Chapter 70

It was the dead of night. A woman was calling to him from beyond the window. Ping Shen felt a real fright.

His father had sent him out into the world properly, and as a boy he'd learned a few real fighting skills. He thought of the layers of guards in the courtyard, the hidden sentries, the traps. How had that woman gotten in?

She spoke again beyond the window. Her voice came floating, ghostly and faint. The hair stood up all over Ping Shen's body. In a flash he remembered that the former owner of this Little Immortal Garden had been struck dead by Heaven's punishment the day Qingfeng fell. Body and bones had vanished, people said, the whole household gone in an instant. He remembered, too, the old joke that the Little Immortal Garden had once hanged a famous actor from an opera troupe. That, it seemed, had happened in this same month. And the ghost loved best to come out and wander in this very month.

Then the voice outside made its errand plain, and he grew more afraid still.

It was no ghost. But she filled him with a dread past any evil ghost or rakshasa.

Two days ago he'd sold her out. Today she'd tracked him to his very door. It was that Lady. But how did she know he'd sold her? Was there a traitor inside the garden? Or had that old man broken the rules of the martial world? Either way, he was finished for good now.

All these suspicions set Ping Shen's legs aching. And why should his legs ache? Because his grandfather, in his youth, had been slicker even than he was, and over some martial-world trifle had crossed a recluse. The recluse came to his door and took both his lower legs, and the Ping family gave up half their fortune before they got past it. Ping Shen was born after that, and his grandfather, mindful of the old lesson, named him Shen, the character for prudent, wary, careful, self-guarding. He drew on his clothes slowly and sat up. Only with the thing right before his eyes did he begin to ask himself, two days ago, what in the world had he been thinking? Yuegong Mountain was fearsome, but ten thousand li away. The five hundred li round about were sheltered by the Elm-Tree Lady. So why had he felt no fear at all? He'd sold her out, just like that.

Thinking of it now, it was only that he'd taken her for just a woman. She lived retired in the deep hills and had never once pointed a finger at the merchant houses. She took not a cash of protection money from the martial-world sub-trades or the guilds. So it was his own baseness, nothing more, insulting a great-hearted soul.

Forcing himself calm, Ping Shen said out the window: "The Elder, one moment. I'm coming!"

That said, he lit a lantern with trembling hands. Holding it, he eased the door open and stepped slowly out. Then he got a fright.

His hidden sentries and his guards had been stacked like piles of firewood for him to see: a heap on the left, a heap on the right.

Ping Shen moved his right foot, reached out to the nearest man, and felt beneath his nostrils. Then he let out a soft breath, and his heart eased a little at last.

Alive.

He only dared to look around by moonlight after that. In the courtyard, standing on the heads of the gold chrysanthemums, stood a red-clad woman in a white wooden mask, exactly like the one from the tales. The wind came, and the leaves and blossoms swayed, and she swayed easily with the wind too. By this one feat of lightness skill alone, she did not shame the name of a recluse.

This was the one who'd pounded Pang Tu to a meat-paste. What in the world had he been thinking?

Ping Shen came down the steps and set the lantern he held to one side. The roots of his hair stood on end, his heart had gone numb, and his fear, at its very peak, turned to its opposite. He grew utterly calm and thought hard only one thing: how had the news leaked out?

But however it had leaked, he had sold the Elm-Tree Lady to Yuegong Mountain. All of Qingfeng, the underworld and the law-abiding alike, and even the court, held her in real respect.

This ground, like as not, would not hold the Ping family now.

Ai... ancestors of every generation, this grandson's crime is worth ten thousand deaths.

Qi Qian'er, for her part, watched the young fellow with some curiosity. She saw everyone as young now. It was a habit past mending.

The young man had sword-brows and starry eyes, and was handsome to look at. Though he was merchant-born and dressed in plain cloth, he carried a part or two of the steady air of a great house's young lord.

He was frightened, truly afraid. The hand that had held the lantern had shaken the whole while. But the moment he'd felt that his men to left and right weren't dead, he'd briskly composed himself. In the few steps of coming out, his heart went from drumming like a racing beat to a steady breath.

Now he stood there carefully doing up the robe he'd flung on, and tying his belt too, wanting only to look proper and seemly.

Mm. The family had reared him passably well.

