Chapter 5

She smiled bitterly.

"Yes. You could even destroy Huo Jingxiu. What am I?"

"He deserved to die."

My voice was quiet.

"You don't. You're merely foolish. You wagered your entire life on a man who devours people."

She stared at me, tears slipping silently down her face.

"Aunt, you never intended to let Shu'er marry him, did you?"

"No. But if you hadn't jumped into the water that day, I'd have had no grounds to break the betrothal. So I should thank you."

"You let Shu'er see that he wasn't worth it."

Outside, snow fell without a sound.

Back at home, Shu'er was in the study drawing plans.

She looked up and smiled.

"Mother, I want to open another workshop in the west of the city. There are so many poor women there. I want them to learn a trade too, so they don't have to marry to survive."

"Very well. I'll provide the money."

"But on one condition. From today on, I won't intervene in your businesses. You must learn to stand on your own."

Her eyes grew warm as she looked at me.

"Mother, are you leaving?"

I laughed and stroked her head.

"No. It's simply time I lived for myself too."

09

It truly was time.

In my previous life, I'd lived to forty-six.

For the first eighteen years, I'd been a daughter, married into the Lu family for the sake of a family alliance.

For the next twenty-eight, I'd been a wife and mother, managing the marquisate and everyone else's lives.

In the end, my daughter died, my husband was indifferent, and the clan had eyes only for my shops and money.

I bought a small courtyard house beside Jinggong Workshop.

The front became a clinic for poor women. I lived in the rear.

My husband, Lu Mingzhang, had served at court for years and seldom came home.

Hearing I'd moved out, he merely sent a letter.

"Qingrong, what does this do to the Lu family's dignity?"

I returned it with a short reply:

"We'll meet over the separation agreement."

He sent no more letters.

Shu'er, however, wrote from the northwest.

"Dearest Mother,

"I've heard you've moved out of the marquisate. All I want to say is that you should have done it long ago.

"I'm well here. Next spring, I'd like to bring you northwest to see the flowers."

Flowers in the northwest?

Yet I held that letter and wept for an hour.

When spring came, an incident of middling importance stirred the capital.

Lu Mingzhang, Marquis of Yong'an, was impeached for "indulging his relatives and failing to manage his household." He lost three months' salary and half a grade in rank.

I was told the Huo family's former allies were behind the memorial.

Unable to touch Shu'er, they'd turned on her father, hoping to make the Lu family fall apart from within.

Sure enough, he came to me that very day.

"Qingrong, people at court are targeting our family. Moving out is easy. But if we fall, you won't escape either."

"Come home. Without you in the household, there are too many things I can't manage."

From inside my doorway, I looked at the man I'd never truly understood.

"Lu Mingzhang, I married you at eighteen. Do you know your mother took my dowry shops in my very first year here?"

"The year I gave birth to Shu'er, you took your first concubine outside."

"When Shu'er was six, the second branch openly dismissed her as just a girl. You said nothing."

"All these years, you've been careful at court and managed nobody at home. You say you can't handle everything."

"I've handled it for you for eighteen years."

"Now it's your turn."

His expression was dreadful.

"Qingrong, why dredge up the past? The family is in trouble now..."

"Then go to your concubines. Go to your mother."

"I've prepared a separation agreement. Sign it, or I'll ask the clan elders to adjudicate."

"Choose."

He looked at me as though I were a stranger.

I had a servant bring the agreement I'd prepared long before.

He took it and stared for a long time. In the end, he didn't sign.

"Must you... be so heartless?"

"You were the heartless one."

"You never saw me as a wife. You wanted a household mistress to manage your affairs, bear and raise your children, and preserve your dignity."

"That woman has resigned."

I turned, went inside, and closed the door.

When Shu'er returned and learned what had happened, she simply said:

"Mother, you were right."

"This family hasn't deserved to keep you for a long time."

I smiled and nodded.

My daughter was becoming more like me.

10

Another spring arrived.

Jinggong School for Girls opened.

The first intake numbered thirty, aged twelve to twenty-five, mostly from poor families.

Shu'er taught them herself. Sometimes I visited to explain a little medicine and teach them to care for their health.

The court's old pedants denounced us daily as "hens crowing at dawn"—women meddling in government.

I had their words copied onto paper and pasted on the school walls.

The girls read them and held their heads high.

"Madam, we're not afraid of insults. The louder they shout, the more frightened they are."

The speaker was a sixteen-year-old refugee from the frontier, a year younger than Shu'er.

A Di blade had left a scar on her face.

She said both her parents were dead. She'd fled alone to the capital and nearly starved.

Jinggong Workshop had taken her in, fed her, and taught her a trade.

"Madam, I want to stay and teach. I want more girls like me to have a decent life."

I patted her hand.

"Then stay."

"One day, you'll all have to keep this school going yourselves."

At the end of that spring, Shu'er had to return to the northwest.

This time, the Ministry of Works sent her as a master artisan to oversee the replacement of military equipment along the entire northwestern defensive line.

The day before she left, she came to eat with me.

"Mother, I'll write often. I'll tell you the good news and the bad. I'll never just say everything's fine again."

I laughed.

"Go. I'll stay in the capital and watch over the school and shop. Do your work without worrying."

She nodded, rose, and said goodbye.

I saw her to the door and watched her disappear down the long street.

Three months later, news of victory arrived.

Not only had she completed the rearmament, she'd designed a lightweight repeating crossbow that fired three times as fast as the old one.

With it, the northwestern defenders dealt a crushing blow to the Di main force, killing more than ten thousand and forcing their royal court three hundred li westward.

Delighted, the emperor granted Shu'er the title Marquis of Precision Craft.

A woman made marquis—unprecedented in this dynasty.

She wrote from the northwest:

"Mother, I've been made a marquis."

"But what makes me happiest is that the soldiers here say the things I make really save lives."

"This life has been worth living."

I read beneath the corridor, sunlight covering me.

Lu Mingzhang had read the court gazette too.

He sent a chest of gifts for Shu'er and a letter for me.

"Qingrong, you've won. I concede."

"Come back to this house whenever you wish. If you don't wish to, that's all right too."

I folded the letter and used it to light the stove.

I'd signed the separation agreement long before and invited an official matchmaker from the capital prefecture to witness it.

In the end, Lu Mingzhang signed too.

From then on, we went our separate ways, neither owing the other anything.

I no longer asked about the Lu family.

I heard the Old Madam was bedridden, still muttering that they should never have let the Huo marriage come to their door.

The second branch divided up a few shops and scattered.

Lu Yufu remained in the convent.

A few days ago, she'd sent me a pair of shoe soles she'd made herself.

I refused them and sent only a message:

"Do your best to live well."

The day Shu'er returned, I went to the city gate.

In official robes, she rode at the head of a troop of guards.

"Mother, I'm home!"

I patted her back, smiling until tears came.

That night, she stayed at my courtyard house.

We squeezed into the same bed and talked far into the night.

Then, when Huo Jingxiu came up, she suddenly fell silent.

"Mother, I remember."

"My previous life wasn't a dream."

"When he forced me to drink the poison, he said something."

"He said, 'Lu Shuqing, you're too talented. As long as you live, I'll never sleep soundly. So I'm letting you die.'"

I took her hand.

"In this life, he hasn't even got a place to sleep."

She laughed, her eyes curving like crescent moons.

"That's right. The grass on his grave must be three chi high by now."

Beyond the window, the horizon began to brighten.

A new day was beginning.