Spring rain pattered softly outside the window. In the third month, the waters of the Qinhuai River had gradually begun to rise. This particular rain had come on suddenly, and a duck out on the river tumbled about rather awkwardly in the current; the maid Kou’er hurried to bring in the laundry from outside. Yuan Jin’er stood at the riverside terrace, poking idly at something with a twig, then turned to watch a pleasure boat drifting past on the water.

The boat’s windows were thrown open, with wine, music, and song spilling out from within; startled by the sudden downpour, the young women and scholars aboard crowded to the windows to look out, some of them laughing and embracing one another. Jin’er leaned back against the railing, watching the scene unfold. A moment later, Yun Zhu came out as well to watch the rain; the wind stirred the hair of the two women on the terrace, and up on the boat, the gaze of one of the young scholars was drawn their way, along with the pointed, unfriendly glances of several women aboard as well.

Jin’er pressed a hand to her hair, gave a scornful little huff, and pulled Yun Zhu back into the room, opening only the side window to watch the rain from there.

This was Yun Zhu’s room; on the bed lay needle and thread along with some clothing — clearly, before going out, Yun Zhu had been sitting here mending. These were old clothes belonging to the children taken in under their care; a few had torn, and with nothing else to do, Yun Zhu had brought them back to mend. Jin’er had no particular skill with needlework — not for lack of temperament, but simply because she’d never really been taught. Girls of the pleasure quarters were trained in music, dance, and the many arts of pleasing men; mending a guest’s clothes in the evening was more often than not a sign one was headed toward buying out one’s contract and settling down to marry, and while the madams of the house didn’t forbid learning it, they made no particular effort to teach it either. What skill Yun Zhu had with a needle was something left over from her days as the daughter of an official household.

“I was actually thinking of going over to Green Court to see what’s happening, but of course it had to rain. So boring.”

Jin’er knelt sprawled across a chair, swaying back and forth listlessly.

“If you’re bored, come mend clothes with me.”

“Don’t know how.”

Jin’er shook her head with a laugh, wearing an expression of shameless unconcern. Yun Zhu smiled and leaned against the edge of the bed, taking up her needle and thread; dressed simply and elegantly, her figure slender and graceful, leaning there against the bed she looked for all the world like a painting of a court lady. Jin’er watched for a while, then grew restless again — drinking tea, rolling around, hopping about for a bit, plucking a few notes on the guzheng nearby without much skill, before finally picking up a pipa instead and settling by the window, letting the strings ring out softly.

She began to sing — an old ballad about the great river rolling on eastward, its waves washing away the heroes of ages past, right and wrong, triumph and defeat, all turning to nothing in the blink of an eye; the green hills remaining unchanged through it all, weathering sunset after sunset, red as ever.

Though it was Yun Zhu who was truly accomplished in matters of music, Jin’er’s voice, singing at her own leisure like this, still carried a lilting, graceful clarity all its own. Yun Zhu glanced over at her, arching an eyebrow, as Jin’er sang on through the first half of the verse, trailing off partway through, after which she simply hummed the rest more loosely. Once she’d finished, she looked over at Yun Zhu, still cradling the pipa. “Sister Yun Zhu, don’t you find it boring?”

“Find what boring?” Yun Zhu bit off a length of thread and picked up another garment.

“Being so quiet and still all day is boring, isn’t it — Sister Yun Zhu, you’re always so content with yourself…”

“If you’re bored, let’s play shuanglu. We could call Kou’er in too, if you like.” Yun Zhu smiled.

“Playing that all day isn’t much fun either.” Jin’er shook her head and set the pipa down, walking over to the bed to help fold the mended garment Yun Zhu had finished, then spread her arms and lay back on the bed. After a moment, she asked, “Sister Yun Zhu, what was it like, back when you were the daughter of an official household?”

“Studying the classics for women, doing needlework, playing shuanglu with people, playing hide-and-seek, that sort of thing.” Yun Zhu paused. “Honestly, not so different from now — except I was younger then, and everything felt interesting.”

“Did you ever want to get married?”

“How old do you think I was back then?” Yun Zhu shot her a look. “But later on, yes — though I didn’t really understand what it meant in my heart at the time, I suppose I had some vague sense it meant something like my parents, being with someone… spending a whole life together. Boys seemed rather dull back then, though — I remember thinking, maybe getting married just meant finding a boy to talk with all day, and that seemed like it might be fun too.”

“Just talking all day.”

