“Why aren’t you going?”

“Can’t be bothered.”

“Master hasn’t written any poetry in Jiangning in ages. If he doesn’t go this time, those people will start talking again.”

“Let them talk. They’re no different from a bunch of gossiping old women anyway — talking is about the only ambition any of them seem to have in life…”

“But they say these are all very learned men. A few times they’ve invited young men along too, to sit and discuss the great questions of the day, and afterward those young men became famous. Master Li Pin, who’s quite close with Master, went once. And there was Gu Yanzhen before — I hear he really shone in front of these men, and afterward people started calling him one of Jiangning’s foremost talents, and later still, word had it he went up to the capital and passed the examinations with top honors.”

“And after that he keeled right over dead…”

“What did you say, my lord?”

“Nothing… You lot are all the same, only ever chasing after glamour. Think about it — anyone attending gatherings like this is already thirty or forty years old at the very least. Sure, they’re well-learned, but if they were truly so remarkable, wouldn’t they already be officials, already have taken up posts somewhere? It’s precisely because they haven’t found that kind of path that they’ve thrown themselves so desperately into scholarship instead — becoming some county magistrate’s clerk, some prefect’s aide, some prince’s guest scholar. It’s men without real prospects who bury themselves in pure scholarship like that, and then they go testing the young men, and if a young man measures up, well, that just makes them look all the more impressive by comparison. Your master here has no intention of ever becoming an official anyway — why should I let them test me? There aren’t even any pretty women there…”

“But a county magistrate’s clerk, a prince’s aide — those are still quite impressive positions…”

“Are they, really?”

“Yes.”

“Er… you have to move with the times, not judge these things by outdated standards. These days, our household can already afford to not even bother acknowledging some county clerk. They’re all men in their forties and fifties anyway — no common ground with anyone, and not a single pretty woman to liven things up…”

“There are, though.”

“…Are you lot deliberately trying to argue with me?”

“…”

“Fine, fine, my mistake.”

“We wouldn’t dare…”

“That’s more like it… so, who exactly are these pretty women, then?”

“Pan Duoyi! Chen Xiaoxia!”

“Miss Qilan will probably be there too…”

“Luo Miaomiao…”

“Which of us is actually the man here, honestly — you all know far more about this than I do…”

“Hehe…”

The third month brought spring scenery like a painting, and as the wind carried petals drifting over the rooftops of the city, the small courtyard of the Su estate rang with laughter and chatter. In the courtyard, the whole family was making sky lanterns together while they talked. Yellow paper, paste, brushes and ink, inkstones, along with bamboo strips for the lantern frames, lay scattered all around. Even Su Tan’er, nearly ten months along in her pregnancy, joined in on the fun, holding the paper meant to be pasted onto her lantern shade and sketching designs onto it. Her mood these days was calm and even, carrying a certain gracious, composed air about her, but she was, after all, still only a woman in her early twenties, her long hair tied back with a ribbon; joining in the chatter with Xiao Chan and Juan’er, she still had all the fresh, quick-witted charm of a much younger woman.

This age was, after all, far simpler than later ones would be, and even though these past few years she had been caught up in her fair share of scheming and rivalry, once her mind was clear of all that, at nearly ten months pregnant she looked, if anything, younger and more innocent than a woman in her twenties from some later age might have looked. Her thoughts these days were mostly taken up with the child and with Ning Yi, and this other, more mature side of her had settled, in its own way, into a particular kind of quiet, magnetic charm. Now and then, catching Ning Yi’s eye, one could almost sense her smiling and speaking even in silence.

Nearly half a month had passed since their return from Hangzhou, and the world of poetry gatherings and refined dissipation outside carried on much as it had before Ning Yi had ever left Jiangning; word of it reached him now and then, deepening his sense of being truly present in this era. The invitation delivered yesterday was, at least by Jiangning’s standards, likely a fairly significant gathering. If the grand Mid-Autumn and Lantern Festival poetry gatherings were something like great carnivals for the whole of high society, this sort of banquet was more akin to something like a later-age Mensa Society dinner — smaller, more private, but, depending on who attended, carrying real weight of its own.

