Chapter 4

I drew my hand back and said only that I still had a business to run. I had come today to sell lip rouge, not settle my marriage.

The empress looked startled at first, then covered her lips and laughed.

“This girl is more interesting than those reciting poetry on the stage.”

Gu Mingzhu could not help pushing forward.

“Your Highness, she's only a merchant's daughter. She knows nothing of etiquette, and her music, chess, poetry, and painting are nothing worth mentioning.”

The Crown Prince did not even look at her. He simply asked me how many boxes I had sold.

I told him honestly.

He turned to the empress.

“Persuading more than a hundred people to part willingly with their money in half a day is harder than reciting a poem everyone knows.”

Now the laughter was directed at Gu Mingzhu.

Scarlet-faced, she could only retreat.

Back at home, Grandmother was so delighted she wanted my measurements taken for wedding clothes at once.

Mother, however, asked me first.

“Is this what you want?”

I said I had only met the Crown Prince once. It was too early to discuss marriage.

The next day, he sent over the deed to a shop.

It was a newly opened property in the south of the city, ideal for selling my cosmetics.

I returned it untouched, along with a note estimating its rental value. The gift was too costly, I told him.

On the third day, he came to the shop himself and joined the queue.

He bought ten boxes of lip rouge with his own silver and seriously asked which colors suited which skin tones.

Several girls ahead of him recognized him, and the queue immediately broke into confusion.

But he told his guards to stand back and stayed where he was, waiting.

When his turn came, the manager deliberately asked the same question he would ask any ordinary customer.

“For yourself, or as a gift?”

The Crown Prince answered without the slightest embarrassment.

“For the female officials on daily duty in the palace. The colors should be understated, and the rouge mustn't dry their lips.”

I had an assistant bring out three samples.

He did not pretend to know more than he did. He carefully noted how to use each one and asked whether they could be exchanged if someone found them unsuitable.

It was far more trouble than giving me an entire shop. But it showed me that he was not the sort to use his rank to force others.

The assistants were trying so hard not to laugh that their shoulders shook.

I had no choice but to go downstairs and attend to our most conspicuous customer.

He gave the lip rouge to the palace's female officials and admitted he had been wrong to send yesterday's gift without asking what I wanted.

“Then what would Your Highness like to ask today?”

“Whether Shopkeeper Gu would be willing to let me try again.”

I looked at him.

At least he listened better than the Gu family, who cared about nothing but faces.

…

In those three days, he had never used his status to pressure me.

His remark at the beauty contest had not become an imperial edict forcing me to accept.

On the fourth day, I agreed that we could get to know each other first.

If we were not suited, the marriage would be called off.

The Crown Prince smiled like a child given sweets and immediately said we would do everything my way.

When the news spread, Grandmother held a feast.

Gu Mingzhu stayed away, claiming illness.

On the night before our betrothal, she brought wine to my room.

“After my mother died, there was no one left to love me. I was frightened. That's why I kept competing with you, Sister.”

Her eyes were red.

It was the first time she had ever called me Sister to my face.

I looked at the tiny bubbles on the wine's surface and still reached out to take the cup.

When Gu Mingzhu saw me drink, her shoulders visibly relaxed.

She said she wanted to comb my hair, just this once.

I sent the maids outside.

The door closed.

The drug quickly spread through my limbs.

I leaned against the dressing table, unable to lift so much as a finger.

Gu Mingzhu wiped away her tears.

Only the resentment she had suppressed for years remained on her face.

“What right did you have to steal everything from me the moment you were born?”

“The inheritance. Grandmother's love. The Gu family's shop. And now even the Crown Prince has chosen you.”

She bent over me, her shrill voice trembling.

“Once I ruin that face, His Highness will know who deserves to stand beside him.”

I asked what she had put in the wine.

She smiled. Only something to take away my strength, she said. It would not kill me.

By the time I woke, someone else would be taking my place in the marriage.

Gu Mingzhu drew a dagger from her sleeve.

The blade flashed in the lamplight and came straight toward my face.

I did not close my eyes.

I only counted silently to three.

The window suddenly burst open.

A concealed weapon struck the back of her hand.

The dagger veered aside. A moment later, someone rushed in and stopped it.

The point halted beside my cheek, unable to move any farther.

9.

The Crown Prince seized her wrist.

The dagger fell to the floor.

The guards outside immediately poured in.

Gu Mingzhu dropped to her knees in pain but still raised her head and shouted at him.

“She's only a scheming merchant girl! I'd make a better Crown Princess than her!”

The Crown Prince looked coldly at her.

“You think you could take her place? You have quite the imagination.”

Still leaning against the chair, with the drug not yet worn off, I first asked him whether he had been having me watched all along.

