The sky was thick with golden clouds. The city of Bianliang, in the seventh month, was gradually settling out of summer’s heat wave, and when the first phoenix-tree leaf fell, autumn had arrived.

Rows upon rows of houses spread outward from the Imperial Way at the city’s center, radiating in every direction. Pedestrians and merchants came and went, passing through the crisscrossing streets and alleys; the calls of shopkeepers mingled with the braying of mules and horses, and the rumble of cart wheels startled the laughter of children playing at the street corners. Swallows nesting beneath the eaves flew past the trees lining the streets, past the courtyards of one household after another; boats large and small drifted along the rivers running through the city, with roads for passersby or the walls of nearby homes along the banks.

In the afternoon, the gaps in the phoenix trees cast golden silhouettes across the courtyard, swaying gently in the breeze. In the study, its window thrown open, Ning Yi sat at his desk, writing and sketching. From a distance came the sounds of the household guards training.

At this time, even in a place as prosperous as the area around Bianliang, things were far from settled. The stream of famine refugees arriving from outside the city walls had begun to swell, and the Kaifeng Prefecture had increased checkpoints along the various roads, tightening inspections at the gates. But at least, for now, the courtyard within these walls still appeared quiet and peaceful—until, after a moment, the sound of stealthy footsteps came from around the corner. Ning Yi frowned. Before long, two heads suddenly popped out from the doorway beside him; though they’d clearly meant to startle him, only one of the faces managed a properly fearsome expression.

“Hah~!”

Yuan Jin’er, having leapt out abruptly, held both hands up like chicken claws above her head, scrunching her face into a menacing scowl. Ning Yi’s brush hung frozen in midair; he stared at her blankly for a moment, then said, evenly, “Ah… how terrifying…” Jin’er’s enthusiasm promptly deflated, and she pouted.

The other figure who’d followed her in was dressed in men’s clothing, a scholar’s cap perched on her head, her smile bright and clear—Yun Zhu.

Her smile now was, in truth, quite different from what it had been around the New Year.

When she’d first poked her head in, she too had briefly attempted something like a “scary face,” but hadn’t been able to hold it, and had burst out laughing instead.

“Liheng didn’t go out today, then.”

“Just got back from the Chancellor’s residence this morning. Not much to do this afternoon, so I’ve been practicing calligraphy. Did you two just arrive?”

“We just ran into Tan’er outside, that’s why we came over. She saw me in men’s clothes and asked me to go out with her later—she wants to look at some new robe designs at the workshop.”

“Oh, you two get along better with each other than with me these days…”

Ning Yi smiled. Jin’er, beside her, gave a light huff. “I’m not going. I’m going to find Xiao Chan.” Perhaps owing to some old prejudices, the relationship between Jin’er and Su Tan’er had never been especially warm, though she’d always gotten along very well with Xiao Chan.

Half a year had now passed since that New Year. Over these six months, a great many things had, in truth, changed—and among them, the change in Yun Zhu, and in the whole family’s relationships, was probably the one that gave Ning Yi the greatest sense of ease.

Since the year before, Ning Yi’s handling of the relationships between the people around him had felt, in some measure, constrained and awkward. Out in the world, he could be domineering enough, and with Tan’er, Yun Zhu, and the others, he’d made up his mind not to let go—but making up one’s mind was one thing, and knowing how to actually manage it was another. He’d carried a fair amount of guilt in his heart, and it was only around the New Year that everything had finally come to a head. Yun Zhu’s inner turmoil and her departure had, in a sense, been rooted in her own psychological knot—but it wasn’t unrelated to Ning Yi’s own subconscious guilt either.

At Muyuan, Ning Yi and Tan’er had, to some degree, reached an understanding. Yun Zhu had taken Jin’er back to her old family home for a visit, and along the way had probably worked through, from beginning to end, her feelings about their relationship. By the time she returned, her inner knot had finally come undone. The process, simple as it sounded, was in truth quite complicated too. In the end, what lay at the heart of it wasn’t some flash of cleverness, or a sudden epiphany triggered by some particular symbol—it could only be called the wisdom that life itself imparts.

