Chapter 105

It was no single cicada in the trees, but a whole shrilling chorus. The high-summer heat had reached a scorching pitch, and as noon drew on it seemed set to draw every drop of moisture out of the world.

Hu Yougui struck up talk with the two drivers. "In all this heat, it's no easy trip."

The carriages stood not far off. At first the driver didn't catch it and had to make sure, and only when he saw Hu Yougui really was speaking to them did he bow respectfully with a smile. "Just so, my lord. A few days back the rain made it easier, but these last days it's grown past bearing. Look at the leaves on the trees, all curled up."

Hu Yougui wore a look of hot-and-bothered disgust. "The heat's nothing much, but I can't stand these cicadas. Evening finally comes, it cools off a little, you want to sleep? Not a chance. Aiya! They never tire, they just call on and on... Come, come, hot as it is, have a cup of the cooling drink to take the heat down."

With his usual kindly look he pointed at the brass pot of cooling drink, then at the few pieces of melon that looked so thirst-quenching, and urged them, "The local first-crop melon's good, just the right season for it. I tried a piece just now, quite sweet. Come have a piece to slake your thirst."

The old driver was truly thirsty, but dared not come and sit. He only unhooked the gourd slung under the carriage, lifted the lid, took a mouthful of water, and then thanked him with a smile. "You're kind-hearted, my lord, but that's the shop's good melon, laid on for you. Coarse low men like us, how would we dare sit at your side and eat your good melon?"

Never mind it was only a patch of tree-shade at the gold shop's door, it was no place for just anyone to sit, least of all in an old traditional house, where rank was strictest of all, and how would a servant dare be on a level with his master?

And never mind that Hu Yougui wore plain cloth. Some people really did put on airs now, and even if he didn't ride a horse in gold-inlaid trappings, he was a cut above all the same.

Since they wouldn't come, Hu Yougui, looking put out, picked up a cattail fan, flapped it a few times, and asked again, "Really won't eat?"

The old driver smiled apologetically. "Thank you, my lord, truly I won't. I'm not, not even thirsty."

And having said it, he swallowed.

Hu Yougui shook his head with a great show of ease and smiled. "Fine, you don't dare eat, then come sit over here. It's only a bit of shade, what harm's in that? Who knows how long your masters will be in there?"

The old driver did know how long his masters would be. Ever since they'd come to the capital, every day out meant drifting round every gold shop in Yanjing. In this heat the masters could cool off inside the shops, and they could only wait it out.

Hu Yougui looked again at the street, emptier and emptier of people in the heat, and shook his head. "This wretched weather's boiling me alive and wringing me dry!"

At that, the two drivers felt hotter still.

They looked at each other, and in the end each led his carriage to the hitching-post and tied it, then came carefully together into the shade. Still they dared not sit, but found a spot at the foot of the tree and sat on the old roots that showed above the ground.

It was cooler here indeed, and once seated they sighed with comfort.

Hu Yougui smiled, pleased, and asked, "Cool, eh?"

The old driver nodded. "Aye, aye! A good spot. Thank you for your kindness, my lord. Anyone can see you're a good man."

Hu Yougui shook his head with a smile and asked again, "Your masters cut no common figure. What house are they? How is it I've never seen them before?"

The two drivers heard the lord's question, and finding nothing in it they couldn't tell, answered, "If it please you, my lord, we're of the Lan family of Ziye."

The driver was a hereditary servant, and speaking of his masters his whole face filled with pride.

Hu Yougui was a different man now, but he knew nothing of the registers of great houses. He smacked his lips and shook his head. "Is that so? The Lan family of Ziye? Never heard of them."

Hearing this, the younger driver grew anxious and raised his voice a little. "How can that be? Surely you've heard, my lord, of the Lan family of Ziye, who down the generations have passed the examinations and set their names on the laurel lists time and again, whose fame for talent the scholars have spread age after age? Our masters' house is the greatest gate in our home country, a gate granted by the throne. Aiya, mm, the kind of pure and noble house that for hundreds of years has never wanted for fine men, famed over four provinces and eight seas. You truly haven't heard of them?"

Hu Yougui checked at this. He'd heard his teacher say that in a true great noble house even the servants had read a few books and could toss off a line or two of verse. He'd never believed it, and now here it was before him.

Seeing Hu Yougui say nothing, the old driver gave the young one a slap and turned back to Hu Yougui with an ingratiating smile. "What does he know, the fool! A lord like you, here in Yanjing and so finely born, how could you not know the Lan house? You just won't stoop to bandy words with this blockhead. You're, you're only teasing him."

Hu Yougui shook his head good-naturedly. "Heh, listen to you. Don't blame him. I truly don't know the Lan family of Ziye. How many days have I been in Yanjing, and how many people do I know?"