Ping Shen set his robe to rights, calmed his heart, and made Qi Qian'er a proper bow: "Junior Ping Shen greets the Elder!" That said, he bowed deep, then slowly straightened up, and kept his head down, and waited without a word to die.

A talent indeed. Qi Qian'er knew how ghostly a sight she made, standing there at dead of night in a mask like this, dressed in red, swaying atop the flowers. A timid man would take one look and wet his trousers and swoon away at the least of it. And in fact, of the two stacked heaps of men, several had simply fainted dead off.

Qi Qian'er, a raw novice of the martial world, of course had no idea how much Ping Shen carried in his heart. Still less did she know that Ping Shen was already braced, only waiting for her to speak the reckoning and demand his death in atonement.

Qi Qian'er saw him bow. She lowered her voice and asked him, as flatly and feelinglessly as she could, "You're not afraid of me?"

Ping Shen sighed. He reached to the small of his back and drew out a fine, dainty gold knife. Holding it up in both hands, he slowly knelt. "Afraid I am. Junior knows he did a wrong thing, and wrong is wrong. I won't argue one word of it. Do with me as the Elder will. Only I beg the Elder not to pursue the rest of my Ping family. This matter has nothing to do with anyone else."

Qi Qian'er saw him do this and got a fright. Luckily her face was hidden behind the mask, so no trace of it showed.

This man, truly. He was talking away, and then out came a knife, and there he knelt with the air of one waiting to be cut down. It was~ rather frightening.

He was sound and whole in body. This pack of martial-world madmen each had a madness of their own. They treated their lives as though they'd come free, to be given up at a word.

But Qi Qian'er didn't know that the last years of the fallen dynasty were among the most lawless decades this world had ever seen. The court's laws couldn't shield its own people, so in their place had grown up a martial-world code of terrible strictness. She had never managed the local martial-world affairs, yet the local martial families took her for their head and lived under her shelter.

Merchants had, from of old, drawn their breath through the cracks. Not only were they of the lowest of the low castes, they weren't even allowed so much as a scrap of silk or brocade on their bodies. Traveling north and south in their blade-licking trade, they feared the court, and they feared the violent men of the martial world even more. Those men they could not afford to cross.

Not until the new dynasty did this change. Its new laws were many times kinder to the merchant than any dynasty before, and this was what made the golden age of Liang that Qi Qian'er had lived to see. To the Martial Emperor Yang Zao, the merchant was ten thousand times better than the martial-world drifter, because the merchant, at the very least, knew when to bow to the times.

Behind the mask Qi Qian'er's mouth twitched. After a silence she said, "Put the knife away, and don't kneel there. I only want to ask you one thing. What's all this for?"

Ping Shen started violently, and looked up at her in astonishment, then dropped his head quick, disbelieving.

Qi Qian'er had no wish to speak. It was a good while before he faltered, "The Elder...?"

Qi Qian'er had no other choice. Riding the wind, she slowly sat herself down on a flower bud, which was more frightening yet. She asked him, a shade impatient, "I told you to get up. Don't you want to?"

Ping Shen's pupils shrank. He sheathed the knife and stood. A long while later he ventured, "The Elder doesn't blame me?"

Qi Qian'er's thoughts could hardly be the same as his. She said, careless, "It's not that I don't blame you. I just didn't think that deep on it. You people are a funny lot. At the drop of a hat it's life and death with you? Don't be afraid. The truth is, I understand your hard case somewhat. A man who keeps an open shop~ likely can't afford to cross anyone."

One day the street patrol comes and takes off a few. The next, some hooligan or rascal extorts a couple more. Earn a little money and you're looked down on for it besides, and have to go build bridges and pave roads just to buy a name for good works. Afraid of being marked out, afraid of the villagers' envy. Every soul in this world has his own hard case. And death, now, was truly not called for.

Ping Shen felt all the more ashamed to hear it. This was a recluse! For near ten years he'd walked north and south, and this was the first so reasonable a recluse he'd ever laid eyes on. He couldn't bear the shame in his heart, and made his apology again. "It was that junior was blinded by the lust of profit, and lost his sense of right. Rest easy, Elder. Henceforth my Ping family's business will never dare trouble the waters of Baiquan Mountain, nor shamelessly put down root and leaf on your ground..."