At gatherings of this kind, poetry was hardly the only source of entertainment — the demands placed on one’s grasp of the classics, argumentation, and policy discussion ran considerably higher. Of course, there was no overt sense of examination to it in the ordinary run of things, just a group of gray-haired scholars trading notes among themselves. But if someone like Ning Yi, who had made a name for himself unusually quickly, happened to be invited, it would typically come with a round of informal testing — and clearing that hurdle, proving oneself capable of discussing the classics and histories on their level, would amount to a genuine seal of approval on one’s scholarship.

For Ning Yi, naturally, this was the sort of thing best avoided entirely. It wasn’t really a matter of plagiarism or borrowing from some template — if Confucian learning could truly offer much guidance for living a life, Ning Yi’s own life experience had already run well past the bounds of what that tradition covered; it was simply that people expressed themselves differently. He didn’t look down on these men, but neither did he feel any need to approach them with reverence, seeking their guidance or trying to prove anything to them.

Looking at things from a later vantage point, poetry salons and literary gatherings might seem like the defining current of this era, as though everyone simply lived their lives around them — but in truth, these were no more than minor sideshows. Whoever made a name for themselves out there, whichever beauty of the pleasure quarters had taken up with which talented scholar — most people’s lives went on at their own pace regardless. These past few days, in the course of trying to guide Zhou Junwu, Ning Yi had talked about things like flying machines and hot-air balloons; back home, when he mentioned it to his wife, concubine, and the maids, everyone found it great fun, and so today they’d organized a little contest to make sky lanterns, each of them crafting one to be flown that evening in the courtyard, to see whose turned out best and most interesting.

“Now, the sky lantern — it might look like a small, simple thing to make, but there’s actually real skill involved. Generally speaking, the temperature of the flame is fairly fixed, and once the weight of the lantern goes above… let’s see, I believe it’s about twenty-three and a half or twenty-six grams, roughly half a liang — it simply won’t be able to fly no matter what. So, Xing’er, your frame’s too big — if you don’t rebuild it, it won’t get off the ground, haha…”

The mood in the small courtyard was warm and easy, and these past few days Ning Yi’s own spirits had stayed fairly relaxed as well; he carefully pasted together his own lantern shade while offering, with an air of great seriousness, pointers on everyone else’s shortcomings. In truth, his own hands weren’t especially skilled at this kind of work either, but since it was all just something for everyone to enjoy together, there was no rush about any of it. Su Tan’er asked, “If anything over half a liang won’t fly, doesn’t that mean the method you taught the young Prince Zhou is useless?”

“You’d need a higher temperature, better materials — what fills the balloon could change too. There are still plenty of approaches that could work…”

They chatted a while about balloons, then a while about the recent literary gathering, and Ning Yi decorated his own lantern shade with little cartoon likenesses of Su Tan’er and the others, adding some flowers and grasses here and there, making it quite handsome. He’d originally meant to add a poem as well, but after writing two lines the paper tore, and that side had to be scrapped and redone. Since “Master knows everything about everything,” Xiao Chan, Juan’er, and Xing’er kept coming over to ask how their own lanterns were coming along, and he obliged each of them with a smiling assessment.

When it came time to release the lanterns that evening, everyone else’s floated slowly up into the courtyard sky, even his wife’s rather poorly pasted-together one wobbling its way up into the air — only Ning Yi’s sat motionless on its little stand, refusing to budge. Xiao Chan stood supporting Su Tan’er on one side, Juan’er and Xing’er on the other, all wearing suspiciously blank expressions, clearly holding back laughter.

Ning Yi stood there blinking for a good while, then rubbed his temple with a finger. “Whoever dares laugh loses their whole month’s allowance.”

Su Tan’er, one hand on her belly, glanced at him and said softly, “I believe my husband did say today was a sky-lantern contest?”

“Did I say that?” Ning Yi shot her a glare, then fixed his gaze on Xiao Chan, who looked ready to burst out laughing beside her. Xiao Chan quickly waved her hands. “My lord, I wasn’t laughing.”

