Chapter 83

Before he left, Lu Hui said to Zhuo Siheng, "My mother told me to choose for myself, whether to help an old friend's son against my true mother's dying wish, or to go on hiding my wits and playing the fool and bury the truth forever. I am a man who sometimes fears to choose, so I quietly gave the choosing to you, my lord. If you had sought me out on purpose, with some design, then I would do the latter. If you did not know, and were an upright officer like your grandfather and your father, then I too would do as my own father did, follow and obey and never fail the hope. From now on Lu Hui is your man, my lord, and if you have any charge for me, I'll not shrink from it though it cost my life."

With that he took his leave.

Zhuo Siheng sat alone in the inner hall a long while.

Lu Hui had left him the letter too.

"The look on your face when you saw this letter, my lord, was a longing and a grief I have never seen. A father's letter come back to the son. Were Lord Lu and Lady Lu to know it in the world beyond, they would surely wish it so. You needn't return it, my lord. Keep it for evidence, or keep it for remembrance. It was always meant to be yours."

After Lu Hui had gone, Zhuo Siheng still held the letter.

His father's hand was so fine. He had studied it all these years and still never got its form and its hard-set bone. Even a man as sparing of words as Lord Zeng praised his writing every time, yet he still felt his own brush fell short of his father's by more than a little.

He sat on alone like that into the night, and only when Ciheng, uneasy, came to look for him did he think of going home. The yamen was near the house, but Zhuo Siheng often carried government work home, and so mostly rode, the better to carry documents. Tonight, against his habit, he said to Ciheng, "A-Ci, walk home with your brother."

Ciheng, who never read too much into things, only said, "All right, I'll go and ask them for a storm-lantern!"

So the brother and sister walked side by side along the stone-paved streets of Quanzhang City, the camphors casting broken shadows on either hand, the banana leaves spread wide, all swaying under the moon. This was not the capital, with its night market thronged and lively past midnight. Here the people were used to rising with the sun and resting with it, and at this hour no shop was open, and no one was about, only Zhuo Siheng and Zhuo Ciheng walking slow under the moon with one pale-gold storm-lantern.

Ciheng was a great talker, and rattled on about the funny things from her doctoring these two days. Zhuo Siheng listened with a smile, putting in a word now and then to set his sister laughing.

As they walked, he made a request he rarely made. "A-Ci, tell your brother something of the old days."

"All right. What would you like to hear?"

"Something of Father, after we came to Xingshan Township. Something I don't know."

"Good. I can think of one right off!" What Ciheng loved most to talk of was the old doings of their Xingshan days. Real as the grief and the hardship of that time had been, the warmth and the gladness of the family all together were just as clear before her. "I don't know if you remember. Our second year in the township, Fifth Uncle Zhu came by one day with time to spare, to drink with Father. You were reading at the side. The light was too dim that night! To see the words you read closer and closer to the oil-lamp, and got so lost in it the page caught fire! It frightened Father and Fifth Uncle, who ran over to see if you were hurt. You were all right, but your cuff was burnt through with black holes and your eyebrows singed, such a sight! Even Fourth Brother couldn't help laughing. Then Father hurried you off to change and wash."

Zhuo Siheng laughed in spite of himself. "I remember it well. The odd thing is, how did I feel nothing at the time?"

"But you don't know what Father and Fifth Uncle Zhu said after, do you?" As the one who knew, Ciheng felt of a sudden a pride at knowing more than her brother, and lifted her small chin high.

"I went out to change and wash my face, and when I came back they were on to something else. Were they saying bad things about me?"

Ciheng laughed. "Fifth Uncle Zhu said: this Siheng's a sensible, clever boy, but there's a daft streak in him somewhere, I can't think why, above all when he reads. Mind he doesn't grow into a bookworm! A muddleheaded one like that, how's he ever to get a wife!"

Zhuo Siheng laughed aloud. That was just the thing Fifth Uncle Zhu would say. Right up to his leaving home for the examinations, Fifth Uncle Zhu still worried he'd turn into a stuffy bookworm.

Ciheng, warmed to her tale, near skipped as she walked, not like a girl of her years but like the wild thing she'd been in Xingshan, and said merrily, "But our father stood up for you! He said at once, our Siheng's not that kind of child, just now he was only deep in his reading. Day to day Siheng does very well, clever and able to bend with things, always weighing the good and the bad of a matter from every side, knowing when to press and when to ease from a boy, never muddling a thing or rushing it rashly. Fifth Uncle Zhu laughed and laughed, and said wasn't there some tiresome sage who said a father mustn't praise his own son, and that rough soldiers like him would be ashamed to say a good word of their sons in front of others for fear of being laughed at, but you reading folk, elder brother, you're an honest one, you praise your son without pausing for breath, and heap every fine word there is on Siheng. Father laughed too, and said that was because Siheng deserved those words, that as his father he couldn't bring himself to say belittling things, that it would go too much against his heart, and to say what went against the heart was itself against the sages... Brother... why are you crying?"

Ciheng put away her memory and her smile, and stood still too.

Zhuo Siheng walked on.

He did not answer his sister's question.

Ciheng stood a moment, then hurried to catch up, and quietly took the storm-lantern from her brother's hand, and went a step ahead of him, to light the road one step before his feet.

The moonlight and the lamplight pulled the two close-set shadows out to the ends of the road, one half sunk deep in a dark neither light could reach, one half held always in the warm bright of lamp and moon.