“Just talking, that’s all.” Yun Zhu laughed, then lowered her eyes. “Later on, I just… hoped someone would come save me and get me out of there. Who could have known what marriage would really turn out to be — I only ever heard people say it was supposed to be a happy thing. Back then I hoped someone would buy out my contract and marry me, so I threw myself into learning music and singing — but once I’d seen enough of the world, none of it seemed like something to be happy about anymore… In any case, whatever I’ve thought about, at whatever point in my life, when I look back on it now, it really only ever comes down to a few simple things — which is why I don’t find things boring now.”

“Er…” Jin’er rested her chin on her folded arms, staring up at the bed canopy above with a troubled expression. Yun Zhu smiled. “You just want to go see what those young scholars over at Green Court are saying, don’t you? You’re not usually this restless.”

“Hehe.” Jin’er flashed a grin.

What they were really talking about was something that had happened at Green Court the day before. Yun Zhu and Jin’er had been there at the time, and had happened to come across a group of young scholars busy flattering one another, trading poems back and forth — nothing unusual in itself. But at some point, once the flattery had built up enough, the conversation had turned to Ning Yi, with someone remarking that this Ning Liheng was nothing but a coward hiding in his shell, with no real substance to him at all, and that he hadn’t produced any new verses lately either — that his talent had run dry, that he couldn’t hold a candle to so-and-so, and on and on. While they sat there composing verses of their own, waxing on about past and present, Yun Zhu had slipped into the next courtyard over and sung, on her instrument, that old ballad about the great river rolling ever eastward.

It was, without question, a fine piece of verse — though Ning Yi had never brought it before the public himself; he had only ever shared it with Yun Zhu in the form of a song. She had made a point of letting it carry over to the room next door, and once she’d finished singing, silence had indeed fallen over there. When the group of scholars asked around trying to find out whose new composition this was, Yun Zhu had someone from Green Court tell them it was Ning Yi’s work, then pulled Jin’er away and left.

She wasn’t ordinarily the sort to seek attention like that — it was only when it came to matters touching on Ning Yi that she occasionally reacted this way. Jin’er, for her part, had wanted to hang back and secretly watch the scholars’ expressions, clinging to a pillar and refusing to budge, but in the end Yun Zhu had dragged her away regardless.

Jin’er was, by nature, someone who loved to play, to stir up mischief, to egg others on, and having missed out yesterday on the satisfaction of watching those pompous fools get taken down a peg, she’d been planning this morning to tell Ning Yi all about it when he came by — except he hadn’t shown up, likely tied up with something. So she’d thought she might go over to Green Court herself during the day to see whether word had spread, only for the rain to come pouring down instead, which left her thoroughly put out. After a moment of laughing, she blinked. “Sister Yun Zhu, do you think — since he didn’t come by this morning — maybe that woman of his has given birth?”

“Ah…” Yun Zhu accidentally pricked her finger with the needle, popped it into her mouth to suck at it, then swatted Jin’er, who was watching with obvious interest, with some irritation.

“You care too, Sister Yun Zhu.”

“Of course I care.” Yun Zhu answered softly.

“Men are such a bother.” Jin’er turned her gaze back up toward the bed canopy, drawling the words out unhurriedly. “He hasn’t even said he’ll marry you properly, so why do you still like him so much…” This wasn’t really meant as a question — the two of them had already gone over this same ground plenty of times before. Neither of them was any kind of champion of women’s rights, and the idea of Ning Yi actually marrying Yun Zhu properly was, in practical terms, genuinely difficult — but there was always, somewhere, a flicker of hope in her heart regardless.

Yun Zhu was quiet for a good while. “Jin’er, you know how capable Liheng is at everything he does, don’t you?”

“Mm, I’ll grant you that.”

“But there’s one thing he’s not the least bit capable at.”

Jin’er’s eyes went wide, and she rolled over abruptly, propping herself up on her elbows, hands clasped together, staring at Yun Zhu. “Sister Yun Zhu, are you two—?”

Yun Zhu pressed her lips together and gave her a light kick. “That’s not at all what I meant! I mean… keeping a woman outside his household — for men like the scholars you and I both know, that’s hardly even a real problem at all, is it?”

“Hehe, yeah.”

“He gets flustered about it, doesn’t seem to know quite what to do, and it clearly weighs on him inside. Though you’d never be able to tell just by looking at him…”

“Er… I guess I can sort of see it now that you mention it.” Jin’er thought it over. “Tch. Big strong man, and completely useless at this.”

“I like it.” After a long moment, Yun Zhu set her needlework down, lowered her head, and smiled faintly, speaking softly. “He probably doesn’t even realize it himself, but I really do like it. All the things he’s so remarkably good at — I just take those for granted, as though that’s simply how it should be; honestly, it wouldn’t matter much to me even if he weren’t good at them. But this one thing, this one thing he’s completely hopeless at — Jin’er, I really do love that about him.”