“I didn’t say you were. Juan’er and Xing’er have been doing well — not making a sound so far. A tael of silver docked from each of their allowances this month. Xiao Chan, yours is spared… And you — if you’re going to laugh, go ahead and laugh already. Holding it in that long isn’t good for the baby. Let’s go inside…”

He turned, supporting Su Tan’er, and made his way back toward their room, laughter breaking out behind them as Juan’er and Xing’er both protested at once. But by now everyone knew Ning Yi’s temperament well enough — commanding and dignified when it mattered, but thoroughly easygoing with his own household the rest of the time; whatever he’d said about docking their pay, no one seriously expected him to follow through. Su Tan’er leaned against his shoulder, laughing softly, and once they were back in their room, the two of them sat by the window while Ning Yi rubbed her belly gently to help ease her mood. Xiao Chan brought in tea, hiding behind Ning Yi and stifling her own laughter; he glanced back at her and narrowed his eyes. “I’ll settle accounts with you later.”

Xiao Chan’s status as a concubine had been formally settled by now, though the household hadn’t yet assigned her any maids of her own — only a slight difference in her clothing set her apart from Juan’er and Xing’er, and even that wasn’t especially pronounced. She dressed in the clean, simple style typical of Jiangnan women, in robes not unlike the sort worn by a certain famous fictional heroine, sometimes in a skirt, sometimes in silk trousers. This time, though, she managed to slip away before Ning Yi could pull her into an embrace.

Outside the window, the four sky lanterns drifted slowly up into the night sky; Juan’er and Xing’er stood off to one side of the courtyard, heads tilted back, watching and hopping about excitedly, until before long they’d run up to the second-floor gallery to keep watching from there, and only their voices could still be heard from below. Xiao Chan wandered the courtyard, checking Ning Yi’s lantern this way and that, and eventually discovered that a thin seam had opened along one side where the ink had soaked through the paper; carefully, she patched the seam back up, and when it was lit again, the once-forlorn lantern finally rose into the air. Caught by the night wind, it drifted somewhat off course, then got snagged on a branch at the corner of the courtyard, hovering beneath it, unable to climb any higher — in the darkness, it looked rather like a little lantern someone had hung from the tree.

From the window, Ning Yi and his wife watched Xiao Chan and the others scratching their heads beneath the tree, before going off to fetch sticks and bamboo poles to poke at it. But the tree was rather tall, and after a good while of effort the three young women still hadn’t managed to free it — until finally, a gust of night wind came through, the lantern swayed, slipped free of the branch, and drifted off into the sky.

All around, the night lay still, the little points of light rising to merge with the stars above — a serene and enchanting late-spring evening.

On roughly half of his nights, Ning Yi still slept beside Xiao Chan.

In great households, once the principal wife became pregnant, it was only natural for the concubines to take over the duty of attending their husband at night — such times were, more often than not, exactly when concubines had their best chance to compete for favor. In Ning Yi’s household, though, things were considerably different. At first, back in the tense circumstances of Hangzhou, there had been no room for such arrangements; only now, in the half-month since their return to Jiangning, had Su Tan’er finally had a real chance to see to these matters properly. With her pregnancy already past nine months, Ning Yi felt her condition mattered more, and though Su Tan’er found this rather touching, most of the time it was still she who insisted that Ning Yi go spend time with Xiao Chan.

Xiao Chan, for her part, gave off a rather singular impression. Ning Yi had already sensed as much during their time alone together back in Hangzhou, and these past weeks had only made it clearer still. When it came to intimate matters, she was willing to go along with almost anything, so long as she believed it was something Ning Yi enjoyed — and yet, at the same time, she remained a girl of the purest, most innocent disposition imaginable, staying silent throughout, biting her lip hard whenever she grew nervous, blushing at the faintest sound that escaped her.

Purely physical desire wasn’t something Ning Yi felt especially strongly on its own account — he had never quite managed to fall in love with anyone before all this, but having lived, in his previous life, at the very top of the world, such matters had never been any kind of forbidden territory for him. Though his own self-restraint kept him from anything resembling promiscuity, when it came to women, so long as there was a genuine need, there was little he hadn’t already experienced, witnessed, or felt for himself.