He brought an antidote to my lips. The tips of his ears had actually turned a little red.

“I was only afraid someone in your family might still want to hurt you.”

I drank the antidote and deliberately teased him.

“People in love are all the same. Wherever I go, there you are.”

At those words, another gleam of deluded hope sprang into Gu Mingzhu's eyes.

She said that if my face really were disfigured, sooner or later the Crown Prince would choose her instead.

He looked as though he had heard a joke.

He ordered the guards to hold her, then asked me what I wanted done.

I crouched in front of Gu Mingzhu.

“Grandmother and Father won't be coming to save you tonight.”

She did not yet know that officers had entered the Gu family's storeroom.

Her expression changed at once.

Had I planned everything long ago?

From the start, the Crown Prince and I had been working together.

He needed the Gu family's real accounts.

Mother and I needed new identities that would let us leave the family.

All the Gu family's ledgers had already been taken to the imperial treasury.

Several secret account books recorded years of tax evasion and bribes paid to officials.

Our meeting at the beauty contest had not been chance.

Orders at the shop let me reach the women of various official households. They also helped the Crown Prince confirm where the money recorded in the books had gone.

Every year, the Gu family wrote off part of its merchandise as losses. But through purchase vouchers from several friendly households, the silver returned to the family's private coffers.

When Mother took charge of the accounts, she found that the numbers did not add up.

She made no fuss. She quietly copied the old ledgers, year by year.

I used the delivery of samples to confirm who had received the goods.

Then the Crown Prince's people checked those details against the records in the local treasury.

The most important ledger of evidence was hidden in a partition wall in Grandmother's Buddhist hall.

Father had always kept the key.

Tonight, the whole Gu household was busy preparing for my marriage. It was the moment they were least on their guard.

When the officers followed our directions and retrieved the ledger, Father still thought he could settle matters by paying back the silver.

Only when he saw several officials who had taken bribes being led away too did he understand. This was no longer something the family could deal with behind closed doors.

In return, the Crown Prince would have the Gu family investigated and dealt with according to the law, recovering all the money owed.

Then he would provide Mother and me with a new household registration, entirely separate from the Gu family, and a shop free of their wrongdoing where we could do business.

Gu Mingzhu's voice shook.

“So when His Highness said he wanted you as Crown Princess, that was only an act for Grandmother?”

The Crown Prince did not answer.

He merely drew my outer robe back up where it had slipped from my shoulder.

“Whether it's a partnership or a marriage, at least His Highness asks what I want.”

I looked at her.

“And you? Before I was even born, you were willing to trade Mother's life and mine for your own advantage.”

An officer soon came to report.

Grandmother and Father had been taken away for questioning.

Gu Mingzhu collapsed to the floor and cursed me as ungrateful. The family had given me the best of everything all these years, she said.

“How can you be so cruel?”

I laughed.

I reminded her that all those supposedly good things had only appeared after they saw I was pretty.

If I really had been as ugly as the fortune-teller claimed, a tub of rotten rice paste and a maddened horse would have sent Mother to her grave long ago.

I would never have lived to see this day either.

“Mother and I recorded that debt at the riding grounds.”

“A few boxes of jewels won't wipe out an attempt on our lives.”

She said all the wrongdoing had been her mother's. It had nothing to do with her.

I looked at the dagger on the floor.

“Did she send you that dagger from prison too?”

Gu Mingzhu had no answer.

I had never meant to touch her face.

If she had left the Gu family quietly, she could still have taken her own dowry and lived her life.

But she had deliberately chosen tonight to bring me the same malice as all those years ago.

I had someone fetch a small porcelain bottle.

Then I told the guards, “Let her try the medicine Concubine Qiao used back then.”

Mother had kept some of the original powder all these years.

I had asked a doctor to alter its effects.

It would not kill. But it would cover the skin in ugly dark blotches.

Gu Mingzhu struggled desperately.

The Crown Prince did not plead for her.

She was forced to swallow the medicine.

On her knees, she retched.

Before long, she fainted.

When she woke early the next morning, her face itched unbearably.

She staggered over to the water jar in the courtyard.

The surface reflected a face covered in black spots and raised moles.

The moment she touched it, more red blotches sprang up beside her fingers.

Gu Mingzhu stared into the water jar and screamed.

Her scream carried through more than half the Gu residence.

By then, Mother and I had changed out of our Gu household clothes and boarded a carriage at the side gate.

Outside the city gates, I took Mother's hand.

She looked back at the city wall, then never looked toward the Gu family again.

Hand in hand, we left the city.

The carriage was packed with our luggage.

The distant mountains came into Mother's view.

As she looked toward them, the smile on her face finally became completely unguarded.

“We're free.”

The End