The driver had offered him a way out, and Hu Yougui wouldn't take it, which left the man awkward. He hemmed and hawed a good while and in the end hung his head and said nothing.

Before they'd set out, the head steward had warned them to be doubly careful out of doors, to watch every word and move, never to lose the family's face, and above all never to carelessly bring trouble on the masters.

These were not the days of the old dynasty. The new Emperor had always been cool toward the old great houses, and the family had no one at court now. With no other way, they could only send the two young ladies to Yanjing to wait for the selection.

The drivers were sorry now. They half wanted to leave the shade, ready to bake in the full sun rather than talk to this man any longer.

Luckily they weren't tormented much longer. They soon saw a few more men come out of the shop, and the questioning lord stood up, joined them, and went off with them.

The gold shop's keeper came out to see them off with several of his shop assistants, all of them bowing, and only when the party had gone a good way did they straighten up.

Just the look of all this ceremony set the two drivers trembling, and only when no one was about did the old driver rap the young one hard on the head and curse. "You death-courting fool, what nonsense were you spouting!"

The young driver covered his head, aggrieved, and argued back. "Uncle, what are you hitting me for? I wasn't talking nonsense. Everything I said was what you, you yourself told me once."

The old driver was angry. "Not nonsense?"

He craned his head carefully left and right, and seeing it safe, bent his head and warned him in a low voice. "What you said was all from ages ago. The Lan ancestors were like that, true enough, but that was back in Ziye, a few thousand li away. And where is this? This is Yanjing, right at the Emperor's heel!

"Didn't you see that lord's belt-hook just now? That was a beast-faced jade belt-hook. When our old master was alive our house could still wear such a thing, but by the young master's generation, look at our young master and the young gentlemen, it's gold belt-hooks and silver belt-hooks for them. That mouth of yours, I could beat you to death, you blind fool!"

He made as if to strike a few times but in the end did not, and only said, helpless, "Be more careful from now on. Lucky that lord didn't take it up with you. The Lan family, is it? Who here knows the Lan family now? Here, hai... If you weren't my own nephew, I'd really..."

He raised his fist again and in the end thumped his nephew a few times.

Outsiders didn't know it, but these old servants saw it clear as a mirror. The Lan family of Ziye, whatever its name, was a fallen house long since. Its title had gone back in the old dynasty, and for all its branches of scholars it had turned out only a few sesame-seed petty clerks. Lording it in Ziye was all very well for frightening country folk.

Among all the Lan family's marriage-kin there wasn't so much as a fifth-rank lord now. Truly all shine outside and muck within, a house selling off its forefathers' land to keep up a show. If they'd had any other way, why would they send two trueborn young ladies to Yanjing to wait for the selection?

And it wasn't even a selection for the Emperor, but for the several princes, where a girl who won no proper rank was only a maid to warm a bed.

Hu Yougui had no idea he'd got the young driver into trouble. He and the others walked on after their chief, who said nothing the whole way. His steps were quick, his face was dark, and the veins at his temples throbbed and stood out all the way, until they reached the six-markets crossing.

Chen Dasheng stopped and gave Tong Jintai and the others their orders. "Split up and go fetch my eldest brother, my second, and my third to the Long Saber garrison. Tell them... tell them the man who tricked us all those years ago and sold our whole family, I... I think I've found him."

They all started, and Hu Yougui stepped forward and asked low, "Brother? You mean it?"

Chen Dasheng nodded gravely. "I'll never forget that steward's face my whole life. He has a big black mole on his nose, with hairs growing out of it. He's old now, but I can't forget him. If I died and burned to ashes and were buried underground, I still couldn't forget him, wouldn't dare forget him..."

That night Chen Dasheng did not go home. The four brothers gathered, and Chen Dasheng drew a pass-token and led his elder brothers out of the city to Qingfeng through the night.

That's right, whoever else this was kept from, it could not be kept from Granny. Her sons, her grandsons, every tragedy of her house had come from that one cheated sale.

When they reached Guard Lane in the night it was close to midnight. The old lady started, had the lamp lit, threw on her clothes, and sat up at the edge of the kang. "What, what's happened, in the dead of night like this?"

Once the serving people had been sent out, Chen Dazhong knelt before the old lady with his younger brothers and said, "Granny! We've found our enemy."

The old lady started a little and lowered her voice. "What, what did you say?"

Chen Dasheng lifted his head. "Granny, do you remember, that year at the Yizhou crossing, the steward with the big black mole on his nose, the one surnamed Jiang?"

The old lady's body gave a great shudder, and her voice went hoarse at once. She sat up straight, fixed her grandsons with a hard stare, and said with hatred enough in her tone, "You've, you've found him?"