Again Qi Qian'er heard words she couldn't follow, and cut in, "Why leave? Stay, if you've a mind to. It's not my ground. I'm only curious, and came to ask you a few things."

An old hand of the martial world had met a raw fledgling. Ping Shen's head was all in a whirl. He caught something in Qi Qian'er's words but dared not think deep on it, and could only ask, careful, "And what is it the Elder wishes to ask? Ask freely. Whatever your junior knows, he'll hold nothing back."

Qi Qian'er nodded: "I heard you asked that old man for some object? What is it, then?"

At that Ping Shen's face flushed. He turned and went into the room, came back cradling a fine hardwood box, opened it, and took out a bronze token. He knelt again and held it up. "Junior's guilty. Punish, punish him as you will..."

Qi Qian'er beckoned, and the thing, as though drawn by a silk thread, flew to her hand. Looking close, she saw it was a bronze token, a crescent moon on the face, and cast on the back the two words Safe Passage.

Curious, she turned it over a while, then held it up and asked Ping Shen, "What's this? You set such store by it that a man gives you this, and you sell me out for it?"

The retribution had come at last.

Ping Shen's heart clutched hard, his head went as though thunderstruck, and he slammed his brow to the ground with a dull thud. "Junior deserves to die! To be cut in a thousand pieces!"

Qi Qian'er winced to hear it, and silently bared her teeth.

She'd thought Old Xin an odd one before. Over a winter of coarse grain, he'd gotten her a Beggar Sect ancestral token that commanded all the little beggars round about to run her errands for nothing. And there were those charity pavilions from Qingfeng to Xiaonan Mountain, each one of them costing several lives.

These people gave it up so easily.

You might not care about your own life. But your mother? Your mother cares.

Of late, passing a charity pavilion on the road, she'd often seen a white-haired old woman lying against the memorial stone outside it, touching one name over and over. She'd go, and the woman would be there. She'd come back, and the woman would still be there.

And there were Zhou Wujiu and Xie Liuhao, who'd walked out of the martial world into the court besides. They all seemed to be men who could kill for one promise given, and lay down their lives for one promise given.

Hmph! If An'er ever dared enter the martial world, she'd break both his legs and chain him up at home besides. Let him just live, that was enough. She'd keep him safe his whole life.

A mother carries a child ten months, and one life is cut out of her like by ten thousand blades. How could a man give it away so lightly? Qi Qian'er couldn't make sense of these martial-world principles. She only felt in her heart that it was wrong, and grieved for their mothers. She thought, besides, that even if the law had its ranks, a life was still a life, and to be harmed at another's whim ought to be answered for.

But the lives of these martial-world folk were, for some reason, ended just so, carelessly. No filial duty done, no mother's grace repaid, and yet they'd dare to die at a whim?

So she asked Ping Shen a very strange thing. "Your mother bore you and raised you, and it was no light thing. How dare you make so free with life and death? You might set no store by your own life. But your mother sets store by it."

Ping Shen, prostrate on the ground, started. He jerked his head up and looked at Qi Qian'er, and a good while later murmured, "Mother~ mother~?"

Qi Qian'er pursed her lips, and the flat, unrippled tone she'd feigned all this while broke at last into a swell of feeling. She tossed the token into Ping Shen's chest and said, with something of anger in her, "What 'Lady'! It's only that Old Xin's grown too old and can't manage the running of it anymore, so he pushed the duck up onto the perch! He schemed me, and that's how I got saddled with this burden of a name! I'm none of your martial-world people! And seeing you all carry on like this, I've no wish to be one of your martial-world people either! You, get up. What I want to ask is, what's this token for? Oh, and don't kneel. I won't do anything to you. A good, grown man, and it's death every other word out of your mouth! Were I your mother, I'd beat you dead with a great bamboo cane. Believe it?"

The truth was, Ping Shen had already guessed seven or eight parts of it. This superbly skilled, ghostly-acting Elm-Tree Lady, who spoke with not one whit of the martial-world manner, was no martial-world person at all. Clever as he was, though, turn it how he might, he could not have imagined that the Elm-Tree Lady had a truly merciful heart.

His eyes stung. He stood up slowly, and under cover of tidying his clothes wiped his tears away. Then he said to Qi Qian'er, smiling, "Lady, this is Yuegong Mountain's pass-token. With it, our merchant-house and escort-house goods, crossing the eight hundred li of their mountain range, need pay the road-money no more."

