Chapter 2

I gave her the powder from my sleeve too.

“Because I know only that he bound me. I don't know whether he administered the poison. And I don't know how many people around His Highness trust him.”

Something changed in Physician Lu's gaze.

Before Xiao Chengke attended the palace banquet, she told me, he had drunk only a bowl of hangover soup sent from his residence. It had been prepared in the inner dispensary and escorted by Song Yanchu himself. He was also the first to discover that the prince had been poisoned.

He had carried a pill he claimed was an antidote.

It could not cure the poison, only suppress it temporarily. That hour had given him time to find a woman in the street with no relatives or connections.

“For protecting His Highness, he was to be promoted to commander once the prince awoke.” Physician Lu wrapped up the token. “If he arranged the poisoning as well, everything makes sense.”

An icy feeling rose in my stomach.

Song Yanchu's letters had said he had no one to rely on in the capital, that every day he risked his life for his future. I had ached for him, sold two silver hairpins Mother left me, and sent the money with a trading caravan.

Later, he wrote that once he became commander, he could marry me openly and honorably.

So the life he wagered for his future had been other people's.

Physician Lu locked the powder and token in a cabinet and told me to return to my courtyard as usual.

“If he has arranged to take you away tonight, he most likely no longer means to leave you alive. His Highness must be informed immediately.”

Xiao Chengke came quickly.

After hearing the full account, he first had the dispensary placed under new control, then ordered Guard Cen to take me to another courtyard.

“I'm not going,” I said.

He frowned.

“Song Yanchu means to kill you.”

“That's precisely why he'll come tonight. Arrest him now, and he can say the token was lost long ago and someone planted the powder. Let him produce the medicine he means to give me. Then you'll have witnesses and physical evidence.”

“I have not reached the point of using an injured woman as bait to solve a case.”

He was plainly trying to protect me. Yet his words made me angry.

“You just gave me the key to my door.”

He looked at me.

“You said you wouldn't decide for me. Staying is my choice too.”

The room fell silent.

Physician Lu coughed softly and took her assistant into the outer room. Xiao Chengke went to the window and stood with his back to me for a long time.

Then he asked, “What do you intend to do?”

I explained my plan.

He added guards at each necessary position, then placed a slim dagger on the table.

“Until the torches are lit, don't go near him, whatever he says. If he draws a blade, forget the evidence. Get away.”

I picked it up. A tiny character, Ke, was carved on the sheath.

“Your own dagger?”

“My imperial brother gave it to me when I first went to war at twelve.”

“And you dare lend me something so important?”

“A lost dagger can be forged again. If anything happens to you…”

He broke off and turned to study the courtyard map. I held the dagger for a long time before remembering to hide it in my sleeve.

At the door, he paused again.

“Su Tang, agreeing to this plan doesn't mean I'm not afraid.”

It was the first time he had admitted fear to me.

I had thought people in power knew only how to give orders. Yet even while worrying about me, he listened to everything I had to say, then returned the decision to my hands.

Around midnight, Song Yanchu came as promised.

He wore plain blue clothes and carried my bundle. Even the travel permit and betrothal document stolen earlier were inside.

“I found your things. Let's go.”

I opened the travel permit. All the passage stamps were there. I put it away carefully.

“Where are we going?”

“A house outside the city. Stay there for a few months. Once the case is over, I'll come for you.”

“In what capacity?”

He frowned impatiently.

“Why quibble over that now? Do you really want to be Prince Jing's secondary consort?”

He took out the jade.

“A Tang, I don't despise you. Stop making trouble.”

I reached for it, but he would not let go.

“Drink this first.”

He produced a little porcelain bottle. A sedative, he said. I would have to hide in a firewood cart to leave. If I drank it, I would not be afraid.

I took the bottle and pulled out the stopper in front of him.

His shoulders relaxed at once.

“Drink. Sleep, and everything will be better when you wake.”

“Before you were exiled, you used to coax me to take medicine like that.”

He froze.