That savage, cruel, vicious face rose at once before her eyes. Her sons and grandsons had been bound and dragged off, struggling in the mud not far away, while she knelt and lay flat on the ground and begged the man. "My lord, you have a kind brow and the face of a Buddha, your house is rich and your children and grandchildren fill the halls! My lord, we never sold ourselves, we never did..."

But the man held up a sheaf of bond-contracts and said, "What are you talking about? A house as great as ours, would we cheat the likes of you? See this? Black ink on white paper, red thumb-prints and all, and you took the money too. How is it you go back on it now? These troublemaking rabble... Seeing you're old, I won't take it up with you. Men, drive her off, the filthy thing..."

He thought her filthy and unkempt, and gave her a kick in the face, and the blood came from her nose then and there...

The old lady's heart ached, but she did not weep. The old pain had turned to fury now. Having asked, she stared hard at her grandsons and waited for an answer.

Chen Dasheng nodded firmly. "Yes, we've found him! That beast isn't surnamed Jiang at all. He's the second steward of the Lan family of Ziye, and his name is Lan Anjiang. I asked about his house, and then I worked it out. Back when the Emperor rose in revolt, he left dead men and pressed-in recruits all along his road. The year he passed through Ziye, the Tan army happened to be levying men, and with Tan the Second's temper, he'd never spare anyone's face. So the Lan family had no choice but to send out that steward to round up a batch of poor wretches from other counties to fill the levy. We, our house had no luck, and a whole heap of menfolk besides, and that was the start of it all."

Two years had passed. The wound in her heart was healing, and the shadow of the war was slowly lifting. The old lady did not find the news a surprise. Hers was a house of helpless famine-beggars, bullied here if not there, and even when no one would take them in, Heaven itself had never cared.

Through all that torment, the truth was the old lady hated Heaven more than she hated men. But now the enemy was found, and she sat there still, and after a long while forced out one thing. "Dasheng, kill him! Kill him! Avenge your father, avenge your brothers! Eh? Do you hear?"

Chen Dasheng and the others knocked their heads to the floor and said in earnest, "Yes, Granny, we know. We came back tonight just to tell you. I've found him. They won't get away. Our family's wrong will be avenged."

The old lady ground her teeth a while, and seeing her grandsons about to leave again in the night, she reminded them, "Your wives are all delicate things. Do this quietly."

Chen Dazhong sniffed. "Aye, we know, Granny. You take good care of yourself. The good days are still ahead of you."

The old lady said nothing, but sat there quietly.

Chen Dasheng and the others left, not fearing in the least that the old lady might take harm from the anger. They all knew that after their long years of hardship, the Chen family had little to spare of anything, but what they had most of was a heart beaten hard as a smith beats iron, a thousand hammer-blows over, and a frame of bone.

Revenge, no less! How would Granny fall down over that?

Once her grandsons had gone, the old lady sat still until dawn.

At dawn, before the sun had risen, the sky too was blue, but a blue-black, as if dyed with ink.

The old lady threw on her clothes, shuffled out in her shoes, leaned on her cane, and came into the yard to look at the sky. She watched until the ink-blue grew lighter and bluer, until at last it was day, and then she suddenly laughed and said to the sky, "Ha, you're sorry now, are you? Opened your eyes at last? But it's too late. I'll curse you still, curse you till I die... curse you I will! Even if I die and come back a pig or a dog, I'll curse you still..."

The high summer of that year was parched and hot, but the hearts of Chen Dasheng and his party were cold.

And the Lan family, with no notion that calamity was upon them, spent that very day hauling gifts about Yanjing on their rounds, hunting up old friends and kin who had once had some tie with their ancestors. To set foot on the road to the top, you had to pay something for it.

But the new lords of Great Liang were mostly of the Shaoshang faction. And even where an old-dynasty minister was still valued, the Lan family couldn't have reached him under the old dynasty, let alone now.

And with the great old houses coming back to Yanjing, who among them, to keep their wealth, didn't want to walk this same road? And these people could scatter money with a hundred times the force of the already-sinking Lan family.

After a whole day of trouble, Lan Zili, the Lan clan heir, who had not so much as glimpsed a threshold, sat in broad day in a smallish courtyard drinking to drown his worries.

The place the Lan family lodged in now was rented in a respectable part of Yanjing, on Wenxian Street, three streets from the Great Liang palace and not far from the six-markets crossing. The cheapest three-court house here ran to a hundred and fifty strings a month, and that was before food and keep and all the hollow show of face the family forced itself to put on.

They had come to the capital raw and unconnected to begin with, and if they'd lodged any further from the circle of wealth, his two daughters, never mind being sent into a prince's mansion, might not have been looked at even as a high official's concubine.

What was more, the two trueborn Lan daughters were not much to look at, plain, you might even say.

The weather was hot, but living in a big house they dared not buy ice, so Lan Zili could only plant his two shins in the running water of the little garden and steal a scrap of coolness.