To break free at a stroke of Yuegong Mountain's grip, and save the family tens of thousands of taels in ready silver a year, that was why he'd stirred with greed. In supporting the new Emperor at Shaoshang, the Ping family had lost their very foundation.

Ah. So it was such a thing.

At that Qi Qian'er was puzzled. "But Yuegong Mountain isn't the court's Board of Revenue. By what right do they take your money? And why need you fear them..." Here, behind the mask, she hesitated, and understood it in the end.

Qi Qian'er sighed. "Just so, each has his own hard case. They've men like Pang Tu. In this world, fist and blade are forever bullying the honest folk who've no weapon in hand. What can the likes of you do?"

The nagging tone of an old lady of the street.

Ping Shen let out a slow breath and cupped his hands. "Just so! We too have wives and children and old parents at home, and go out into the world with our heads in our hands to feed the family. The Lady may know, we come through wind and rain. Along the whole road to Yanjing, there are seven or eight places like Yuegong Mountain. They set up checkpoints at the mountain foot and take a toll by hand, judged by the weight of the goods and their quality. So a string of ten tea-cakes, worth three strings at the tea hills, gets shaved and shaved the whole road down, until by the time it reaches Qingfeng it costs thirty strings." Ping Shen sighed as he finished.

Qi Qian'er heard him out, and after a while sighed too. "So the clever ones went off to the Jiusi Hall, and the fools still go plucking hairs off the tiger's head. Pitiful indeed. But they won't carry on many more days."

Qi Qian'er sat up on the flower and muttered it by her old lights. She had seen a golden age. After a golden age the martial-world folk became mere strolling players hawking their skills. By then, with all the four seas at peace, where would there be these charity pavilions past seeing the end of, and where a vexing place like Yuegong Mountain?

She only muttered it, but it set Ping Shen's heart drumming to hear.

At the last of her muttering, Qi Qian'er let out a long breath. "In the years of a dynasty's changing, no one has it easy. Had those before had any real authority, they'd not have let the realm be governed into such a state. I won't hide it from you, Keeper Ping. Today I went to find Old Xin for word of things, but rummage where I would, I couldn't turn the old thing out. There's no knowing what guilty deed he did, to be hiding from me so. Mm, the truth is, I don't come down the mountain. And you, walking north and south, your news is sharper than mine after all. I'd ask you a few things, only I've no such token as the old man gave to pay you with."

Ping Shen had been through the great rise and fall of his feelings, and by now was near enough calm again. Strange as Qi Qian'er's talk was to him, he answered it with the greatest good will.

He cupped his hands: "Does the Elder not know?"

Qi Qian'er asked, all wonder, "I, I don't even like to come down the mountain. What should I know?"

Ping Shen lifted his face and smiled at her, sincere. "By the rules of the martial world, save under the very feet of the Son of Heaven, in the five hundred li round Baiquan Mountain, so long as you do not permit it, the bandit will not rob, the idler will not extort, and the vile beggar will not knock at a door. So of all the small peddlers and traveling traders who come and go in these five hundred li, and every trade's head, and every martial family that has entered the martial world, of their business profits and their income from land, for every hundred cash earned, six cash ought to come to you as tribute."

Qi Qian'er was struck dumb on the instant. A good while later she asked, unable to believe it, "Give~ give me money? Earn a hundred and give me six?"

Were these martial-world people sick in the head?

Ping Shen nodded. "Yes! Owed to you! No one knows when this rule first arose, but it's of long standing. And beyond this, you may enjoy the private tributes that the great and noble houses render, and that sum is a thing not to be reckoned surely. My house is but a merchant house, and yet year by year we must send Yuegong Mountain ten thousand taels of tribute at the least. Yuegong Mountain has come through several dynasties and is thick with men of talent, and it's on this protection money that it all rests."

Qi Qian'er sat stunned a good while again, and said at last: "Since the third of the third, I've not seen one cash of it!"

Ping Shen was a shade taken aback. He stood up a little straighter, cupped his hands, and after a hesitation said, "That's because people can't find you. You've only to name a martial family to collect it on your behalf, and there'll be no end of them thronging to flatter you. Ever since the third of the third, when you took up Baiquan Mountain's flag, folk have been searching everywhere for you. Rest easy, Elder. My Ping family is but newly come to Yanjing, and from this year on will render the tribute by the old rule..." He looked up at Qi Qian'er, who sat silent on the flower, and dropped his head again. "Junior was a fool, and has done wrong again. This year I'm willing to render tenfold the tribute..."

