Chapter 3

"Even if the banking houses are yours, that's still my parents' money!"

I laughed.

"I made my first investment at twelve, with twenty taels earned copying accounts for a bookseller."

"If the Gu family's food is valuable enough to produce twelve banking houses, you've eaten plenty of millet porridge these past few days. Why not open one and show me?"

"The receipt is genuine. The money is mine."

"If Lord Liang still has doubts, perhaps we should examine his accounts too."

Censor Liang's expression changed.

I recited a date.

"On the seventeenth of last month, you borrowed forty thousand taels from the Guangyuan branch. You said it was to redeem a young woman from Lixiang House."

"Your personal seal is on the loan agreement. Since Madam Liang is here, she might like to see it."

She was sitting right there at the banquet.

Her eyes rolled back, and she fainted. Those beside her hurriedly caught her.

Liang retreated half a step.

"You're slandering an official of the court!"

"The agreement was drawn up in triplicate. You took one copy. The bank kept two."

"If you dare tell Her Highness that your own seal is forged too, I'll have it brought here at once."

The Grand Princess put down her teacup heavily.

"Investigate Censor Liang's private debt first. Then examine his false accusation against Chief Grand Secretary Gu."

"Take him away!"

As the guards escorted him out, he kept protesting his innocence.

Once Madam Liang recovered, she followed him out of the garden, cursing all the way.

The Grand Princess turned to Suyin.

"You sneaked into your adoptive sister's room to take a receipt, then used it alone to accuse your birth father of embezzlement."

"If the Gus can't teach you, I will."

She ordered twenty slaps, then had Suyin expelled from the banquet.

Mother wept beside me, but didn't plead for her.

Dragged to the garden gate with swollen cheeks, Suyin turned back toward me.

Her gaze was as vicious as ever.

I knew it wasn't over.

Before the banquet ended, the Grand Princess returned my receipt and asked whether Fengtai could settle a relief-grain payment for the court.

"Yes. But every item must be openly accounted for."

"Who receives the money, who transports it, who signs for delivery—there must be documents for everything."

She looked at me.

"The whole capital says you recognize only silver."

"Only by accounting for the silver can we know whether the grain really reaches the refugees' cooking pots."

She laughed and said no more about which Gu daughter was true or false.

Mother held my hand all the way home, only releasing it when the carriage stopped at our gates.

She asked quietly,

"All twelve banking houses are yours. Why hide it even from me?"

"What good would telling you do?"

"Father would tell me to earn less. Eldest Brother would borrow for every poor scholar under heaven. Second Brother would borrow for the entire army."

"In the end, you wouldn't keep even your last piece of jewelry."

I'd struck home. She wiped her eyes and laughed.

"But if Manager Zhao had arrived one moment later today, you'd have been taken away."

"He's at the main house every morning during the hour of the Dragon. If I dared show the token, naturally I'd calculated how quickly he could run there."

That didn't reassure her.

After we returned, she carefully kept the torn piece of my skirt. The next day, she personally found an embroiderer who mended it into a lotus leaf resting on water.

Suyin knelt in the front hall to apologize.

"Father, I was only worried Sister might stray down the wrong path. I was foolish for a moment."

"I've just come home and don't understand the capital's rules. Please give me another chance."

Father sat in his old armchair, his voice weary.

"If you were truly worried about her, the first thing to do was ask where the receipt came from."

"You searched her belongings and destroyed her reputation and mine in public. Even now, you're blaming it on not understanding the rules."

He sent her to the ancestral hall to copy the family precepts. Without permission, she couldn't leave the courtyard.

That night, as I checked accounts in the study, Xingyu brought hot soup.

"Second Miss smashed two teacups after she returned. She says all the poverty here is an act."

"Let her smash them."

"The kitchen discarded that coarse pottery last year. Ten pieces wouldn't fetch a copper."

I opened another old ledger.

It recorded Father's salary, rewards, and borrowings through the years. When embankments broke, he'd paid for materials. When frontier rations were cut, he'd borrowed from old friends to send grain to the camps.

Eldest Brother's salary went to an academy for poor scholars. Second Brother's rewards helped the families of wounded soldiers who'd died.

Outsiders saw only our poverty.

I knew where the money had gone.

One page was wrinkled by water.

That year, the eastern embankment had burst. Father had rushed to the disaster area through the night, handing the last three hundred taels in the house to the works supervisor before leaving.

Mother had then sold her jade bracelets and sent medicine.

Two months later, he came home with worn-through soles.

His first question was whether my girls' school tuition had been paid on time.

Another entry concerned Second Brother's letter when he'd first reached the frontier.

The camp lacked padded coats. Afraid the commander would suppress the matter, he hadn't dared report the actual figures to the court. He'd only asked the family to gather five hundred taels for immediate relief.

Father had borrowed from all his old friends and was still short by half.

I'd just taken over my second pawnshop then. I mortgaged it to cover the difference.

No one repaid me afterward.

Second Brother never forgot.

Whenever he returned to the capital, he sent me the camp's casualty list first. He knew I'd set aside money for families with nowhere else to turn.

Since twelve, I'd fought desperately to earn money because I feared that one day they'd want to save someone and have not even a handful of rice.

Only in my hands could the silver withstand their endless giving.

Suyin stayed quiet for a few days.

On the fifth afternoon, Xingyu ran in from the eastern courtyard.

"My lady, someone from my hometown saw Second Miss pay a scullery maid, then steal an old personal seal of yours."

"She's left the residence and gone south!"

"What does she want with the seal?"