He hadn't drunk long when Lan Anjiang, the steward who had been his companion from childhood, grown up at his side, and whom he trusted, came into the courtyard. Seeing him, the man trotted over. "Master, the mistress and the young ladies are back."

Lan Zili's eyes brightened, and he turned at once to stare at Lan Anjiang, but Lan Anjiang dared not raise his head. "The young ladies have bought a few more trinkets. They didn't spend much today, only a dozen strings or so. Don't be angry, Master!

"It's only what people often say about town, that the few managing matrons of the Bureau of Apparel like to go to the gold shops to look at patterns. We didn't meet them today, so we'll go a few more days. We went out on a lucky day, and our luck will come in the end. Don't fret yourself ill, Master."

Lan Zili gave a helpless smile, drank a cup, and sighed. "Heh, I'm not fretting ill, I'm ready to hang myself. Two or three hundred strings gone every month. Old Jiang, our house will be begging in the streets soon."

He looked off into the distance, as if he couldn't fathom it. "Tell me, why can't this new Emperor learn a little from the old ones? If he'd choose more palace maidens, we'd be spared all this trouble."

Lan Anjiang went over, knelt by his master's low couch, served him a few bites to go with the wine, and comforted him. "Don't drink on an empty stomach, Master. I've heard it said, too, that it's no fault of His Majesty's. In this world, what man alive doesn't like a fresh pretty face? They say it's the Empress who's jealous..."

"Rot!" Lan Zili swore at him. "Rot! You listen to the wild talk out there. You think your master takes a concubine by leave of his wife? That's what the rites say, but who actually does it? The Emperor of Great Liang is a founding emperor. Him, afraid of the Empress? Hmph! It's street rot, that's all. Off you go. I'll sit a while longer."

Lan Anjiang had gone only a few steps when he heard his master say sorrowfully behind him, "Old Jiang, your master's had a wretched time of it these last days!"

Lan Anjiang turned back with a thoughtful smile. "Just so, the weather's parched and you've suffered for it, Master. Don't fret. Tomorrow I'll go to the slave-market and have a look."

Lan Zili gave a soft laugh. "Mm, look carefully, keep your eyes sharp. Don't go finding me those old tree-roots you found for your mistress, no flavor to them, I don't like them. The flower must not be old. A bud just opening is best, just right, and one with a little dew on it is the daintiest. Isn't that so?"

Lan Anjiang took his meaning and nodded, then scurried back to his own room. He set down his purse, shut the door, and set to doctoring the account books.

He was a hereditary Lan servant, and after long years together, knowing the house inside out, his hands had grown less than clean.

He didn't dare steal much. This trip to bring the young ladies for the selection had staked the whole clan's strength, over two hundred thousand strings scraped together on one throw.

Greedy as he was, he knew the consequences. He was a bondservant, after all, and lived off his masters, so his stealing went only so far: a little skimmed off the master's wine money today, a little off the horse-feed money tomorrow, and even off the mistress's powder-and-rouge money he'd dare skim the first cut.

All his life he had trusted human nature least and money alone. Three cash here, five cash there was little, but little by little it piled up.

With the day's accounts doctored, Lan Anjiang ate the very same wine and dishes as his master, drank his little cups until the first mark of the hour of the Pig, groped a few free feels off the cook's wife, and only then went back to his room and lay down to sleep.

He did not know that this cup was to be his last on this earth.

At the last mark of the hour of the Pig, several shadows dropped from the wall of the house the Lan family lodged in, and went door by door, piping sleep-smoke into the rooms.

In the summer heat, with no ice, the Lan family couldn't keep their doors shut tight, and slept with the doors open behind bamboo blinds.

With two hundred thousand strings on them, the Lan family had brought plenty of house-guards to the capital, so they didn't worry about sleeping with the doors open.

But as luck had it, who they'd met were the old sabers, men who in time would become the Emperor's most trusted old scouts. Dealing with a few house-guards was the simplest thing in the world to them.

Once the sleep-smoke had done its round and everyone in the three-court house was out cold, Chen Dasheng and the rest searched the courtyards without the least restraint, and before he'd gone half a round a man found Lan Anjiang in a side room off the front court.

And so Lan Anjiang, who'd had his cups and breathed the sleep-smoke, was brought round by a good score of hard slaps left and right and a ladle of cold water.

He woke and wanted to shout, but a hand gripped him by the throat in warning, and the fierce man said, "Shout, and I'll cut you dead with one stroke."

And with that he really drew a knife and cut once into the skin of Lan Anjiang's thigh. The man's blade-work was good: it took off a hand-span of thick skin and never touched the red flesh beneath.

The tearing pain came in an instant, and Lan Anjiang was wide awake now, every bit of him.