So the two of them, Zhuo Siheng and Zhuo Ciheng, walked on quietly toward home, and said not another word.

---

The next day Zhuo Siheng came to the yamen as usual, and with a mild, warm smile set the newly-reported Lu Hui to meet his fellows, and gave him his work afresh. Lu Hui was the same, as if nothing at all had happened, greeting everyone calmly and throwing himself into the commandery's business.

So diligent, day after day.

---

The capital. The Zhuo residence. New Year's Eve.

Zhuo Huiheng and A-Huan hung up the freshly written door-charms, and seeing Xiheng still out in the yard counting over the New Year's gifts, hurried to say, "Go back inside, Brother, it's too cold out. We'll carry the things in and look at them after."

Xiheng was always biddable before his sister. "Second Sister, let's go in together. Sixth Sister-in-law Chai has boiled hot sweet-nectar, with the Jinzhou brown sugar Elder Brother sent home in it."

Huiheng nodded smiling and went in with her brother. This New Year's Eve there were only the two of them at home, but Zhuo Siheng had sent back so much local produce from Jinzhou that they thought to make a table of it, as if they were keeping the vigil together with their brother and Ciheng in Anhua Commandery.

"Elder Brother and A-Ci have been a year in Anhua now. I heard from Teacher that the emperor this year singled out Elder Brother's record in the provinces for praise, said he governs with good law and good policy, works at the real thing, and is a model for office in a wild, out-of-the-way place!" Huiheng raised her voice without meaning to, pride spilling past the gentle corners of her eyes and brows. Xiheng too, rarely, kept a smile on his face the while, and said softly, "Remade the crag kiln into new ware, opened hill ground for the sisal pools, cut a new road over the mountains, drew new trades into the commandery, built up the people and kept the farming seasons... In one year Elder Brother has done so much. I can't think how he brings it off."

Huiheng lifted the little honey-ware cup before her, and said gently, "Never mind the rest. This one honey-ware alone, the 'amber light borne in a jade cup,' is enough to rate his record the very highest. The capital's wild for it now. Since some people brought it back from Jiangnan, there are folk everywhere going north and south to buy it, only there's never enough. The emperor's asked after it several times, they say. Anhua sent up a few, and the emperor kept them all himself, wouldn't give one away, and is sending the Palace Maintenance Office down to Anhua to look. Who knows but they mean to set an official kiln on the crag kiln!"

"Have you changed the incense-holder on the altar to a honey-ware one?" Xiheng asked suddenly.

Huiheng couldn't help a laugh. "You think your sister thinks of nothing but the book? Every vessel of offering before Father's and Mother's tablets I've changed for the honey-ware Elder Brother sent. To let Father and Mother see too what their son can do now, and what he's done."

The brother and sister smiled at each other, their eyes full of a warmth too thick to melt.

When they'd drunk the sweet-nectar, Huiheng looked a long while at her brother's face, growing more a man's by the day, and said suddenly, "Brother, there's something I'd like to talk over with you."

Xiheng looked at his sister, and said easily, "If my sister wants my view, it must be a thing to do with me. Is it that my birth mother wishes to come at the new year and pay respects to Father and Mother?"

The two words set side by side had always an odd ring to them, but for their family it was only one of fate's hard turns. Huiheng sighed softly. "It is. Nothing gets past you. You should trade some of your sharp eye back to A-Ci."

"It's a good thing. Elder Brother would agree too. Don't fret over me, Second Sister."

Xiheng seemed wholly calm, but Zhuo Huiheng knew that the children of their house, even Ciheng, kept some cares always hidden. She thought a moment, and settled on a sure way, and said, "Then I'll ask her to come to pay respects around the fifteenth. That day you go out with young Lingxian, go and see the temple fair at the Great Xiangguo Monastery. He's come looking for you several times and you've always been shut up at the academy."

Since the day Tao Nanyun, wife of Yang Lingzhao, garrison general of the Chongling garrison-pass, came to fetch her own people from the selection exam and met the Xiheng who'd drawn his carriage aside for hers, and the more so as General Yang's younger sister Yang Linghua had become one of the compilers, the two families had grown closer and closer.

Huiheng thought: Xiheng was not open and warm like their elder brother, forever with people drawn to his side, but came off a little solitary and sharp-edged. To have made friends this time with General Yang's lively young brother Yang Lingxian gave him a friend at last. The two even went riding together now and again, and got on famously, and she was glad past measure. Though the Yang family's youngest girl, Yang Lingyi, seemed very fond of tagging along. That girl was a funny one, lively but not loud. Zhuo Huiheng rather felt Madam Yang had a mind to make a match between her and their Xiheng...

The Yang family's case was much like their own, both parents gone to their rest, General Yang having raised three younger brothers and sisters. Now that he was away guarding the border for the state, of course the elder sister-in-law stood in a mother's place, and Madam Yang could make such a decision for her young sister-in-law.

But Xiheng seemed only to go out with Yang Lingxian, and whether a girl tagged along at his side he did not seem to mind. Then again, their brother at this age had thought of nothing but his books. The children were young yet, and the matter could wait for later.

By now Xiheng had agreed, and told his sister to arrange it as she pleased and not mind him.

Biddable, that one, much like their elder brother...

Zhuo Huiheng mused with a smile.

But thinking of what Third Aunt had come to, Huiheng was sad again. And just then, a plump, lovable little round face flashed before her eyes, and a bold thought rose in her...

Of course, she decided to write and ask her brother's mind first.