Yun Zhu had always been clever and perceptive by nature. Before the age of ten, she had been the daughter of an official household, raised with a fine education—but her path had later turned rocky, and the secluded life she’d led after buying back her own freedom had, psychologically speaking, left her somewhat repressed and withdrawn. After falling in love with Ning Yi, her heart had become entirely bound up with him, and it was perhaps precisely because of this concern and sensitivity that, after a small measure of disappointment, she had gradually slipped into something like depression.

For an ordinary woman, matters like this might be very difficult to untangle. For her, of course, it hadn’t been easy either—but during that journey away from Ning Yi, with her naturally clear mind, she had finally managed to see clearly the knot at the heart of things between herself and Ning Yi, and no longer dwelled on it with self-pity. By the time she returned to Bianliang and faced Ning Yi again, what she offered him was a smile much like the one from when they’d first met, yet somehow different too—clear and pure.

“I’m back, husband.”

That day, when Ning Yi once again set foot on the second floor of that small courtyard house, what greeted him was the woman kneeling gracefully on the bed to bow in welcome, her smile carrying longing, warmth, apology, and a touch of playfulness besides—leaving Ning Yi, for a moment, at a complete loss for words.

Of course, the habits of a lifetime built up over ten years couldn’t be entirely transformed by a single moment of realization. Yun Zhu remained, in essence, the same Yun Zhu—fond of quiet, of solitude, of reading, of playing the zither. But within all this, she no longer rejected small-scale social contact; she paid visits to Tan’er, and Tan’er came to visit her in turn.

In truth, the two of them had held a degree of mutual regard for each other even before this. Even with Yun Zhu counted as, in effect, a third or fourth woman in Ning Yi’s life, ever since the night Yun Zhu had saved Ning Xi during that thunderstorm, Tan’er had already shown a willingness to accept her. It was only the string of events after arriving in the capital, with Ning Yi unsure how to manage or conduct himself, that had left the two women uncertain how to interact with each other. Once Yun Zhu returned to the capital in the fifth month, though, such contact had come to feel natural again.

If the earlier Yun Zhu had carried a certain watery fragility beneath her intelligence and grace, the Yun Zhu of now was, if anything, more like clarity itself flowing beneath that same intelligence and grace. She had, after all, been the daughter of an official household—had there been no later upheaval in her life, had she simply grown up along a smooth, steady path, this might well have been, in some small part, who she would naturally have become.

Though he liked to think of himself as a formidable man, when it came to Tan’er and Yun Zhu, Ning Yi found he’d actually played no real part in any of it. Sometimes, thinking it over, he realized he himself had become the very knot the two of them needed to work through—a thought that left him, on reflection, rather glum.

These days, when Tan’er and Yun Zhu happened to meet, Tan’er, knowing Yun Zhu’s temperament, never invited her to anything overly grand or troublesome—just the occasional gossip, or talk of the Bamboo House’s business, or taking her along to look around the Su family’s clothing workshop, sometimes even having Yun Zhu sketch a flower design to decorate a garment. Yun Zhu, for her part, would occasionally tell Tan’er about currently fashionable poems and prose, about the stories circulating among Bianliang’s talented young scholars—she had, after all, considerable skill in poetry and prose herself, arguably even more than Ning Yi—and with her experience from the pleasure quarters besides, she could speak on such things with real fluency, sometimes adding in a bit of scandalous gossip that had Tan’er listening with rapt attention. In truth, on this front, Tan’er couldn’t help but admire her.

