by Rose Lerner
“Why not?”
“I was being foolish. It will be enough to have just the one night.”
A pang of sadness overtook me. I’d loved sitting in that tea house, pretending to belong there. Sipping tea while surrounded by conversation. I’d met Gao, someone mysterious and dark and unexpected. I would have gone my entire life never knowing anyone outside of the lane we lived on.
“Here.” Yue-ying set her brush down and turned the paper to face me. “Help me correct this.”
It was a letter to Mingyu. The language was simple, but relatively free of mistakes. “This character should be ‘eager’.” I circled it and wrote the correct one beside it. “And you need to rewrite this section.”
I had been tutoring Yue-ying for over a year. She was making progress, but her calligraphy was very rough.
She took out a fresh sheet of paper and I waited patiently while she recopied the letter. When she was done, she folded the paper and held it out to me.
“Would you be kind enough to give this to my sister?”
I stared at the letter.
Yue-ying gave me a smile. “The baby is coming any day now. Surely no one will stop me from exchanging letters with Mingyu. And as women’s matters are so uncomfortable for men to deal with, I have no choice but to trouble you, Little Sister.”
At times like this, I truly believed we were sisters, in a previous life if not this one.
“I could go tomorrow.” I wanted to go right then and there.
“Yes, tomorrow please.” She gave me a little wave of her hand. “Otherwise you’ll drive everyone here mad, pacing around the way you do.”
Pacing? I liked to wander when I was sorting out my thoughts. I would circle around the confines of our parlors and gardens.
“You’re like a restless alley cat circling the street,” Yue-ying pointed out. “You and Huang are the same. Neither of you can remain still.”
* * *
The next morning, I had a plan in place and the plan was simply this: I would walk out of the house as if this excursion were something I did every day.
First, I told the housekeeper to inform my mother I was out on errands. Mother was occupied fawning over Yue-ying and her soon-to-be grandchild so it was unlikely she’d notice I was gone. The advantage of being overlooked was that I was overlooked.
Zhou Dan was the one I typically enlisted for an outing like this, but our manservant was becoming a bit too familiar with me. I was getting weary of the rolling of his eyes.
Sideways glances aside, if anything went amiss, I would only be scolded. Zhou Dan would be punished. So I hired a carriage on my own to take me to the market ward.
As the carriage rolled forward, I could feel the breeze on my face. I closed my eyes, letting the cool air surround me. The tightness gripping my chest eased away until I could breathe freely.
My situation was not so bad. With my brother’s marriage and a new baby on the way, things were just changing. I feared that I alone would remain the same. The same routine played out day after day.
I opened my eyes to take in every moment of the carriage ride. It was different during the day, with every street in the capital alive and bustling. We drove by vendors squatting beside baskets of fruit and steamed cakes.
As soon as we passed through the ward gates, I could see the high walls of the North Market looming ahead of us, but we were headed to a small section in its shadow.
I tried to give directions as best I could, but I had only been here once and it had been dark outside. The carriage driver huffed noisily as we drove in a circle around the streets and then another circle before I spotted the tea house.
I paid the driver, not bothering to haggle for the price though Yue-ying had insisted it was expected. As the carriage pulled away, I spied a familiar figure standing beside the building.
It was Huang. Even from afar, I was certain of it, but what was my brother doing here in the middle of the day? He was supposed to be in the records office of the imperial archives.
Huang wasn’t wearing the state uniform he’d left our house in that morning. Instead he’d traded it for a more extravagant silk. Perhaps it wasn’t unusual for Huang to meet with some associate or another over tea—but this place was quite out of the way from the administrative center.
He was deep in conversation with a man with graying hair and a short trimmed beard. As etiquette dictated, I kept a polite distance. Once the conversation had run its course, I would then make myself known to my brother.
I stood several paces away, but remained invisible. The elderly man glanced at me once, only to dismiss me in the same moment as he returned his attention to my brother.
I was still waiting patiently when the two of them began walking away from the tea house. The stranger must have been leading Huang somewhere. They moved at a quick pace, cutting through the street with my brother a few paces behind. Though I tried to follow, my dignified, ladylike steps soon left me trailing.
Two lanes over, I was out of breath and no longer moving in a ladylike fashion. I’d also lost sight of my brother and his companion.
The crowd had started to thin, and there were fewer shops. I was next to what appeared to be a brickyard, which in itself fascinated me. All these structures had to be built from something from somewhere.
“Bai.”
I turned, my pulse quickening even before my eyes settled on a recognizable face.
“Lady Bai this time,” Gao said, his mouth curving crookedly.
I touched a hand to my throat as he approached, then realized it was a nervous, vulnerable gesture and immediately dropped it. “What are you doing here?”
He glanced at the surroundings with a bemused expression before returning his gaze to me. “I live here.”
Gao had come to a stop before me. My heartbeat pounded to warn me that he was perhaps closer than was proper. And that we shouldn’t be speaking with one another, here in the open. Without occasion. But what did it matter if no one was here to say so?
