Chapter 81

The mistress of ceremonies came from the palace, and had presided over the inner-court rites of sacrifice and the investing of consorts, and held every form of ritual by heart. She told Zhuo Huiheng and the other four women that in thanking the Grand Princess they need not make the full kowtow, but that while the Grand Princess read out the imperial edict they must kneel and wait with bowed head.

That said, she smiled too, the gravity easing from her face, the years sketched in a few lines at the corners of her eyes, and sighed. "I have served the inner courts of two reigns, and led countless rites of sacrifice and investiture, but never had the fortune to share with women of learning in the blessings of so fine a tide of study. To open this rite for the first time today, and stand with you all at the head of a new thing for the women of the realm, what an honor it is."

Hearing it, the five women were stirred, and thanked the officer together.

Zhuo Huiheng stood at the front. Today she was called the "woman top-graduate." The name was not official, but Zhao Lanxuan told her the whole capital called her so now, and said too, "The Zhuo house, a brother and sister both top-graduate," which made a fine tale.

She warned herself not to let the praise turn her head, yet a glow of honor she could not shake went with her, step by step, up the stairs of the main hall of the Grand Princess's residence.

Luo Yuanzhu, in the pale purple court dress of a female scribe, waited in the hall. When all were gathered, the mistress of ceremonies called each name in turn, and the Grand Princess, in full court dress, came stepping out from the rear with the edict held in both hands, and read it.

Zhuo Huiheng knelt and listened as the ceremony bade. A pity the edict spoke only of compiling the book, and did not name the five chosen in the selection exam, nor their native places.

After it came each one's charge. Luo Yuanzhu was chief editor, Zhuo Huiheng associate editor, and the other four compilers.

The edict read out, the Grand Princess looked quietly at the six women below the steps, her eyes resting on Zhuo Huiheng.

She thought of what her brother had said to her a few days before, in the Tianzhang Hall.

...

"The Zhuo house came back from bitter cold and the far border, yet its sons and daughters all carry learning. That is no small thing. But rarer still is something else."

"You mean, Brother..."

"Zhuo Siheng, as eldest brother, has three younger sisters and a brother in his care, yet since he came first in the palace exam he has never once been seen seeking matches for his family. He could have climbed by it. With his gifts and name, many would gladly have made a marriage-tie of him. But he does not go that road. He stays home content and rears his brother and sisters, and never makes his kin's marriages a stake. Before, I took it for a careful, self-holding nature. Now, seeing the edge of his sister's brush, I see it is a thing the house carries, a scorn for climbing by marriage-ties."

"Just so. Even frail of health, with Zhuo Huiheng's looks and bearing and her virtue and learning, a marriage into a high and powerful house would not have been past hope. Yet she has stayed home at her leisure, with the nursing of her health put first in all things, which shows how Zhuo Siheng has worn himself out in care for her old illness. The third sister of that house went with Zhuo Siheng to his post, and practices medicine there, with an excellent name, they say, and the youngest brother is still at his books in the academy. The other day I saw my cousin A-Yun, and she too said this fourth one, Zhuo Xiheng, young as he is, is a gentleman of high, clear bearing and steady, upright ways, and that the love among those children wants no telling. A-Yun said that the day of the test, when they fetched little Linghua home, the Zhuo vice-prefect's fourth brother came in person to meet his sister. It moved me to hear it. Such a love among brothers and sisters who have shared hardship, what other house could match it?"

"Others may not see the heart of it, but you and I understand it best... It is just so."

...

Now, the edict received, Luo Yuanzhu took it in both hands and set it in reverence on the table before her, then turned grave and said to the rest, "Having received the edict, we must give it our whole strength, pour all our learning into the brush, and not fail the breadth of Heaven's grace. The compiling of a history is from of old a long labor, a year at the least, and at the most several. Should there be in that time a marriage or a mourning, the great duties of filial rite we may not set aside, but neither wedding nor funeral may shake our purpose. We will hold ourselves a model for the ages, and match it in virtue."

Zhuo Huiheng's parents were both gone, and as for marriage, that was no trouble of hers.

As a woman, to have a real work to give herself to, apart from serving a husband and raising children, was more than she had dared hope. For herself, she wished only to live and not fail her learning. For her family, she wished to bring the Zhuo name glory beside her brother. And for the realm, she wished to set down with a woman's own hand what women could do, to open the eyes and ears of the people, and break new ground for an age.

---

Jinzhou. Anhua Commandery. The crag kiln works.

The first proper firing of honey-ware Zhuo Siheng watched come out of the kiln. He rolled up his own sleeves with the kiln-men and hauled away the sealing-bricks, taut with hope, and when the amber glow of the finished pieces showed to the world and drew a gasp from every eye, the feeling was beyond compare.

So when he watched this first lot of new ware loaded onto the Song caravan, he fretted like a man sending a younger brother off to school, deeply uneasy, afraid they'd be knocked and chipped and smashed, and then what?

Though Song Yunhe swore before he left that he'd guard the honey-ware, first in all the world, like his own life, Zhuo Siheng was still not easy, and stood at the mouth of the road watching until the caravan's shapes vanished into the winding hills, then let out a soft sigh.

"My lord, are you uneasy about this Song the Third?" Wu Xing had never seen such a look on Zhuo Siheng. He'd crossed the man in trade himself, but he trusted Song the Third's ability and his sense of a charge. "Song the Third brings every load through himself, with no fear of hardship, which shows a solid, working man. My lord needn't fear he'll be careless. And he's walked this road a hundred times. Nothing will go wrong."

Zhuo Siheng gave a wry smile inside. For him, what was leaving was not the honey-ware. It was the answer to the first question on the examination the emperor had set him, the test of holding office.