"Wait, wait now..." Qi Qian'er hastily cut him off. "Am I mad, to take this money?"

Qi Qian'er was thoroughly vexed, and said, loud, "Of course I can't take it! Are you a fool? This realm is the court's realm, and all these ten thousand people are the Emperor's own subjects. This tribute you speak of, this protection money, why, it's the very taxes each trade ought to render up to the court! Now I understand it. The old dynasty already had its one-tax-in-ten, and then you'd have a martial-world fleecing laid on top of it. Keep on so, and the treasury goes empty. Should hard times come north or south, with what money is the court to relieve the disaster folk? And so the state falls, and the families are ruined."

She fixed her eyes on Ping Shen, in earnest, and charged him, "This matter ends here. Hereafter you're not to dare so much as mention it."

Hearing this much, Ping Shen was already at the very depths of admiration in his heart. His own house kept its strategist, but in the old days the man had only ever taught from the family's interest. Not until the old dynasty had fallen did an old master, half-veiled, speak out this same principle, and add a prophecy besides. Looking to the old dynasty's decline, the disorder of the martial world had been one of its very ills. Now the new dynasty had come, the good days of the martial world would, like as not, be finished within these ten years.

And who'd have thought it. He'd only idly touched on interest, and this one, oh, was truly the great-wisdom Elm-Tree Lady.

Qi Qian'er felt it had grown late, and feared the night-maids might notice, so she had a mind to go. She asked Ping Shen, "Keeper Ping."

"Here."

"The truth is, in seeking you today, besides the token, I wanted to ask~ why does Yuegong Mountain fix its eye on Baiquan Mountain without end? Why do they cling so to the Emperor's few old sabers, and not let go? What's the reasoning of it? As things stand now, a man with any brains at all wouldn't act like that?"

This time Ping Shen answered crisp. "A contest of strength. How should they not act so? I said it to you before, Elder, Yuegong Mountain has come through several dynasties. Besides its disciples past counting, it has grandmasters dwelling on the mountain to guard the veins of it, and the Twenty Old Recluses holding the mountain on heaped-up hills of gold and seas of silver. My own thought is, this is an old pattern of theirs! Perhaps, generation upon generation, at the founding of each new dynasty, they find some pretext at random to come down off the mountain and show the court their arm, to overawe someone. As for why they cling to the old sabers, we've talked it over among ourselves and hold different views. But since the Elder has asked, junior will lay them out for you one by one?"

Qi Qian'er was fairly dazed by now. Her heart held no more than a Guard Lane, and at its widest, the bounds of Quanhou Street. With a little money to spare she'd gone near the Emperor's feet to open her eyes a bit. How had she gotten rolled up into a thing like this?

Now, hearing all this jumble of hidden, generations-old feuds and grudges, she felt, mm, it was hard to put a word to.

She nodded to Ping Shen, and heard him say, "Elder, for the first of it. In the new dynasty the old sabers guard the south gate, and the south gate is the very face of the Liang palace, through which alone may pass the great amnesties, the presenting of captives, and the weighty affairs of the court. To damage the old sabers who guard it is to slap the face of the present court. For Yuegong Mountain to come and drive straight through, with none to bar the road, would overawe the whole realm on the new dynasty's behalf. In truth, old sabers or no old sabers, it's all one. If not this blade, then that hammer. It only turns on who's unlucky. They only seek out the hardest persimmon to bite, and bite it, and show the pain of it to all the realm..."

"How base!!"

Qi Qian'er heard it, flew into a rage, and swept her palm out all of a sudden. In that instant the ten thousand yellow petals of that garden left their flower hearts and went flying every way...

Eh. Three hundred cash a stalk, they were. And she'd only that moment paid the people thirty taels for them.

Qi Qian'er's mouth twitched. But Ping Shen looked about him in astonishment.

This skill. It was a thing never heard of.

This woman, this woman, this woman, what school and what sect was she of, in the end?

A good while later he said, his lips twitching, "The Elder... good, good skill."