"To borrow six hundred thousand taels from Qinglang, she says. For a dowry to marry the Earl of Yongning's heir."

My brush stopped.

That heir was buried in gambling debts. The year before last, he'd beaten a maid in his rooms badly enough to cause serious injuries.

For the hollow title of an earl's lady, Suyin dared gamble six hundred thousand taels.

"What did Qinglang accept as her proof?"

"Your old seal and her own thumbprint."

I laughed.

That seal was a scrap of wood I'd discarded while learning to carve. Three years ago, my banking houses had registered the official impression. No one could withdraw a copper with that reject.

As it happened, Qinglang was also an underground gambling house I'd established to deal with gamblers who defaulted.

I had Xingyu pass on a message.

"Go to collect tomorrow morning. Make a proper show of it."

"Recognize only the loan agreement and thumbprint. Don't touch a single brick of the Gu residence."

At dawn, thunderous pounding shook our gates.

More than a dozen men in blue blocked the entrance. Their leader, Scar Han, pasted the loan agreement on the stone lion's head.

"Second Miss Gu! Six hundred thousand taels, at thirty percent monthly interest."

"If you don't repay today, we'll proceed according to the agreement."

Neighbors quickly gathered.

Father and Mother hurried out. A matron brought Suyin from the ancestral hall.

At the sight of Scar Han, she immediately turned to retreat.

He didn't let his men cross the threshold.

He read out the full agreement: the date, interest, and Suyin's own claim that she was about to marry into the earl's household.

The Yongning steward happened to be there, at my invitation.

Hearing the engagement mentioned, he spoke from outside the crowd.

"Our heir did meet Second Miss Gu at a restaurant, but we have never proposed."

"She said that if she could prepare a six-hundred-thousand-tael dowry, she'd find a way to make him agree. Those weren't our household's words."

The last color left her face.

She'd intended to borrow on the Gus' reputation, then use the money to force the earl's household to accept her.

Deceiving both sides, she'd only been waiting to see which would bite first.

Father called her.

"Is this your loan agreement?"

She fell to her knees, crying.

"Father, I did it all for our family."

"The heir agreed to marry me. Once I enter that household, we'll have a powerful marriage alliance."

"I borrowed for a dowry so they wouldn't look down on us."

Mother was so angry she had to brace herself against the doorframe.

"That man gambles and beats people. You'd wager the whole family's lives on this marriage?"

Suyin pointed at me.

"The seal belongs to Gu Yingqiu. She should repay the money!"

"She's filthy rich, yet won't give me a copper for my dowry. What else could I do?"

I stepped down, the real seal in my palm.

"What you stole was a discarded scrap of wood. Every Fengtai house registered the official impression three years ago."

"But the thumbprint on that agreement is yours."

Scar Han nodded.

"Qinglang recognizes the borrower's own thumbprint."

"Whether Miss Gu's seal is genuine has nothing to do with this debt."

Suyin crawled to Father and clung to his leg.

"You have influence at court. How hard can it be to order the officers to drive them off?"

"If there's really no other way, sell this house. We can move!"

He jerked his leg away.

"This residence was bestowed by the Emperor. You dare use it to pay for your dowry debt!"

He ordered the steward to bring the instrument of family punishment.

Suyin suddenly sprang up.

"You all favor the adopted daughter! Does anyone treat me as their own?"

"If the Gus don't want me, I won't acknowledge them either!"

She pushed through the crowd and fled.

Scar Han looked at me.

I inclined my head toward the end of the lane. He immediately led his men after her at a distance, neither approaching nor stopping her.

Mother wanted to follow. I held her back.

"In her eyes, we owe her nothing but wealth and status. Chasing her won't make her listen."

Father watched the agreement flutter in the wind. He had the steward disperse the crowd, then personally apologized to Yongning's steward.

Scar Han sheathed his blade, but didn't tear up the agreement.

"Proprietor, if she truly has no money, what happens to the debt?"

"Not a copper has been disbursed. The agreement is only bait."

"Once she finds the person she wants to find, cancel it."

He rolled it up, then raised an empty purse for the onlookers.

"Look clearly, everyone. Qinglang hasn't paid out one copper. The Gus haven't mortgaged one brick."

"We came today only to establish whose thumbprint it was."

That evening, word reached the study.

Suyin had entered Censor Liang's old residence. Though suspended pending investigation, his faction was still pulling strings everywhere. They needed a knife to aim at the Gu family.

I laid several deliberately aged letters on Father's desk.

"Father, if Suyin comes back to steal something tomorrow, don't stop her."

He read them, his brow tightening.

"Letting her take a forged letter to the enemy bearing my old seal is too dangerous."

"If His Majesty believes the evidence first, we won't live long enough for your explanation."

"Liang's faction tampered with river-works funds and cut the frontier troops' winter coats."

"The real ledgers and drafts they used to send silver to the Northern Territories are in my hands."

"If we take only Censor Liang, they'll cut him off to save themselves. Only when they think they hold fatal proof against us will they all show themselves."

Father was silent for a long time.

Then he put the letters back.

"How sure are you?"

"Where there are accounts, there are people."

"I'll be waiting outside the palace gates tomorrow."

His fingers rested on the letters.

"For years, I told you not to taint yourself with money. In the end, every time our family survived a crisis, we relied on your accounts."

I pushed warm tea toward him.

"You save your people. I protect my capital. The two don't conflict."

The next morning at court, Cao Jingxian, Vice Minister of Justice, was first to step forward and impeach Father for embezzling river-works funds and secretly colluding with the Northern Territories.

The Emperor's face darkened.

He demanded evidence.