Voices rose here and there.
Outside, the sky remained overcast. In the plain little courtyard, people occasionally passed by, and now and then someone would poke their head in to peer inside before scampering off with quick footsteps.
In the main reception hall, as the thin, dark-skinned boy’s tea tray was taken from him and the cups set down beside the host’s and guest’s seats, Hongti heard the two men discussing something she could hardly follow.
“…Liheng studied Confucian classics too, back in the day — what sort of books did you read?”
“…When I was studying, I went through the Analects, the Zuo Commentary, the Doctrine of the Mean, and so on… though I always preferred the Analects…”
“…All proper paths of learning. It reminds me — my own teacher, back in the day, thought little of the Doctrine of the Mean. Said the book was useless, far from the great Way… though I, for that reason, read it all the more…”
“…In truth, the great Way runs through all of them alike…”
Since Ning Yi’s current status was difficult for anyone to pin down, and since he’d come back quietly together with Hongti, few in the stronghold had even been alerted to his arrival. Aside from the old man’s welcome at the courtyard gate earlier, there had been no other display of ceremony. Here in the small courtyard, everything unfolded much as it would if an ordinary mountain woman had simply brought her new husband home — some curiosity, but no fuss. In the sitting room, the conversation stayed simple and plain, without much drama one way or the other. Out in the yard, the men kept quiet, while the women went about their own business with curious glances, murmuring low guesses about how things would turn out.
“Speaking of which, Liheng’s family is in Jiangning — I visited there myself once, years ago. I wonder how Jiangning’s doing these days…”
Liang Bingfu sat in the host’s seat, speaking to Ning Yi with a faintly stern expression, his eyes still sharp, his spine straight. On the chair to the side, Ning Yi answered his questions respectfully. Hongti sat silent in the room, looking, at that moment, something between a newly married bride and Ning Yi’s own elder sister — she’d first brought the tea for the two of them, then rubbed Liang Bingfu’s shoulders, and finally taken a seat beside Ning Yi, head slightly bowed, gaze calm, occasionally clasping her hands between her knees when boredom crept in.
Having gone over Jiangning, the old man asked about Hangzhou next. He drained his cup, and Hongti rose to refill it. The old man tapped his cane and smiled faintly. “Hongti, if you’re bored, go see to other things. He’ll be staying for dinner — go have someone get things ready.”
Hongti nodded, glanced at Ning Yi, and Ning Yi waved her off with a smile, mouthing silently: “I’ll keep Grandfather Liang company.”
Before long Hongti left the room, smoothing her hair lightly. A few men who had been loitering about the courtyard, pretending to have nothing better to do, hurried off to one side. Most of those present in the compound now were among Green Wood Stronghold’s elder members and inner circle, along with their families; over by the kitchen, dinner preparations were underway, and Hongti went to help, washing vegetable leaves and melons under the eaves, glancing back at the room from time to time.
After a while, she waved over the thin, dark-skinned boy who tended to Liang Bingfu, and asked him how the old man’s health had been that day. From the snatches of conversation drifting her way, she of course knew the old man’s condition wasn’t nearly as vigorous as he was letting on.
In truth, though Ning Yi wasn’t especially deep in orthodox classical learning, he spent his days in the company of great Confucian scholars like Qin Siyuan and Yao Zunian. Liang Bingfu, a man of no more than average learning to begin with, and one who hadn’t seriously studied the classics in many years, stood no chance of stumping Ning Yi in conversation. After a while, it settled into Ning Yi doing most of the talking, with the old man mostly listening — though, having held the stronghold together for so many years, he’d occasionally offer an opinion when something struck him.
Though it was summer, the afternoon passed quickly, and before long dusk had fallen. Once dinner was ready, the table was set, and the old man still sat perfectly upright, chatting with Ning Yi. By now the conversation had turned to the affairs handled by the Right Chancellor’s household, the situation in the north, the state of the frontier — Ning Yi walked him through everything, starting from the Zhang Jue affair, one matter after another; these were not things to be brushed over lightly, and the old man listened with great attention. On hearing of Zhang Jue’s death, he let out a heavy sigh; on hearing of the reactions this had provoked from various sides, his right hand gripped the head of his cane tighter still, trembling faintly. After dinner, when Hongti tried to persuade him to rest, the old man only waved her off. “Go on, out with you. Liheng and I… will keep talking.”
Hongti left the room and went out to the courtyard. Overcast all through the day, the night now offered no light of star or moon at all; down in the valley below, scattered torches flickered, and by the courtyard gate behind her, two more torches burned. She stood there for a long while in that faint light, looking down at the valley. Inside, the two men who mattered most to her in the world were talking together — for her, it was an intensely complicated feeling.
After some time had passed like this, she went back into the courtyard and lit the lantern under the eaves. At the creak of a door, from the room across the way, glowing with warm yellow light, Ning Yi stepped out, stood watching her for a moment, then held up two fingers in front of him and gave them a playful little wave, smiling.
“Grandfather Liang, has he…” Hongti walked over.
