was, this time, a faint undertone of suppressed anger running through his words.
Su Tan’er fell silent for a moment.
“Those people saying such things — isn’t that exactly what they want, to sow suspicion between my husband and me? I didn’t act on it this time — otherwise, let’s see who else dares wag their tongue about it after this!”
Though Ning Yi couldn’t see her, he could well imagine the cold, severe expression that must have settled on Su Tan’er’s face just then. But as for the rest of what her father had said, in the end there was nothing more she could really argue.
“Are you going to stop every single person from talking, is that it!”
“If none of them can measure up, don’t blame me for standing above them!”
“In any case, drop this idea about the firstborn taking the surname Ning — if your grandfather ever heard of it, it’d be the death of him! You know full well how well he’s always treated Liheng, but if word of this got out, what would he think of you? Don’t you dare bring it up again! “
Su Boyong was no fool — he understood that if this idea were ever truly to be realized, it would eventually have to be brought before Su Yu himself, and that his daughter coming to him first was, in part, an attempt to win him over as the first link in that chain. Suppressing his anger, he moved first to put a stop to Su Tan’er’s intentions. Su Tan’er was silent for a long moment before finally saying, “Understood. I’ll think it over some more.”
“Don’t think it over any further — you’re carrying a child… As it happens, your grandfather already discussed this very matter with a few of the uncles some days ago. It wasn’t really about what surname the child takes, that much wasn’t even worth arguing over — it was about the ancestral rites, whether he ought to be allowed into the ancestral hall going forward. But since he never changed his surname to Su when he married in, there’s simply no way for him to enter the ancestral hall — and the elders didn’t think much of the matter either way… This husband of yours is truly a capable man, but you’ve already treated him more than well enough — no one can find any fault with that. He… probably isn’t thinking too much about it either.”
So he said. In truth, with Ning Yi’s status having risen, others had already begun to reposition how they saw him, and it was no longer possible to treat him with the old attitude reserved for a mere matrilocal husband. A few days earlier, when the elder patriarch had gathered with several senior clan members, the question of whether to make an exception and let him into the ancestral hall had indeed come up — though it hardly amounted to any real trouble; it was raised offhandedly and dismissed just as casually. Whatever connections he might have out in the wider world, however much they might genuinely benefit the family, even if he were on close terms with the crown prince himself, before the rules of the clan he would still have to fall in line.
This wasn’t arrogance on the part of the elders — it was simply how things stood. Not that Ning Yi could really be said to be indifferent to any of this; rather, he was the sort who found it not worth the effort to think about whether he cared or not. What followed in the room, naturally, was nothing more than idle household chatter, and after listening a while longer, Ning Yi climbed back over the wall and left.
“A domestic drama…” he murmured to himself, smiling as he made his way back. In this era, there were precious few things one could turn to for entertainment — even something like eavesdropping through a wall could be enjoyed with real relish.
By the time Tan’er came back, she said nothing to him about any of it, and when it came to the matter of the firstborn son’s name, her thoughts still leaned toward the Su side. With the matter not yet settled, both husband and wife kept their composure about it — it was only that night, once they’d gone to bed, that Su Tan’er, with some amusement, brought up how the elders had been discussing Ning Yi two days earlier. “It seems my husband has given them quite the headache.”
“Just idle talk, that’s all… is that supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?”
“You’ve made a name for yourself — surely that counts as good?”
Ning Yi smiled, looking over at his wife lying beside him, and reached out to give the bridge of her nose a light flick, tucking his other hand behind his head. “Heh, don’t overthink it so much. As for the name, I’m not planning to change mine — Su Yi doesn’t sound nearly as good as Ning Yi, it’d sound strange. But it’s not as though I’d get genuinely angry over something like this just because of what other people think. If there really were some lingering resentment in my heart, do those elders really imagine that setting foot in the Su ancestral hall would somehow stop people from laughing at me, looking down on me? It’d all amount to the same thing regardless… Don’t you find all this rather interesting to watch, though?”
“Interesting?” Su Tan’er blinked, a little uncertain.