“Mister Gao,” I began. “It’s good to see you again.”
He cocked his head at that, making me wonder what I’d said or done wrong.
The first time I’d encountered him was in the dark of the night. I took in this new view of Gao. He appeared coarser in the daylight—sharp bone encased in hard muscle. The night had hidden the rough edges and rendered him less menacing.
One would say with Gao’s sun-darkened skin and long, rangy build that he had the look of a commoner, though he was far from common in appearance to me. I could study his face for days and not tire of it. My instincts told me I didn’t find him handsome—and yet I couldn’t look away because I certainly found him to be…something.
He lacked the soft, fed look of the scholar-elite. I’d never thought of the flock of scholars and poets and bureaucrats that flooded the capital as soft before, but in comparison I could think of no other word. Even the candidates who boasted of starving during their studies still were fleshy in comparison.
I realized I’d been staring too long then and lowered my eyes. My gaze landed on his hand, resting at his side.
His nails weren’t ragged or caked with dirt, but there was a worn look to them. The fingers were callused and hard and cracked, not from toil today or yesterday, I imagined, but from years of toil.
Slowly, Gao curled his hand into a fist, hiding his fingers against his palm. Caught, I glanced up to meet eyes, which pierced through me.
Gao had been looking at me as well, just as closely. And I didn’t know what he saw or what I wanted him to see.
“What are you doing here?” he asked quietly.
It was an echo of my earlier question, but I heard something more in it. I was the one who didn’t belong, which made it all the more obvious that we shouldn’t be there together, out here in the street, standing too close.
I was supposed to avert my eyes and excuse myself from his presence. Instead, my resolve to match him look for look meant I could see the
roughness of his jaw with dark stubble covering it.
None of this should have been a revelation to me. I had already determined where we stood by the way he spoke and stood and walked. Inches and angles, I wasn’t wrong about that. But I was surprised to look at Gao, a man I had already decided wasn’t educated or refined or handsome, and feel a knot forming in the pit of my stomach. My mouth went dry searching for words.
“I’m looking for my brother. He was just here.”
I glanced down the street at the row of storehouses, looking lost enough that Gao took pity on me.
“We should go quickly then.”
I was grateful when he took my side, though I was conscious of every step. Last time we’d walked like this, I had been in disguise and rejoicing in my willfulness. It was harder to figure out how to behave when not misbehaving.
“It seems you and your brother have taken a liking to this neighborhood,” he remarked.
I was occupied searching down an alleyway. “I came to deliver a letter.”
“And Lord Bai?”
“He must have been meeting some associate at the tea house.”
At one corner, white slips of paper littered the street like snow. Most of the papers had been trampled on and ground into the dirt by foot traffic. I bent to pick one up, brushing off the dirt covering it as best I could.
There were ten characters written on it, similar to the paper I’d found, but with different characters. Where the paper I’d given to Wu Kaifeng contained an entire block of print, this one looked like two couplets printed side by side. I read the lines several times, trying to make sense of them.
“It’s a gaming slip,” Gao explained, standing close enough I could feel the brush of his arm against me.
“But what do the characters mean?”
“There’s no meaning.”
Gao gestured toward a window that was currently shuttered. “Stacks of gaming slips are printed using an arbitrary selection of characters. A man sits behind there and sells the slips for a copper. Once a day, he draws wooden lots from a bowl and writes the winning characters onto a paper to post over there.”
I could see where a paper had been pasted onto the wall before being ripped away.
“Is this the only place where the slips are sold?”
“The drawings are very popular. Every den runs a game.”
“Are there quite a few dens here?”
“Practically on every street.”
An uneasy feeling ran down my spine. This area my brother frequented was a haven for gamblers, but he’d promised us that he was done with all of that.
I inspected the paper in my hand. There was a red stamp in the shape of a crescent moon. I saw the same mark on a few of the papers that had been trampled underfoot. “This seal must mark which location the slip belongs to.”
He leaned in to inspect the slip and I could see that a thread had come loose at the neckline of his tunic. I quickly looked away so he wouldn’t catch me scrutinizing him again.
“Each gaming house is designated with some drawing or symbol,” he explained. “The lesser places might have nothing more than a blot of ink to identify them, with hastily scrawled characters on the ticket.”
The games he described were all illegal. The printing of paper lots and selling them for money was akin to thievery under the Code. The Tang Code was another volume I’d pored over in the course of my studies.
I imagined there were too many dens to regulate, or gambling was casually overlooked by the authorities. Many a scholar enjoyed gambling enough to write poems about dice tables and nights of drunkenness. Irresponsibility romanticized.
I tried to recall what had been on my slip. “What about a circle? Perhaps a full moon or sun.”
Gao quieted, leaving me to read all sorts of things into that silence.
“There is one den with a similar mark,” he said finally. “Why do you ask?”
“I found a paper on the ground the other night. When I showed it to Wu Kaifeng, he seemed to recognize it.”
His gaze measured and weighed me. “So you’re the reason why.”