“Already asleep,” Ning Yi said softly. “The old man really does have spirit.”
“He was forcing himself to keep it up.”
“I know. But that’s exactly what shows how seriously he takes this — it was his way of testing me…”
“Grandfather Liang wasn’t trying to give you a hard time…”
“No, he wasn’t. But this matters a great deal to me too.” Speaking quietly, the two of them walked toward the courtyard gate as if out for a stroll. Ning Yi smiled. “What that old man has done here — it’s truly admirable. He’s carried a great deal of responsibility… just like you.”
“I’m… not nearly as busy as Grandfather Liang.”
“Different roles to play, that’s all.”
The summer night wind blew across the hillside. When they reached a spot on the path overlooking the valley, Ning Yi crouched down, and Hongti crouched beside him. Down in the valley, every household had already finished their evening meal; there wasn’t much in the way of nighttime entertainment, so people gathered along the paths between houses to talk, and the sound of children chasing and playing drifted up through the darkness. Farther off, the outer market of Lüliang was livelier still, and rather more chaotic besides. Hongti pointed things out to Ning Yi below — this was where people lived, that was where supplies were stored, over there a new building was going up, and there something had gone wrong recently, and so on.
Before long, she pointed out a cluster of courtyards below the hillside — that was where the “guests” who’d come to Lüliang this time were staying. Steward He, backed by the Qi family; the envoy sent by Dong Pang’er; a deputy officer from the Wusheng Army; some self-proclaimed unrivaled hero of the Central Plains; and chieftains from the nearby strongholds of Lüliang — each with their own agenda or mission, and no shortage of variety among them. There were even those who genuinely believed Hongti was holding a martial contest to choose a husband. All of them, these past several days, had been trying every way they could think of to get in touch with Liang Bingfu — and since Hongti hadn’t been around, Liang Bingfu had simply been sitting on the matter, stalling.
“Now that I’m here, and you’re back too, let’s not wear the old man out any further. Over the next few days, let’s get all this sorted,” Ning Yi said quietly. “You already know who most of them are and what they’re about, I take it?”
Hongti nodded. “I do.”
“Good. Zhu Biao will come find me later, and I’ll fill him in — by tomorrow or the day after, we should have a clear idea of how to handle it. But before any of that, take me to see how ‘that thing’ is coming along.”
“All right.” Hongti stood, raised her hand, and pointed toward a spot on the far side of the mountain, where, faintly, in the darkness, a dull red glow seemed to seep out.
Before long the two of them made their way along the mountain path toward it. That was the blast-furnace workshop, hidden within the mountain itself. For Ning Yi, none of it — not the steward, not the envoys, not even the pacification decree currently shaking up the whole northern half of the Wu Dynasty — was the true reason he’d come here. Beyond Lüliang, the Jin were nearing the height of their power, and the Mongols were sweeping across ever-widening territory; a petty tug-of-war over some obscure corner of Lüliang Mountain sometimes struck him, when he thought about it, as almost too trivial to matter.
But of course, there were things of real weight here too — the madwoman in the mountain village; the old man who had finally, in his exhaustion, fallen into sleep; the woman who, though mistress of an entire stronghold, still wore patched clothing. Sometimes it brought back to him that simple sentence Hongti had said the first time they met: “We don’t live like human beings here…” Set against that, the posturing of a handful of petty schemers really did seem tedious, even pointless.
And yet, feelings like that aside, before he could get to the things he actually wanted to do, these tangled little matters still had to be dealt with first. That night, Ning Yi and Hongti went to look over the progress on the improved blast furnace and the small quantity of steel it had produced — after being entrusted with the task, Hongti and Liang Bingfu had both put considerable effort into it, and while progress wasn’t dramatic, it was still respectable given the circumstances. He then met with Zhu Biao, went over what they’d learned about the outsiders in the stronghold, and began mapping out further lines of investigation in detail.
Meanwhile, on the Lüliang side, the consolidation of the bandits at what had once been Little Sparrowhawk’s stronghold was reaching its final stage. Early the next morning, they set out with their soldiers and, by that evening, arrived at Green Wood Stronghold as envoys of Tian Hu, the Prince of Jin, and were given lodging and hospitality. Along with requesting a meeting with Hongti, she also had people quietly look into the identities of the others who had come, then moved quickly to respond, forming alliances and paying visits to the various parties.
It was also that evening that Ning Yi, standing on a hillside with a single-lens spyglass, spotted her among the party that had entered the mountains. The lens of this telescope had been ground entirely by hand, and even the finest examples of the craft couldn’t achieve especially high clarity, so he ended up holding it up and peering through it for quite a long while.
“Whoa, is that… Lou Xiaowan, or Lou-something… where’s Shuheng…” After sweeping the spyglass back and forth for a good while, and pausing to think, Ning Yi handed the tube over to Zhu Biao beside him.
Then he brightened a little. “Ah, well, at least now I know why I got beaten up — that’s something, at least…”
Of course, that night, Ning Yi didn’t go over to say hello to this long-lost old acquaintance.
His reunion with Lou Shuwan would come only a few days later…