As a child, I had hated bitterness. Whenever I was ill, he hid candied fruit in his palm and promised it to me after the medicine. He had been only a child himself. Reluctant as he was to part with it, he always saved the biggest piece for me.

Those scraps of memory had sustained ten years of waiting.

I raised the bottle to my lips, then stopped.

“Where's the candied fruit?”

His eyes reddened.

It was as though he finally remembered that the person before him was neither a nuisance nor some woman from elsewhere to bear disaster in his place.

“A Tang, don't force me.”

“Is this poison?”

“It will only make you sleep a few more days. Once this is over, I'll give you the antidote.”

I nodded, then flung the whole bottle into his face.

He closed his eyes and dodged. I pulled the silver hairpin from my hair, drove it into the back of his hand, and ran for the courtyard gate.

He caught my hair from behind and threw me to the ground. Drawing a short blade, he pressed its point to my throat.

“I did mean to marry you at first.”

Medicine wet his face. His voice shook.

“Why did it have to be you? Why did you come so early?”

More than ten torches flared at once.

Xiao Chengke stood outside the gate, his guards' swords drawn beside him.

He looked calmer than he had by day. But veins stood out on the hand gripping his sword.

Song Yanchu would not surrender.

He gripped my throat and pressed the blade harder.

“Let me leave, or I'll kill her.”

I caught his injured right hand and suddenly drove the hairpin deeper.

His grip loosened in pain.

I ducked and bit his wrist. Before the guards reached us, I snatched the jade from inside his robe.

Once he had been pinned to the ground, Xiao Chengke came to me.

I was shaking all over. He removed his outer robe and held it, but first asked, “May I?”

I nodded.

Only then did he drape it over my shoulders, shielding me from the surrounding eyes. He neither touched my hands nor urged me to release the hairpin I still gripped.

“It's over,” he said. “Go back to your room. Leave the rest to me.”

I shook my head.

“I want to see him taken away.”

So he stood beside me.

Only after the bottle, blade, and betrothal document on the ground had been collected as evidence, and Song Yanchu dragged through the gate, did he call Physician Lu.

As she bandaged my palm, I noticed that the old wound on Xiao Chengke's wrist had reopened. He had not even struck a blow during the rescue. He had clenched his hand so hard that it bled.

Noticing my gaze, he hid it in his sleeve.

“A small wound.”

For the first time, I felt that this Prince Jing, famous for his ruthless decisiveness, seemed even more afraid than Song Yanchu of letting me see him in pain.

5.

Song Yanchu was confined in the underground prison.

The medicine in the bottle was not lethal. But it could leave someone unconscious for seven or eight days and confuse their memories after waking. He had planned to take me out of the capital while I slept, then fabricate news that I had died of illness.

No one knew whether he would ever have come for me afterward.

Tracing the token, the household found the remaining ingredients for Hehuan Yin in an apothecary in the south of the city. Its shopkeeper confessed that Song Yanchu had paid him three hundred taels, first to compound the poison, then a pill that would temporarily suppress it.

He had calculated that Xiao Chengke would not die.

Provided he brought a woman in time, he would be the loyal servant who risked his life to save his master. Once promoted to commander of the personal guard, he would gain access to the household's secret correspondence. Then he could offer his services to the Third Prince, who paid more.

This had been no momentary lapse.

Buying the drugs, administering the poison, selecting a woman in the street with no one to turn to—every step had been calculated.

When Xiao Chengke laid the confession before me, I could not turn to the next page for a long time.

The last page said Song Yanchu had never intended to honor our betrothal.

He had formed an attachment to a concubine-born daughter of a vice minister of war. She promised that once he became commander, she would persuade her father to let her marry him. Afraid I might actually come to the capital, Song Yanchu had bought, six months earlier, the household registration of a woman who had died of illness. He meant to lure me outside the city and make “Su Tang” disappear.

My arrival twelve days early overturned all his plans.

Yet he still had not recognized me.

