Chapter 8

Pei Yanchu didn’t speak.

After a long while, he finally said, “I knew.”

“What’s in the well?”

“Lingge’s clothes. A few old garments, and a half-finished pair of newly embroidered tiger-head shoes.”

Tiger-head shoes.

For a child.

“Your wife ordered someone to throw them down the well and seal it.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you stop her?”

Pei Yanchu closed his eyes.

“I did. I argued with her. It was the only quarrel we had in twenty years of marriage.”

“And then?”

“She said Huaijin had already taken Lingge away. What was the point of keeping these things? Better to destroy them and be done with it.”

“I said we should keep a few mementos, at least.”

“She said, ‘Mementos of what? For whom to see? So Huaijin could spend his whole life missing that wretched maid?’”

“I couldn’t win that argument.”

Pei Yanchu opened his eyes and looked at me.

There was something in the old man’s gaze that I couldn’t quite name. It wasn’t exactly guilt, nor exactly grief.

It was more like resignation.

“Qingping, I wronged your mother. And I wronged you.”

“When Huaijin left, I promised him I would find Lingge and the child. I searched for eighteen years, until you found your own way to my door.”

“This land deed was left to the two of you by Huaijin. I’ve watched over the house in Anle Ward all these years and never touched it.”

“If you agree, you can return to the Pei clan and claim your ancestry—”

“No.”

I cut him off.

Quickly and decisively.

“My surname isn’t Pei.”

Pei Yanchu froze.

“Qingping, you are Huaijin’s own flesh and blood—”

“I know.”

I touched the wooden sword pendant at my waist.

“I know my birth father was Pei Huaijin. I also know my birth mother was Fang Lingge.”

“But the man who raised me was surnamed Liu.”

“His name was Liu Shouyu.”

“He was a fake Taoist. His fortunes were never right, his talismans never worked, and he ruined people’s marriages and fortunes, earning curses from everyone for twenty years.”

“But he raised me.”

“When I had a high fever, he carried me eight li over a mountain road in the middle of the night to find a doctor.”

“When I was hungry, he broke off the last piece of bread for me and kept himself going with plain water.”

“When other children bullied me, he chased them three streets with his wooden peach-wood sword. Then, when we got home, he solemnly taught me, ‘Daughter, listen carefully: if you get into a fight, strike first. If you can’t win, run. If you can’t get away, play dead.’”

“He taught me to read, cast fortunes, read faces, and draw talismans. Even if none of it worked.”

“But he taught me one real thing.”

Pei Yanchu asked, “What was that?”

“He taught me to live happily.”

I laughed.

“He told me, ‘Liu Qingping, remember this: it doesn’t matter who owes you something in this life. Just don’t owe anything to yourself.’”

“The sun rises new every day, and luck changes every day.”

“If your fortune-telling is wrong today, try again tomorrow. If you can’t swindle anyone out of money today, try again tomorrow.”

“If the sky falls, someone tall will hold it up. If the tall person falls, the earth will catch them.”

“Eat well, sleep soundly, and live decently.”

“That’s enough.”

I took the letter and the land deed from inside my robe and set them in front of Pei Yanchu.

“Keep the letter. Let my mother know in the afterlife that she had the truth wrong—Pei Huaijin never abandoned her. He was saving her.”

“And I’m returning the deed to you. Pei Huaijin bought the house in Anle Ward and put it in your name, so it belongs to the Pei family.”

“My father was a fake Taoist, but he was a real father all his life.”

“My surname is Liu.”

Pei Yanchu’s eyes filled with tears.

He didn’t bring up my returning to the Pei clan again.

Because he understood—

I hadn’t come to claim a place in the family.

I’d come to settle an old debt.

The land deed was Pei Huaijin’s gift to Lingge. She never used it, and neither would I.

The letter was written by Pei Huaijin for Lingge. She never received it, so now Pei Yanchu would keep it for them both.

I kept only two things.

The white jade pendant my mother had left me, and the wooden sword pendant my father had made.

One came from my mother.

The other, from my father.

That was enough.

I had planned to leave first thing the next morning.

But on the night before my departure, Pei Yuanbai came to Bamboo Court.

He brought a flask of wine.

“Daoist Liu, care to have a cup?”

“You don’t call me Daoist anymore? You should call me Miss Liu.”

“I can’t bring myself to.” He set the flask on the table and sat across from me. “You’re the kind of person who once killed a crown prince and fooled an emperor. ‘Miss’ doesn’t seem like a title with enough weight for you.”

I froze. “How did you know—”

Then I caught on.

Pei Yuanbai was an editor at the Hanlin Academy, and news traveled quickly there. The crown prince’s sudden death had thrown the capital into an uproar. The court’s official verdict was “the crown prince was harmed after being misled by a wicked Taoist,” but the bookworms at the Hanlin Academy, who pored over the court bulletins every day, must have smelled that something was off.

“Don’t be afraid.” Pei Yuanbai poured me a cup of wine. “I don’t care what you’ve been doing out there. I only came to tell you something.”