Chapter 1

Pei Yan, head of the Pei household, hated liars above all else. Naturally, he had a particular dislike for me: the cousin who said one thing and meant another.

At the spring banquet, he exposed me in front of everyone. He said he had never ordered anyone to bring me ginger soup.

Nor would he ever wear the sachets and brocade pouches I embroidered.

Holding back tears, I pointed at the fan case swinging at his waist.

“Then what is that?”

Pei Yan’s face was ice-cold.

“A keepsake from my late father.”

“You would even use this to deceive people? You truly are… shameless.”

His words struck like a slap.

I sat stunned, surrounded by looks of astonishment and contempt.

The vice minister’s daughter, who had just come over to talk to me, leisurely stepped aside and covered her nose with her fan, as though avoiding a plague.

“What a lying little slut.”

“If Pei Yan hadn’t happened to overhear, we’d all have believed he was interested in her—that she was about to climb straight into the position of Lady Pei!”

Above the edge of her fan, her eyes gleamed with mockery and satisfaction.

I hurried after her, desperate to explain, but her maid shoved me away.

Pei Yan had delivered his verdict.

No one would hear my explanation now. No one would wait for the truth.

A liar. A social climber.

From this day on, that was all the world would see in me.

Unable to endure another moment, I fled the banquet.

Pei Yan saw the despair in my tear-filled eyes.

He remained seated, upright and dignified, without the slightest flicker of emotion.

Only the clear green tea in his hand rippled, though there was no breeze.

However tightly he gripped the cup, its surface would not settle.

“Chunxin, you know I wasn’t lying, don’t you?”

“I gave you that fan case myself, to take to him…”

I ran far into the fragrant garden and let my tears fall.

My maid, Chunxin, hurried after me. She stammered for a long time before managing a reply.

“Perhaps… perhaps the master mistook it for something else.”

A mistake about one object might have been an accident.

But Pei Yan had denied every single thing that had ever passed between us.

His cold, merciless manner reminded me of our first meeting.

It had been the spring equinox. I’d come to live under the Pei family’s protection and attended lessons with their daughters in the household schoolroom.

Pei Shan, the fourth daughter, was playing around when she accidentally threw a handkerchief against our tutor’s back.

Annoyed, he grew angrier when no one admitted it. He stopped the lesson and questioned us one by one, determined to find the culprit and punish her.

Pei Shan kept shooting me frantic looks.

She was the youngest of the Pei daughters. Her father had died before she was born, and she had never seen him. The old matriarch and Lady Pei indulged her especially.

I didn’t dare offend her. I stood up and took the blame.

But a spring breeze pushed the window half open. Beyond a crabapple tree, Pei Yan saw everything.

That was my first encounter with the head of the household, a man barely into his twenties.

He entered the schoolroom slowly. Without exposing what had happened, he admonished us in a cold voice.

We must not let our love of play lead us to disrespect our teacher.

Still less should we curry favor, using pleasing words to ingratiate ourselves.

The first warning was for his own sister.

The second was for me.

Had the matriarch and Lady Pei not intervened afterward, I might always have kept a respectful distance, afraid of making him dislike me even more.

“Yan may seem cold, and he is particular about propriety, but he has a warm heart.”

“He spoke harshly that day, but he spared your dignity by not revealing the truth, didn’t he? If you were a stranger, he might not even have bothered to look.”

“It’s been so rainy lately. He worried that you girls would catch a chill while studying, so he told the kitchen to send a bowl of ginger soup to each courtyard every day. Knowing you dislike ginger, he specifically asked them to add brown sugar and tangerine peel to mask the taste.”

Since my arrival, both elders had treated me with great affection.

I never doubted them. Only one thing puzzled me.

How did Pei Yan know I disliked ginger?

I remembered the deep, searching looks he often gave me at family meals, and my cheeks grew warm.

The matriarch had told me that the Pei family in the capital did not insist on marriages between households of equal standing.

If two people loved each other, and a girl had good character and looks, there was nothing unusual about marrying her properly as the wife of the family head.

Both women’s eyes had been full of hope and encouragement.

But now I no longer wanted to bear that burden.

Nor could I.

Rain fell again after nightfall on the day of the spring banquet.

I sat by the window with a cushion in my arms. Chunxin should have been resting in the room next door, but I saw her hurry past in waterproof boots, bound for somewhere I didn’t know.

She had neither lantern nor umbrella.

She’d only recently recovered from a chill. If she caught another, she would suffer for it.

I put on a coat, took an umbrella, and followed her all the way to Wutong Courtyard, where the matriarch lived.