Xiao Chengke asked, “What do you intend to do with the betrothal document?”

I closed the confession.

“Burn it.”

“Your elders arranged the marriage. Burning your copy won't remove the record held by the authorities.”

“Then please help me cancel that record.”

He did not agree at once.

“You saved me. I can offer you more compensation. A house, money, a recognized position—you may ask for any of them.”

“Do you think I saved you?”

He looked at his wrist, not yet fully healed.

“I cannot call what happened last night a favor. You were a victim, and so was I. But I was the one who survived. You are the one left to bear the consequences and the gossip.”

That comforted me more than a promise to take responsibility ever could.

“Did you ever think of simply giving me a title and considering the matter settled?”

He neither used his rank to pressure me nor accused me of insolence.

“For the first two hours after I woke, yes.”

I looked up.

“I thought making you a secondary consort and silencing the household would be an answer.” He turned his teacup halfway around. “Then Physician Lu told me you had asked whether you could continue practicing medicine after leaving. Only then did I understand that you had a life of your own.”

His frankness left me at a loss for words.

“Su Tang, I do want you to stay. But if you stay because you have nowhere else to go, that cannot be called willing.”

It was raining when I left the main courtyard that day.

He had an umbrella brought for me. He remained beneath the veranda, without using the excuse of seeing me off to follow. Long after I had walked away, I looked back. He was still there, watching.

I suddenly remembered the night that bedroom door closed.

Both men had reached out. One decided where I must go. The other returned the choice to me.

I asked him for three things.

First, cancel the betrothal and restore my freedom.

Second, stamp all Song Yanchu's letters with an official seal, as supporting evidence that he had long planned to lure me to the capital.

Third, let me attend the interrogation.

He agreed to the first two. For the third, he would only allow me to listen behind a screen.

In the underground prison, Song Yanchu admitted the poisoning but refused to admit he meant to harm me.

“If I truly wanted to kill her, I'd have done it that night. Why wait?”

The presiding official asked, “How do you explain the medicine you gave her?”

“If she revealed the betrothal, my entire life would be ruined. I only wanted to send her away. Once my position was secure, naturally I would find her.”

From behind the screen, I asked, “How long did you mean to wait?”

Chains clattered.

He lunged toward me. The jailers forced him back to the ground.

“A Tang, come out. Look at me.”

I stepped from behind the screen.

In a few days, he had become almost unrecognizably thin. The faint scar still marked his left eyebrow, but I could find nothing of the boy who had saved candied fruit for me.

He knelt and shuffled forward.

“The document is still there. Our betrothal hasn't been dissolved. Ask His Highness to help me. Everything I did was to get ahead. Once I had power, no one would ever trample us again.”

“But you were the first to trample me.”

Weeping, he said he had not recognized me.

“I know.” I opened the officially stamped document. “That's why you would feel no guilt about abducting any other woman.”

I held it to the candle.

Flame licked across my name, then reached his. He suddenly struggled, chains scraping harshly over the floor.

He begged me not to burn it. He would admit his wrongs, marry me, spend the rest of his life making amends.

As the paper burned to the end and heat reached my fingers, I let go.

Ash fell before him.

“Song Yanchu, I did not come to plead for you.”

I laid the half-pendant on the table.

“This belongs to you. Take it back.”

After the interrogation, I vomited outside the prison.

Xiao Chengke did not ask why I still grieved. He had warm water brought, then stood with his back to me below the steps and sent away the nearby jailers who were gawking.

Only after I rinsed my mouth did he offer a clean handkerchief.

“I waited ten years for him,” I said. “Just now, when I burned the document, for a moment I couldn't bear to.”

“Ten years are not ten sheets of paper. Burning a betrothal document cannot burn away the days you sincerely spent waiting.”

“Don't you think I'm useless?”

“If I were you, I might have killed him with one stroke. You still let the law take its course. You've shown more restraint than I could.”

He made me laugh.

For the first time since coming to the capital, I laughed from the heart.