I blinked. “The reason—”
“The reason former constable Wu has been prowling around the neighborhood.”
Whenever Gao spoke of Wu, it was like the subtle sharpening of a knife. His tone took on an edge.
“Is Wu Kaifeng in danger?”
Gao snorted. “You worry about him?”
He took a step closer to me, when he was so close already. My breath caught as I became engulfed in his shadow.
“Everyone in this ward knows everyone else. We know who to speak to and who to walk away from. Wu Kaifeng may recently have set up residence here, but he is an outsider. You, my lady, are even more of one.” His mouth twisted into a smile that made a shiver run down my spine. “Your brother, however, is quickly becoming a familiar face.”
My fingers tightened around the paper. “Is Huang involved in these games?”
“This is a wager for peasants.” Gao drew the paper from my grasp and crumpled it into a ball, letting it drop to the ground. “Gamblers who have it in their blood are more particular. Lord Bai Huang prefers the dice tables.”
My instincts told me I needed to leave.
“How exactly are you acquainted with my brother?” I asked, holding firm. “Why does he come to see you?”
I didn’t expect Gao to answer, but once again he surprised me. Unlike our family, he felt no need to speak around the issue to avoid unpleasantness.
“Your brother pays me whenever he needs things done, Lady Bai. We are not friends.”
“What sort of things?” I could hardly form the question.
“Ask him.”
Gao’s reply hung ominously in the air. It really was time for me to go. We parted without the usual niceties. No farewell or ‘until we meet again’.
It left the moment unfinished. I looked back to see Gao watching me and making no effort to pretend that he wasn’t.
Chapter 4
* * *
I entered Wu’s tea house to a quiet and sparse afternoon crowd. A quick scan told me Huang hadn’t returned.
In one corner, Mingyu poured tea with the same elegance she was known for in the Lotus Palace; arm raised, long sleeve hanging dramatically. She saw me out of the corner of her eye and flashed a quick smile. I was compelled to smile back.
Once finished with her guests, Mingyu floated toward me as she had done the other night. I truly did wonder if her feet touched the floor.
“Lady Bai.” Her eyes were bright. “Is it that time?”
I frowned while Mingyu continued to watch me expectantly. It took me several moments before I understood. She’d assumed I’d come with happy news about her sister.
“Not yet, Lady Mingyu. But any day now.”
Everyone liked to echo that throughout our household: ‘Any day now.’
I handed Mingyu the letter that Yue-ying had entrusted to me, and she started leading me to the back of the room where there would be more privacy. I never did get the chance to sit, however. I was intercepted by a dark, imposing figure coming from the kitchen.
Wu Kaifeng balanced a tray in his hands. The delicate tea pot and cups looked woefully out of place beside him.
“Lady Bai,” he greeted. “A coincidence that you’re here.”
“Mister Wu, I hope you’re well—”
“I found the weapon.”
By this time, Mingyu had already swooped in to take away the tea, lest it go cold by the time Wu remembered where he was supposed to bring it.
“Weapon?” I echoed.
“The knife that was used on Scholar Chen.”
“How were you able to find it? How do you know it’s the one?”
“Come with me if you want to know more.”
I trailed after Wu as he climbed the stairs. While the lower floor contained the tea house, the upper level was their living quarters. Wu led me into the bed chamber, and the realization I was
being allowed into such a personal space made me blush, but Wu displayed no such embarrassment. He went to the window on the far wall and opened the shutters.
“Look there,” he said, pointing.
Filled with morbid curiosity, I went to his side and peered outside. I was looking down on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings and lanes.
“That is the corner where it happened.”
It took me a moment to orient myself, but Wu was right. I didn’t realize I’d been so close to the tea house at the time.
“You reported coming up that alleyway. The killer would have had two possible escape routes if he wanted to stay away from the night market.”
The night market had been filled with workmen having their evening meal. “He would have been noticed there.”
“Or he would have blended into the crowd,” Wu pointed out. “I considered it a possibility as well, but another point to consider is the watchmen who were approaching from that direction.”
The same watchmen I had encountered. Between the night patrol and Gao and me, we would have cut off the killer’s escape, likely sending him down one narrow passage.
“I found the knife in there, buried beneath a pile of refuse.” He pointed to the very route I’d identified.
The events of that evening came back to me, but instead I was a player in the scene rather than merely myself. I saw my approach, the watchmen’s, the shadowy, faceless killer running in the opposite direction just as I picked up the gaming slip.
“We were so close,” I murmured. “Scholar Chen must have just suffered his wounds.”
And there were so many people nearby, yet no one to help him. The stark reality of it left me feeling helpless.
“Wounds can bleed out faster than one realizes.”
Wu had reached into a wardrobe to pull out an object wrapped in coarse canvas. I shuddered at the sight of it. That couldn’t possibly be—
It was. Wu unwrapped it to reveal a knife. The point of the blade was directed away from me, but I was still filled with dread at the sight of it. A sick feeling curdled my stomach.
“It’s stained with blood,” he reported.
