Chapter 2

Xie Linyuan coughed softly. Father lowered his head over his tea. Even the steward at the door turned toward a veranda pillar.

Qi Zhaoye stared, then laughed.

“Into what?”

“Knee warmers and a hand muff. The remaining fabric made Mother a neck warmer.”

“As long as it wasn't wasted.”

My sister entered just in time to hear that. She looked from Qi Zhaoye to me, a very familiar light appearing in her eyes.

The look she wore whenever she discovered something interesting.

I immediately returned to business.

“Where did this wooden tag come from?”

His smile vanished.

“A carriage firm in the west of the city. Someone hired an old cart that once carried lacquered furniture and used it to move grain from Futai's rear warehouse at night. Afraid of being implicated, the driver threw away the numbered tag. I found it by following the wheel tracks.”

The firm's mark was stamped on its back. Accounts, grain samples, cart tag: at last, the three leads connected.

But to prove Pei Zhiyan knew, we still needed his written order or evidence of payments.

Xie Linyuan proposed tracing the missing accountant.

Qi Zhaoye looked at me instead.

“You know accounts, Second Miss Wen. Where would someone usually hide a transaction?”

Turning the tag over, I noticed a little green wax in the crack.

Futai sealed its books with red wax. The Pei private treasury used green. I happened to know because I had once checked the Duke of Anguo's estate rents.

“We needn't find the man first,” I said. “Investigate the heir's private treasury.”

Qi Zhaoye immediately wrapped the tag in a handkerchief.

His movements were so decisive that it seemed he had taken charge not of a broken piece of wood, but of the idea I had just voiced.

6.

Searching the Duke of Anguo's heir's private treasury required evidence.

Xie Linyuan went to the palace for authorization. Qi Zhaoye returned to guard the riverside granary.

I stayed home copying the evidence inventory. My sister sat beside me, grinding ink.

She ground it for a long time. The ink grew darker, but not one word appeared on her paper.

“If you have something to say, say it.”

She propped her chin on her hand.

“What do you think of Qi Zhaoye?”

My brush stopped. I looked up.

How the tables turned. Only days ago, I had asked her about Xie Linyuan.

“Good-looking.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“What else?”

“He finds cart tags and listens to accountants.”

“Are you choosing a husband or a constable?”

We laughed together.

Then she fell quiet and put down the ink stick.

“Yanning, lately you avoid Linyuan's eyes whenever you see him.”

I had not expected her to notice.

My sister was not suspicious by nature. She simply never treated the people she cared for as ornaments. She noticed when their expressions changed.

I could invent an excuse. But that would only send her imagination somewhere worse.

So I laid down my brush.

“At first, I thought him very good. I liked him a little.”

Her fingers tightened.

“And then?”

“Then I found that when he looked at you, he was more earnest than when he examined accounts.” I smiled. “I've put those feelings away. It has nothing to do with you. You owe me nothing. If you truly like each other, go on.”

Her eyes reddened as she watched me.

I hurriedly offered a handkerchief.

“Don't cry. Walk out in tears, and people will think I've bullied you.”

She did not take it. She came around the desk and held me.

Her crabapple scent overcame the ink. She hugged me tightly, as she had sat beside my bed when I had a fever as a child, afraid that if she let go I would burn to ash.

“I didn't know.” Her voice caught.

“Of course not. I hid it so well.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Like eating one sour cherry for far too long.”

She released me, her nose red.

“From now on, you can have everything sweet.”

“Please don't. My future brother-in-law might object.”

She raised a hand. I grabbed my ledger and ran around the desk.

Mother entered to find one daughter holding up an ink stick and the other circling the table with a book, ink splattered all over the floor.

She watched a moment, then asked only, “Talked it through?”

We stopped together.

“You knew all along?”

She wiped the table.

“One suddenly wanted to ask about the prince all the time. The other suddenly stopped. I gave birth to both of you. How long did you think you could hide it?”

“Weren't you afraid we'd resent each other?” my sister asked quietly.

“If you truly did, I'd intervene. You've talked it through yourselves. Why should I interfere?” Mother tossed the cloth into a basin. “Liking someone isn't wrong. Hiding things and hurting each other is.”

Looking at the spreading ink on the paper, I felt the last sourness dissolve.

That night, I copied the inventory again.

Qi Zhaoye came for it the next morning. Seeing ink on my fingertips, he offered a small porcelain pot.

“Soap-pod paste. Takes ink off quickly.”

I accepted it.

“How did you know I'd have ink on my hands?”

“Whenever you hand over a ledger, there's some on your left forefinger.”