She blinked. “Liheng is always so composed, so at ease, no matter what… but maybe it really is because I spent so long at the Jinfeng House. This is the one thing I saw through from the very start — maybe he’s seen it himself too, by now — but even having seen it, there’s nothing at all he can do about it. I think… being able to see him like that — never mind that I’m Nie Yunzhu, a reformed woman now — even if I were still the daughter of that official household, whatever came after, I think I’d accept it all the same…”

Having said all this, she went back to mending the clothes, head bowed. The rain went on falling outside; Jin’er lay there watching her for a good while longer before finally letting out a sigh. “You really are something…”

The spring rain wrapped the little tower, and the whole of Jiangning, in a soft veil of mist. At the Su residence, in the small courtyard where Ning Yi and his wife lived, the entire morning had passed in a flurry of activity — Su Tan’er had woken with pains in her belly, and everyone had thought the birth was finally at hand; once the midwife arrived, though, it turned out to be a false alarm. Still, the real delivery could hardly be more than a day or two off now, so the midwife was persuaded to stay on at the residence, and Ning Yi remained in their room, working to calm his wife’s nerves. At the very same time, a strange rumor was making its way, in hushed tones, among a certain small circle within the second and third branches of the Su family — word of some improper entanglement between Ning Yi and a reformed courtesan of some renown. Where exactly the rumor had originated remained, for the moment, unknown.

“Is it true?”

“No telling…”

“If it really is true…”

“Could go either way, small or big — think it over carefully…”

“Might be our last real chance to break things open…”

For now, this small, shadowy circle of gossip had yet to reach either Ning Yi or anyone in the senior branch of the family. And it was that very same afternoon, as the rain grew heavier still, that at one end of the city of Jiangning, under cover of the downpour, a violent struggle was unfolding across several courtyards.

Wherever there are people, there is the world of the martial underground — and these particular courtyards belonged to a fairly sizable faction within the city of Jiangning, one led by a man named Cheng Lie. The name of this faction differed by only a single character from the once-formidable Sabre Alliance that had dominated the martial world of the south — it called itself the Hundred Blades Alliance.

Its strength, though, was plainly a great deal weaker.

By now, the courtyards of the Hundred Blades Alliance were already littered with corpses and blood. The men who had struck had come in a group of a dozen or so, all clad in black rain-cloaks, some carrying bundles on their backs, dressed like traveling wayfarers. Every one of Cheng Lie’s senior lieutenants had already been killed in the fighting that had just taken place; he now stood half-drenched in blood, gripping a longsword already hacked halfway through, backed up against a pillar in the main hall, watching a burly man armed with a pair of battle-axes bearing down on him. “You— who are you people…”

“Heh, once you’re dead, remember your grandfather’s name… your grandfather’s name is Li Kui! Anyone who touches my brothers pays with their life!”

The great axe came crashing down!

Out on the street beyond the gate, a signboard bearing the name “Hundred Blades Alliance” toppled to the ground in the rain with a splash. Xi Junyu, likewise clad in a rain-cloak, glanced back over his shoulder and exchanged a few idle words with a man beside him, then turned back around just as a carriage came rolling up the street, several more men climbing down from it, all of them similarly cloaked in black rain-gear that both kept off the rain and concealed their features. The man in front was tall, wearing a wide bamboo hat with a long spear slung across his back; though his face beneath the hat’s brim was rather handsome, there seemed always to be some hidden trace of melancholy about him.

Xi Junyu cupped his hands in greeting. “You’ve all made it, brothers. Brother Lin, you’re a man of the Eastern Capital yourself — what do you make of Jiangning? I know this place well; I’ll find us a fine establishment later to properly welcome you all.”

The men returned the gesture, and the man in front gave a simple nod of acknowledgment before turning to look toward the neighboring courtyard. Though the courtyard gate was shut and the rain was heavy, he could still make out well enough what was happening inside.

“Brother Xi, we’ve come to Jiangning this time on serious business. I’ve nothing to say about your own private grudges, but mind you don’t let them get in the way of the matter at hand.”

“Of course, of course. My thanks for the reminder, Brother Lin…”

“It’s nothing.” The man reached out and clapped him on the shoulder, then walked on past him.

Xi Junyu let out a quiet breath. Though everyone these days addressed one another as brothers, there remained, even now, a certain nameless awe and unease he still felt toward a few particular figures — the strategist, for one, and this man before him now, who had once held the position of—

Drill Instructor of the Eight Hundred Thousand Imperial Guards!