He and Xiao Chan had, by now, been intimate for well over half a year. Back in Hangzhou, Ning Yi had assumed it was simply that, in such an extreme environment, the young woman had thrown herself desperately into offering him comfort. Only gradually did he come to realize that, though Su Tan’er herself had once fled her own wedding, Xiao Chan had nonetheless received the full pre-marital instruction expected of any young woman in a great household — she seemed to feel that, as a maid and concubine, whatever was asked of her was simply hers to do, and yet at heart she remained utterly innocent. Even once the two of them were undressed together, if Ning Yi asked her to look at him, she would blush and then simply close her eyes, biting her lip. A few times, Ning Yi tried speaking gently to her, encouraging her to say something in turn, and the girl could only stammer in a daze, “S-say what…” — her mind a complete blank, unable to form a single coherent thought.

When two people were together like this, with one side willing to do absolutely anything, eager, cooperative, obedient in every way, and yet so overcome with shyness the whole while — Ning Yi couldn’t help but feel a certain sense of defeat at times. Surely his own performance wasn’t really that lacking.

“Actually… it feels… really good.” When Ning Yi finally asked her outright, Xiao Chan, unable to dodge the question any longer, answered at last, red-faced, in a voice barely above a whisper, then asked with genuine concern of her own, “Does it feel good for you too, my lord?”

“Er… yes, good…” Answering like that left the whole exchange feeling rather like two schoolchildren sharing their first kiss. Faced with this strange, oddly endearing feeling, all Ning Yi could do was sigh — though, honestly, in his heart, he did like it.

The weather had already turned warm; dressed in a light undergarment and silk trousers, Xiao Chan had grown used to lying on her side, arms wrapped around one of his, unbothered by wherever his hand happened to land. Sometimes, when Ning Yi turned his head to look, he could make out, in the dim light, the faint smile curling at the corner of her mouth — a look of deep contentment and happiness, curled up beside him like nothing so much as a child… a little girl curled up beside him.

For Xiao Chan, perhaps this really was the thing she truly loved most.

The next day, Ning Yi ended up not attending the literary gathering after all, and over the following days, talk began circulating among Jiangning’s literary circles — that Ning Yi’s reputation was overblown, that he hadn’t dared show his face. Given that certain interested parties were behind the push, it wasn’t especially surprising that such rumors took hold. The Su family did feel some of the fallout from it, and because of it, the head of the academy, Su Chonghua, came by specifically to lecture Ning Yi at length over the matter. Ning Yi simply looked back at him with an odd expression, and in the end, the man had no choice but to leave in frustration.

By this point, Ning Yi’s mind was already elsewhere, well beyond these matters within Jiangning that had nothing to do with him. In the south, Fang La was still putting up desperate resistance; by his own reckoning, Liu Xigua’s forces had probably already made their way into the mountains, while Tong Guan’s side was beginning to consider withdrawing his troops and marching north. Ning Yi himself had already begun formally weighing what he might actually do once he reached the capital. During this stretch of time, Kang Xian had come to see him once, asking whether he might consider taking on some responsibilities within the Secret Investigation Bureau nominally overseen by Princess Chengguo — which came as something of a surprise to Ning Yi.

“…It was really just a small, ramshackle office cobbled together from odds and ends to begin with — plenty to do, and it dabbles in everything, so it’s badly short-staffed. A’Gui’s already helping out there, and Wenren Bu’er thinks very highly of you besides — he’s a disciple under Lord Qin’s own banner, and he’ll be heading up to the capital soon too. The two of you could work quite well together, supporting each other’s efforts… On top of that, over the coming while, there may well be some dealings with men of the greenwood, and you happen to be well acquainted with that world yourself — with your reputation in the martial community as the Bloody-Handed Butcher, why, the very mention of the name is enough to bring grown men to tears, ahem… why not come join us, lend a hand? With the situation in the south more or less settled now, the northern campaign can’t afford to keep being held back any longer — going forward, there may be reason to keep a closer eye on places like Liangshan Marsh. You’ve killed men of theirs before, so in a manner of speaking you already have history with them — if you’re interested, why not make a bit of private use of the public office while you’re at it…”