I looked down at the pot.

Someone remembered my sister's love of crabapple. Someone else noticed the ink on my fingers.

I tucked it into my sleeve. The ink remained, but the porcelain was already warm.

7.

The Duke of Anguo's private treasury was opened.

In a chest sealed with green wax, investigators found receipts from the carriage firm and two bank drafts. Pei Zhiyan still protested his innocence. A trusted attendant held the key, he said. He knew nothing.

The attendant immediately knelt and confessed.

Too quickly, as though he had learned his lines.

Checking the drafts, I found that they had been exchanged during the days Pei Zhiyan took his wife to visit her family. He might well have chosen a time when he was away from the capital and let his attendant act for him.

The evidence proved his treasury had paid. It did not necessarily prove he had given the order.

At home, I shut myself in the accounts room for half a day.

Qi Zhaoye waited on the steps outside, sending in hot tea at intervals.

When the third cup arrived, I opened the door.

“General Qi, shouldn't you be back at camp?”

“I'm off duty.”

“And spending your leave at my door?”

“Xie Linyuan told me to protect the accounts.”

I looked toward the courtyard gate.

Two guards from the prince's household stood straight as posts. They could have protected ten ledgers.

Following my gaze, he was silent a moment.

“I wanted to come too.”

He spoke so directly that I could find no way around it.

I sat at the other end of the steps.

“Then help me think. How would a man who cares about appearances order his attendant to do something wrong without leaving his handwriting?”

“Tell him in person.”

“The attendant is willing to confess. His testimony would cover for his master.”

“A private signal known only to the two of them.”

I turned sharply.

Every month, Futai sent household-expense accounts to the Duke of Anguo's residence. Pei Zhiyan never wrote his approval. He stamped a small crane in the corner of approved pages. The manager acted on the mark. Outsiders took it for the accounting office's certification.

If the grain-transfer slips bore that crane—

I rose so fast my skirt caught on my shoe. Qi Zhaoye steadied my elbow, releasing it once I had my balance.

“Where?”

“Futai.”

“I'll get the horses.”

When we arrived, the manager was burning old books.

Smoke drifted from the rear window. Qi Zhaoye kicked open the door and overturned the brazier. I rushed to the desk and snatched the accounts. Sparks scorched half a page. The manager turned to run, but soldiers waiting at the lane caught him.

In the lower right corner of a surviving transfer slip was half a crane in flight.

The manager went pale.

I pressed a wet handkerchief over the burning corner. The back of my hand reddened with a burn. Qi Zhaoye frowned and took out medicine.

“Seal the evidence first,” I said.

“The soldiers are doing it.”

“Then question the manager.”

“The prince's men are on their way.”

He spread medicine on gauze and handed it to me.

“Now your hand.”

I accepted it and laughed.

“You arrange everything thoroughly, General.”

“On a battlefield, if you only charge ahead and ignore your wounds, you won't be able to hold a blade afterward.”

“I'm not on a battlefield.”

He looked at the surviving accounts in my arms.

“What you won today is more useful than a blade.”

Then he bent to help a soldier tie the evidence bag, his tone unchanged from his report about the cart tag.

After bandaging my hand, I met his eyes without looking away for the first time.

That night, once the surviving pages were sealed at Prince Duan's residence, Futai sent someone to us.

The visitor was the manager's brother-in-law, claiming to bring an apology from his sister. He carried in two chests. Inside lay neatly stacked silver ingots and a deed to a house in Jiangnan.

Our steward refused them. The man knelt outside and shouted that if the Wen family treated the surviving accounts as nothing but ordinary losses, Futai would give me twenty percent of its annual profits.

He had chosen his target carefully.

Everyone in the capital knew I liked picking up things my sister did not want. He thought I would take any bargain.

I had the servants carry the silver to the screen at the main entrance, then invited stewards from two neighboring households to witness it. Seeing me, the man shuffled forward on his knees.

“Second Miss Wen, the heir only lost his head for a moment. One nod from you, and the house and silver are yours.”

“You say the heir sent you?”

His face stiffened.

“I never said that.”

“The whole street just heard you.”

I had the accountants weigh each ingot and copy its bank mark, then seal the deed in the chest. Thinking I had accepted, he thanked me repeatedly and rose to leave.

My sister tossed a stool out of the doorway, neatly blocking his feet.

“What's the hurry? My sister hasn't written your receipt.”

He stumbled to a halt.

I had the accountants record his name, the time, the silver's weight, and everything he had said in the street. The neighboring stewards signed. Then I handed the chests and receipt to officers from the Capital Prefecture.