Their interactions with each other appeared to unfold naturally enough, though each still moved with a certain careful caution, maintaining this small circle that might, in this era, be called a family. One day in mid-sixth-month, when Tan’er went to visit Yun Zhu, she mentioned offhandedly: “Let’s find a time and have Miss Nie formally married into the Ning family… mm, I’m not joking.” Yun Zhu, blushing slightly, nodded. Afterward Tan’er went and said the same thing to Jin’er, which left Jin’er’s whole face flushed crimson, stammering, at a loss for what to say—she’d more or less expected something like this eventually, just hadn’t imagined it would be Su Tan’er who brought it up to her.

In any case, within this household, matters had now been settled, more or less, as they stood. It was only that in the sixth month, with Ning Yi swamped with business, there hadn’t really been an ideal moment to arrange things properly, and the matter of the formal wedding was, for now, put off—in truth, the two of them were, to some extent, still waiting for Ning Yi himself to take the initiative on the matter.

Ning Yi, upon learning of all this, found himself troubled over whether Yun Zhu and Jin’er should move in with them once married. On one hand, as a man from a modern era, he felt that keeping some distance between households, rather than crowding everyone together, might actually preserve the harmony they currently enjoyed—easier to get along at a distance than under one roof. On the other, the household here in the capital was growing quickly, and the four-courtyard residence purchased the year before would need replacing, or at least expanding—better, he thought, to handle the matter once that was done.

As for Tan’er and Yun Zhu, they too understood well enough that someday there would surely come a scene of the whole family—Ning Yi, Tan’er, Yun Zhu, Jin’er, Xiao Chan—gathered together at one table for a meal. But for now, it would still feel, to some degree, a little strange.

And so, with Yun Zhu occasionally stopping by and Tan’er occasionally visiting in return, and Ning Yi running back and forth between them, this arrangement had, for the moment, become the most ideal way for everyone to get along.

As for the current state of development of the capital’s “Ning household,” that was a far larger subject altogether…

…

In the side courtyard of the Ning residence, Yun Zhu, dressed in a scholar’s robe, climbed into the carriage, then turned back with a smile, reaching out both hands to pull Tan’er up after her. Yun Zhu wore men’s clothing; Tan’er, as usual, dressed as a married woman—yet despite this, both women were only in their early twenties. Yun Zhu, though dressed as a man, still looked intelligent and clear-eyed, while Tan’er carried about her a quiet, composed confidence—together they looked rather like a formidable lady of the house who’d just taken on a scholarly-looking live-in husband. Once they were seated, Ning Yi walked over to the carriage to speak with them.

“Stick to the workshops within the city—don’t go outside the walls. Things are tightly controlled these days, but it’s not safe out there.”

“Mm.” Tan’er turned back, resting her hand over Ning Yi’s where it gripped the carriage window frame, chin propped on the back of his hand. “Do you want us to bring anything back… oh, are you going to the Chancellor’s residence again this afternoon, Liheng?”

“Not sure. Depends on whether there’s news from the north.”

Yun Zhu leaned against the window as well. “Mm, if General Guo has won, let us know soon, Liheng.”

Over this recent stretch, Ning Yi had been involved, to some extent, in disaster-relief planning across the Wu dynasty’s territory, but the most pressing situation by far remained the standoff between Guo Yaoshi and the southward-marching Xiao Gan in the north. Tan’er, Yun Zhu, and the others, though they only heard about it in passing, still couldn’t help caring, given how much rode on it for the fate of the whole dynasty. Ning Yi smiled and nodded.

As the carriage pulled away from the courtyard gate, the faint sound of Xiao Chan and Jin’er teasing Ning Xi drifted from behind, the phoenix-tree leaves scattering gold across the courtyard ground. Ning Yi, lost in thought, smiled and made his way toward the neighboring courtyard.