However firm and set he was, a man handing in his paper could hardly be free of nerves.

But that was a thing he could tell no one, so Zhuo Siheng only smiled and said he was fretting over nothing.

Wu Xing looked abashed. "Who doesn't fret! I was afraid before that my lord might talk with Song the Third and settle something against the crag kiln, and it was my own mean heart. My lord's great kindness to the crag kiln, we couldn't repay if we gilded you a statue."

Wu Xing was an honest soul to a fault, able to speak out even such a dark thought of his own, which showed how open and square his dealings were. So Zhuo Siheng was easy leaving the Song house's silver in his hands. "No man is a sage. What I thought that day wasn't fit to say aloud, and that you don't blame me for taking the works' affairs into my own hands is generous enough. But let me say one thing, kiln-master. Mind the Song house's silver well. It will have a great use by and by. When the academy is built, the honey-ware will likely be known across the realm, and then I'll trouble you, as a man of local standing, to come forward and say you'll fund the building, and you needn't hide where the silver came from. Say it's the shared profit of the Song house and our works, which is the truth."

Only put another way.

Come to think of it, for a court official to go to a merchant and "seek rent" and "raise capital" was a heady business. That day he'd near soaked through his underclothes, feeling he walked a tightrope while tossing up a dozen bared knives, any one of them, thrown or caught amiss, a risk to his neck. But the end was good, save for the surprise of Song Duan.

...

"My lord... how did you know?" When Zhuo Siheng had put his last request, Song Yunhe asked in wonder. "Could even that be seen?"

In all his years in the market he'd never met so uncanny a man, or so uncanny a thing.

Zhuo Siheng could have kept it to himself, but he chose to say his reasoning out. "Talking with you before, Manager Song, it was as if I'd turned merchant too. We talked trade to trade, both to the point and not to the air, every feint and turn a step forward to drive the other back further. That, I take it, is your usual way of talking a deal?"

Song Yunhe thought: he reads a matter and knows a man, a rare eye. So he nodded, smiling.

"But this time, you shifted your way of talking several times in the middle, and what you used was not the way of 'deal-craft' but the turns of phrase of the Daoists. Most telling."

"The Daoists?" This Song Yunhe did not follow. He knew only the names Laozi and Zhuangzi and a few Daoist titles, and that wastrel nephew of his read no books. How had the Daoists come into it?

"'What you would draw in, you must first stretch out. What you would weaken, you must first make strong. What you would cast down, you must first raise up. What you would take, you must first give. This is called the subtle light: the soft and weak overcome the hard and strong.' That is the pith of the Daoist forefather Laozi's Daodejing, and it speaks of the very way of giving ground to gain it. Whoever taught you must have taught you so."

Zhuo Siheng's smile was all friendliness, which to Song Yunhe was exactly an old fox of Futing Mountain grown to a spirit. He marveled that Zhuo Siheng could bring out the very "the soft overcomes the hard, give ground to gain ground" his nephew had taught him, and another thought stirred in him too. If Song Duan could come to know Zhuo Siheng, then, whatever else it brought, Lord Zhuo's character and learning might talk his idle, trouble-loving nephew round a little and set him on the right road, which would be no small luck for the house.

So he hid nothing, and told it all, Song Duan's words and all.

Now it was Zhuo Siheng's turn to be surprised.

That eighteen-year-old Song Duan, bright as a pearl and seeming a thing above the dust of the world?

The one catching crickets at the start?

Zhuo Siheng had felt from the first there was something odd about the man, only he'd never thought it ran this way. A true man keeps his face hidden, sure enough. In the reading and judging of men, he might be a touch short of the fire yet.

More practice needed.

Before he left, Song Yunhe said he'd arrange for his nephew to call. Zhuo Siheng gladly agreed. What the boy was truly made of there was no knowing without a meeting and a talk.

But there was much to do, and this was perhaps not the hour for it. Just as Zhuo Siheng was about to take his leave of Wu Xing, several people came up from far off, a few kiln-men he'd seen about the works in front, and behind them, hurrying, Chen Rong.

The kiln-men led the way for Chen Rong, who near ran to Zhuo Siheng, and held out a letter. "The third young miss charged me to come with all speed and put this family letter into your hands myself."

Zhuo Siheng's heart jumped. Could something have happened at home in the capital? He took it quickly and opened it, and after he'd read, his face went calmer and steadier than before he'd read at all.

"It's nothing of any weight." Zhuo Siheng folded the letter back into the envelope, and turned to Wu Xing with a smile. "Go back and watch the kiln still firing, kiln-master. I'll take a turn here, and see how the mile-markers should stand once the mountain road is built."

Wu Xing was not a man of fine threads, and did as Zhuo Siheng said. But Chen Rong, who had come to know his Lord Zhuo a little, could not make out the strange calm. When the third young miss gave him the letter her eyes had been near to tears, so why was Lord Zhuo so composed?

"Chen Rong, go and rest at the kiln first with the kiln-master. It's been a hard road. Drink some water, have a bath, and feed the horse." Zhuo Siheng's words were always so thoughtful and ordered.

Perhaps he was reading too much into it.

So thinking, Chen Rong agreed, and went back with Wu Xing and the others.

Zhuo Siheng stood on his toes and watched a good while, and only when he was sure they'd gone far did his shaking hands tear the letter open fast, and he read it a full three times, and more than three drops of tears fell on the paper.

He laughed as he wiped at his cheeks, his sight gone blurred, yet the gladness and the thrill gathered so clear in him. There was no one about now, and Zhuo Siheng sprang up toward the sky, leaping and laughing, and crying out through his tears:

"My sister's taken first place!"