“I do like picking things up,” I told him. “Evidence of bribery delivered to the door would be a pity to leave.”

The onlookers laughed. He turned and saw the pen in a neighboring steward's hand. His delight vanished.

After he was taken away, my sister crouched by a chest and tapped the lid.

“All this silver. Truly no temptation?”

“Some.”

She stared.

“Being tempted doesn't mean I can take it. Imagine how many false entries I'd have to make to cover it up. I'd never sleep.”

She folded her arms and nodded.

“That sounds like you.”

The next day, tracing the bank marks, the Capital Prefecture discovered that the silver had been withdrawn the previous night from a private banking house on East Street belonging to the Duke of Anguo's household. The withdrawal used the Futai manager's calling card, but the guarantee bore the same crane seal.

Pei Zhiyan meant to buy silence over the surviving pages. Instead, he supplied another piece of evidence.

When Qi Zhaoye heard, he brought a bag of roasted chestnuts.

“Why these?”

“You can't accept silver. Chestnuts should be all right.”

I peeled one. Steam rose from the split shell.

“What if I refuse these too?”

He considered it seriously.

“I'll take them back to camp and eat them.”

“You can take back a gift?”

“If you don't like it, leaving it here only takes up space.”

I hugged the bag.

“Who said I didn't like it?”

He smiled and sat beneath the veranda to help sort the copied bank marks. One peeled chestnuts, the other arranged papers by year. In an hour, with barely a few words, the tangle of evidence became orderly bundles.

My sister peeked around the carved doorway and quickly withdrew.

Soon, her maid brought sweet cherries, the roundest on top.

I sent half back.

She gave me things she did not want, and things she loved best too. I kept half and put the roundest cherry back on her plate. While outsiders stared at our gift-filled storeroom and speculated, we had already divided these cherries across a carved doorway.

8.

The recovered pages frightened Pei Zhiyan.

He dared not stir up more rumors of sisters competing for affection, so he tried something else. The Wen warehouses had stored spoiled grain. Perhaps we had switched it. Futai's manager changed his statement too, insisting our accountants forged the crane seal.

This time, the accusations struck directly at Father.

A crowd gathered outside: grain merchants awaiting news and relatives of flood victims from the capital's outskirts. Father ordered the gates opened wide. He did not hide.

My sister brought a long table.

I laid out the original warehouse accounts, rental records, and seal samples from successive years.

Xie Linyuan stood inside without speaking for us. Using his princely rank now would only give people more reason to accuse him of favoritism.

Qi Zhaoye brought three witnesses: the old warehouse steward, the carriage-firm owner, and a craftsman who cut seals for Futai.

I compared the records in public without a wasted word.

The spoiled grain's incoming weight, outgoing weight, and losses were all recorded. Futai had acknowledged receipt with a square seal.

The crane on the surviving pages was cut by another craftsman. Its ink contained gold powder, a formula used by the Duke of Anguo's household. Three years separated the two seals. Each had a clear provenance.

The seal cutter also remembered altering the crane's tail at Pei Zhiyan's request six months earlier.

The surviving page bore the altered tail.

The crowd gradually quieted.

Pei Zhiyan pushed through the gate and pointed at me.

“An unmarried girl showing herself in public to discuss this! Who knows whether Prince Duan's people taught you what to say?”

I pushed the original ledger forward.

“These accounts have been in our keeping for three years. His Highness first visited half a month ago. If he taught me to write them three years in advance, he should be telling fortunes at the Imperial Astronomy Bureau, not being a prince.”

Someone laughed.

Before Pei Zhiyan could speak again, my sister stepped forward.

“You say my sister cannot examine accounts without the prince teaching her. You also say the Wen family could switch relief grain. In your version, she's both helpless and capable of anything. Choose one story to stand on first.”

His face reddened. He had no answer.

Xie Linyuan produced the palace's inspection authorization and ordered all evidence sealed. Qi Zhaoye took the Futai manager away. The man still protested, but when he saw that the seal cutter had been summoned too, his knees weakened. He confessed everything: Pei Zhiyan promised to make good his shortfall and told him to mix years-old spoiled grain into the relief supplies.

Once the crowd dispersed, my legs felt numb. I leaned on the table.

My sister hurried over.

“Standing too long?”

Xie Linyuan stepped forward too, then checked himself.

Qi Zhaoye asked nothing. He brought a chair and put it behind me.

For a moment, none of us spoke.

I sat and suddenly found the scene very funny.

“Sister, Your Highness, go and check the documents. General Qi can stay to help me put away the accounts.”

My sister raised an eyebrow.