At that same moment, at Bianliang’s eastern gate, a party of four—a master and three attendants—had just passed through the gate inspection and entered the city proper. Leading the group was a young man in his twenties or thirties, chin bearded, his bearing calm and composed, followed by an even younger servant; the other two were a household secretary who looked to be in his thirties, and a tall, weapon-bearing man who looked like a martial-world figure hired for security. The gate guards examined the travel documents bearing the name “Li Pin” and let them pass, then remarked quietly to a fellow guard: “A county magistrate—looks like he’s been promoted…”

The man now entering Bianliang was indeed Li Pin, courtesy name Dexin. He had taken up his post as magistrate of Nanhe County at the start of the ninth year of the Jinghan era, and it had not yet been three years. Summoned to the capital on account of his achievements in office, this counted as a promotion well ahead of the usual schedule. Still, glancing back now at the scene outside Bianliang’s gates, at the soldiers stationed there, he let out a sigh, his face showing little sign of joy.

Ever since the flooding and drought disasters had begun ravaging the north and south, the Kaifeng Prefecture, responsible for the capital region, had already tightened its controls, and the number of refugees visible outside the gate was, in fact, not especially large. But a man who had risen this far in officialdom and scholarship had long since learned to read the telltale signs in the smallest details—a single falling leaf enough to know autumn had come. Nanhe County was prosperous, and Li Pin’s administration there over the past two years had gone quite well; when the disaster began spreading, his territory hadn’t yet shown especially severe conditions, and he’d already made preparations to respond. But now, summoned to the capital for promotion, what he saw along the road had increasingly filled him with worry.

Resting briefly in the small square by the gate, his attendant Guyu asked, “Sir, where to now?” Li Pin frowned at the bustling crowd nearby, then pointed toward a large cart heading out of the city not far off. “There.”

Guyu craned his neck to look. The cart, heading out through the gate, was covered with thick cloth but looked remarkably neat and tidy; on one side of its wall were written the characters “Bamboo House.” Guyu broke into a smile. “Understood, sir—you mean to visit Master Ning. I’ll go ask.”

Of the four in the party, only the attendant Guyu had followed Li Pin since his Jiangning days, and knew a fair amount about Li Pin’s affairs there, including his friendship with Ning Yi—he even knew that his master’s securing of a real post owed something to Ning Yi’s help.

After entering officialdom, with the two of them scattered across the realm, contact between Li Pin and Ning Yi had grown infrequent. Guyu occasionally heard Li Pin mention Ning Yi—having studied a little under Li Pin himself, he knew that in his master’s heart, the two shared the bond of “gentlemen’s friendship.” But another piece of news about that Master Ning had only reached him through some channel or other in these past few months.

That was the rumor concerning the capital’s “Bamboo House.” Nanhe was prosperous, with plenty of traveling merchants passing through, and word of the Bamboo House’s “one poem per floor” concept had spread to Nanhe over these months; in the past two months, the large carts the Bamboo House used to peddle its goods had even reached the county town, stirring up considerable talk—and it was through this that Li Pin had first learned of Ning Yi’s affairs.

For this trip to the capital, as far as Guyu understood it, his master had two places he needed to visit: first, the Right Chancellor’s residence, and second, Master Ning, whose business had by now grown quite substantial in the capital. Hearing Li Pin nod, he went at once to inquire about the route for the oil-walled carriages—the horse-drawn public transit of the great cities—and then mounted the single packhorse carrying their luggage, while Li Pin and the other two boarded the oil-walled carriage, heading toward the Bamboo House’s Swallow Pavilion location.

The oil-walled carriage stopped at a stand called Sanguan Ward. As Li Pin and the others got down, Guyu dismounted as well, gazing at the building not far off, mouth slightly agape.

“Wow, so lively… Sir, Master Ning really does have a knack for business…”

Li Pin gave a soft “mm” and nodded.

Guyu’s voice carried plenty of delight and amazement, but he failed to notice that in his master’s eyes, fixed on the building ahead, there was no delight at all—only a faint astonishment, layered with a complicated undercurrent of worry…

“Let’s go,” he said after a moment. “Let’s first ask about… where he’s staying.”

The afternoon sunlight fell bright across the city of Bianliang. Ahead, the Bamboo House branch known as Swallow Pavilion had changed little in decor since its opening—but the bustling scene of activity on display there was, compared to half a year ago, a world apart…