No one was on guard. Chunxin entered easily.

And through a partly open window, I, following behind, heard the people inside just as easily.

Candlelight flickered.

The familiar voice had lost its usual kindness. It was full of disappointment and disgust.

“Yan was so merciless today. I don’t think he has any feeling for Shenbi at all. And I thought the girl might be useful.”

“If that’s the case, there’s no need to send your mistress things in the master’s name anymore.”

“If Shenbi still wants to approach Yan, tell her to give up the idea. She must stop disturbing his peace.”

“A girl ought to have some self-respect.”

Spring thunder drowned out the quiet voices inside.

It also drowned out the sound of an oilpaper umbrella falling to the ground.

On one side, a modest gentleman who wanted neither marriage nor women.

On the other, loving elders who had gone to great lengths to awaken their grandson to romance.

And me?

What, exactly, did that make me?

Spring blossoms covered the ground, sinking into cold mud beneath the rain.

By morning, there would be nothing left for them but to be swept into the gutter.

I returned to my room and took out paper to write home.

The lingering spring cold made my writing hand shake.

“Brother, I’m doing very well at the Pei residence. I just miss home a little.”

“Life in the army is so hard, and your term of service is nearly over. Please don’t risk your life for more glory on the battlefield. Let’s go back to Zhao Commandery together, shall we?”

We belonged to an impoverished branch of the Li clan of Zhao Commandery.

After our parents died in an epidemic, our clansmen reclaimed more than half our land and left my brother and me struggling to survive.

My brother resolved to enlist. Having heard of the capital’s Pei family’s upright traditions and distinguished reputation, he hoped they would look after me.

“When Father was young, he traveled to study with the late head of the Pei household. He even saved his life. Our families have intermarried for generations. They won’t mistreat you.”

“Once I’ve made a name for myself, I’ll come and take my little sister home!”

But blades on a battlefield did not spare anyone, and military honors were hardly easy to win.

My brother had spent three years on the frontier. Not a word had reached the capital of any descendant of the Li clan distinguishing himself in the army.

By comparison, the examination for female palace officials was not especially difficult.

Yet I’d sat it for three years and never found my name on any list of successful candidates.

The imperial post stations carried only official dispatches and military intelligence.

To send a letter home, one had to find another way. It cost dearly, and nine letters out of ten went astray.

I tucked my letter inside the mechanical bird my mother had left me.

Once I’d saved a little more silver, I would find the most reliable messenger I could.

One day, I returned from lessons as usual to find Chunxin running toward me with the bird in her arms.

“My lady! I was tidying your desk today. I must have touched something on this bird, because it suddenly spread its wings and flew away!”

“It’s only just come back. It frightened me half to death!”

The bird was intact.

The letter inside its belly had vanished.

I didn’t scold Chunxin. I only said softly, “You needn’t attend to my room anymore.”

Since Hedong, she had been the only maid by my side.

Exposing what had happened and replacing her with another maid would not improve my position.

She lowered her eyes and asked cautiously, “Then… what about the red-bean soup?”

“A servant from the main courtyard said the master has been working on dispatches late into the night…”

“No more of that either.”

I took out the things I’d been given in Pei Yan’s name and told Chunxin to sell them.

That night, I set a little stove in my room and cooked red-bean soup again.

The beans had soaked for a long time. I mashed them as they cooked.

They were soft and smooth on my tongue, sweet with a faint fragrance of brown sugar.

Brown sugar was expensive. Ordinarily, I couldn’t bear to use it.

Only when making soup for the main courtyard did I add six spoonfuls, measured with a silver spoon. Pei Yan liked sweet things.

What a waste.

I supposed all those bowls I’d sent him had been poured away.

I sipped my soup slowly.

I had no idea that, a few dozen feet away in the main courtyard, someone else was thinking about it too.

“The master used to give us all the sachets and pouches the cousin sent without even looking at them. He only kept the red-bean soup and drank a little. Why hasn’t she sent any lately?”

“Idiot! Didn’t he say it was ‘just about drinkable’? How much could he have liked it? Now she’s stopped, we finally have some peace.”

A roll of documents hit the desk with a thud.

The whispers beneath the corridor fell silent.

Pei Yan’s face was dark.

He ought to feel at peace.

Since the spring banquet, rain had fallen without end. With no one to disturb him, he had all the time he needed to watch the wind, listen to the rain, warm his wine, and brew tea.

Yet those foolish servants kept bringing up the cousin.

Until even the wind sounded noisy.

Even the rain had become a clamor.