“All this gossip, this household chatter — what this person says, what that person says. Whether they hated and looked down on me from the start, or whether they were cold at first and warm later — the way people’s thinking shifts, the way what they say shifts, the way their attitudes shift — it’s genuinely fascinating to watch. It’s like watching a great play unfold — the thinking of one person, the thinking of a whole crowd, seems random and scattered at first, but once you bring it all together, there’s always a pattern to be traced. Sometimes someone curses you because they despise you; sometimes they curse you because they’re afraid of you; and sometimes when someone curses others… it’s really because they despise themselves. Once you can read all that, it’s really no different from the logic of running a business…”
“So… am I the same? Just something my husband watches too, in that way?”
“By the end of it… I’ve come to know that you love me.” Ning Yi gave her hand a squeeze.
Su Tan’er stared up at the top of the bed canopy, her face warming faintly. Even as something of an old married couple by now, an expression like “love” still felt, in the end, somewhat unfamiliar to her, and it was a good while before she finally spoke, softly.
“…You’re my husband.”
Whether Su Tan’er kept working on the matter of the firstborn’s surname over the days that followed, there was no telling. During this stretch of time spent with family, Ning Yi made one trip to the academy, though not to teach; Xiao Qi and the others came by the small courtyard a few times looking for him instead, pestering him for stories about Hangzhou — though most of those stories were, in the end, far too unsuitable for children, so he settled for retelling the legend of the White Snake, weaving in the scenery around Zhenjiang and Hangzhou. Not long after, the young princess Zhou Pei came to call.
Ever since Ning Yi had left Jiangning, the siblings Zhou Pei and Zhou Junwu, though still nominally enrolled at Yushan Academy, no longer came by to attend lessons — all the more so now that Zhou Pei had come of age, with matters of choosing a consort and marriage soon to be considered; attending lectures at the academy had already been forbidden to her. This was the age at which a young woman changes most rapidly, and though barely a year had passed, the young princess now looked every bit a graceful, willowy young lady of marriageable age — though in Ning Yi’s eyes she still seemed like a girl who’d only just grown out of her baby fat, this meeting, after her careful grooming and composed bearing, did carry a distinctly different air of a princess about her.
Zhou Pei had come this time on her brother’s account — at least, that was the reason given on the surface.
The year before, when Ning Yi had left Jiangning, Zhou Junwu had already grown infatuated with the study of natural philosophy — though of course, no one could have said at the time how long a young man’s enthusiasm for such things might last. In Ning Yi’s own view, physics and chemistry were, for the most part, rather dry and tedious pursuits, and Zhou Junwu had indeed gone through a stretch of feeling that way himself. And yet, as word of Ning Yi’s exploits in Hangzhou kept trickling back, it proved, for the young prince, nothing short of one shot of confidence after another. If his master was that formidable, surely nothing he taught could be wrong — and the tale of him using a gunpowder formation to hold off attackers at Peace Alley, sending men like Shi Bao and Liu Xigua fleeing in defeat, left Zhou Junwu positively starstruck.
And so, over these past six months or so, he had thrown himself into the study of gunpowder.
He’d very nearly blown his own face off recently.
As a young prince, the rest of his life might well have amounted to little more than eating, drinking, and idling about, perhaps bullying commoners for sport now and then — nothing out of the ordinary, and more or less exactly the future his father had planned for him. But Zhou Pei, for her part, hoped her younger brother might amount to something greater — serving the nation, serving the people, achieving something truly worthwhile. That her own little brother had instead turned into some science-obsessed recluse left her thoroughly displeased.
Though the recent near-miss with the explosion hadn’t actually disfigured the young prince, it had accidentally singed off a lock of his hair. One’s body, hair, and skin being a gift from one’s parents, King Kang had flown into a rage over this and confined Junwu to the estate. Caught between pressure from both sides, the young prince was having a rough time of it — but Zhou Pei genuinely cared for her brother, worried he might grow so despondent as to develop some real affliction, and knowing that only the one who tied the knot could untie it, she had come calling in the hope that Ning Yi might step in and help resolve her brother’s inner turmoil.
The whole matter was reasonable enough, and the young woman who came to call, composed and dignified in her bearing, left Ning Yi rather impressed. It was only after she’d finished explaining her brother’s situation that Zhou Pei asked him about his upcoming trip to the capital — with what seemed like just a touch more enthusiasm than the topic strictly called for… The feeling only flickered briefly across Ning Yi’s mind at the time, gone in an instant…