6.

Song Yanchu was eventually sentenced to exile three thousand li away, forbidden ever to return to the capital.

The Third Prince's men tried to silence him on the journey. He survived by luck, but an arrow pierced his right leg. The wound went untreated too long. Afterward, he could only limp.

The vice minister of war's concubine-born daughter handed over all their correspondence, hastening to prove she knew nothing of the poisoning. She had indeed taken no part in it. But she had long known of his betrothal and had even helped him find a house outside the city.

Her father sent her to the family temple. Naturally, her marriage to Song Yanchu was abandoned.

Xiao Chengke asked whether I felt vindicated.

I said I did not know.

Punishing the wicked could not undo what had happened to me. Sometimes I still woke in the middle of the night and touched the fading rope marks on my wrists.

When I heard a man's footsteps approach, I instinctively checked whether the door was locked.

Physician Lu said these things could not be hurried.

She took me into the household dispensary to help dry and sort herbs. Father had practiced medicine in Qingshi for twenty years. I had learned to identify medicines beside him from childhood. The work was not difficult.

Once, I picked two slices of astragalus from a packet of licorice root. The dispensary steward grew impatient. A little mixing would not kill anyone, he said.

I pushed the packet back and told him to find those two slices himself.

His face darkened. I was only a woman from elsewhere lodging in the residence, he said. I had no right to interfere in the dispensary.

Just then, Xiao Chengke entered.

The steward hurried to greet him, insinuating throughout that I did not know my place. After listening, Xiao Chengke did not scold him on my behalf. He simply picked a slice of astragalus from the licorice.

“Miss Su is right. Recheck all twelve baskets of herbs delivered today.”

The steward protested miserably.

“Your Highness, that will take until midnight.”

“Then work until midnight.”

Once he and his assistants were busy, Xiao Chengke sat opposite me and laid his bandaged wrist on the table.

“Physician Lu went to the palace today.”

“So you've come to me?”

“What else?”

I unwound the bandage. The wound had scabbed over, but he kept staring at the licorice on the table instead of my hands.

“Does it hurt?”

“No.”

I deliberately pressed the edge of the wound.

His wrist jerked. His expression remained perfectly composed.

“Are you this stubborn on the battlefield too?”

“Army physicians don't deliberately press my wounds.”

I could not help laughing.

He looked up at me. This time, he did not quickly look away.

“You should laugh more.”

My hands paused.

“If you're trying to cheer me up out of guilt, there's no need.”

“At first, it was guilt,” he answered calmly. “Then I saw that even when you were too afraid to put out the lamp all night, you still dared bring me evidence the next day. You could have asked for a lifetime of wealth. Instead, you wanted only your betrothal document back and an apothecary of your own.”

He withdrew his newly bandaged hand.

“I want to know whether, without that night, you would have been willing to get to know me.”

I lowered my head and tidied the medicine case without answering.

Only after he left did I discover I had ruined three lengths of bandage.

The next day, the steward did ask me to help check the new herbs. Half a month later, Physician Lu said a small apothecary in the east of the city was available for transfer. Did I dare run it myself?

The shop owed three months' rent, and its roof leaked. When I went to inspect it, Xiao Chengke was inside, speaking with the landlord.

Thinking he meant to buy it for me, I turned away at once.

He followed to the door, stopping three paces away.

“I only asked whether the deed was genuine. I haven't bargained for you.”

“Truly?”

He handed me the deed and copies of the rents for three nearby shops.

“Negotiate yourself. If you make a bad bargain, don't come crying to me.”

In the end, I brought the price down by forty taels.

On our way back, he rode beside the carriage. I told him the result through the window. He nodded and said only that it was acceptable. Yet the next day, guards brought a box of pastries. The residence kitchen had made too many, he said.

Physician Lu exposed him.

“Since when does that kitchen make Qingshi rice cakes? He sent people across half the capital to find them.”

I took a bite. In truth, they tasted little like home.

But I ate the entire box.