Qi Qian'er dry-coughed a few times, and, having no wish to pay for it, turned the talk aside. "Mm~ and you, didn't you say you'd lay them out for me one by one? So there are other reasons besides, then?"

Ping Shen nodded: "Oh! Right, right..."

These two exchanged their news here. What Qi Qian'er did not know was that the old city of Qingfeng was, in fact, already in an uproar.

At the gate of the old city of Qingfeng, the Jiusi Hall had newly built a dueling platform, on account of that little scheme of Qi Qian'er's, back at the first. Tonight, beneath the platform, a white-haired old man sat on the ground, taking gold and silver paper ingots and paper money of every kind out of the baskets heaped beside him, and burning them.

Around this old man moved some people, marked off clear as the streams of Jing and Wei, the local folk of the martial world.

All round was ablaze with light. The craftsmen who ought to have been at the moving of the old city had been hired instead, and had come to work overtime at the platform, throwing up colored sheds. They drove their piles with the finest timber, and raised bright, open platforms one after another. When the sheds had first taken shape, the cloth merchants of every part of Qingfeng hauled up silks of every hue, and, as though the stuff cost nothing, wrapped the wooden sheds so gorgeously that each one was finer and lovelier than the last.

Near the two rows of viewing sheds hung oxhide tents past counting. On the outside of those tents hung the wooden nameplates of the martial families of the Baiquan Mountain country.

Ever since the Yuegong Mountain man had laid down his challenge notice the day before, the Guan-surnamed old recluse had bought heaps of paper money and paper figures, and was burning them there for his disciple and his disciple's disciples. He meant to keep burning them clean up to the hour of the duel next afternoon. He had nowhere else to go, anyway. The foot-inns wouldn't take him, the Beggar Sect wouldn't lend him one of their broken-temple roofs, and Baiquan Mountain was in a death feud with Yuegong Mountain now.

Either way it stood so, and either way it was a death.

The Baiquan Mountain line, for its part, had cut fully loose. Let it be as it would. You burn yours, and we'll do ours, and let no one get in the other's road.

Ever since the third of the third, when the five hundred li about had by default accepted that the Elm-Tree Lady had raised the flag, the men of face and standing in the martial world hereabouts had been searching everywhere for the Lady. This was for no other reason than that it was a great, great piece of business. Just consider. The new dynasty had settled, and the hundred trades were reviving. In the few hundred li round Baiquan Mountain there were ninety-five great trades with heads to be found, and the escort agencies besides, and the traveling traders. And just for Xiaonan Mountain's Five Manors and Twelve Gates over there, one gate alone brought in two thousand taels a year. A divine personage like the Elm-Tree Lady, once a man had hitched onto her, meant sure profit and no loss. And who knew, besides, what stood behind her? Never mind the manpower. Of the surface money alone, how much was there?

Since the fallen dynasty's end, the old recluses of the mountains had had no love of coming out, and so the tribute stood owed, three full years of it, by every house. This pack of blockheads cared nothing at all for the changing of a dynasty. They threw open their halls, bright and bold, cried their wares with all their might, and sent word round to every quarter, striving to make a fine show before the Lady, so that she might have use for them hereafter. People! A lifetime's struggling, and who among them is not, in the end, in it for a little profit?

But what they did not know was that up on the tower of the old city wall, no fewer than twenty accountants sat on the ground. Fearing to alarm these martial-world folk, they dared not so much as click an abacus, and reckoned it all by hand.

When a cart bearing three chests of silver was carried into a certain hall's tent below the right-hand platform, a martial-world man cried out at the tent's mouth, "The Cui-Liu Fragrance Tower of Sangle County, twelve houses, three years' savings paid clean at one stroke! Tribute to the Elm-Tree Lady, eighteen thousand taels!"

The cheer rose on the instant, and the outdoing and the show grew ever greater.

When a hall had gathered the silver into its tent, an accountant would come into the side room behind the old city tower with a full-written account book, and hand the account to the person in the seat of honor.

The Second Prince, Yang Zhen, turned a few pages of the account book. Seeing the sum total, he'd have slapped the table, but his palm came down onto a soft cushion someone had swiftly slid over from one side.

Yang Zhen was beside himself, and pointed at the account book. "Little Martial-Uncle! They're taking from the scent-powder towers now, the money of the bawds. Only look, one tavern courtesan of Sangle County brings in fifty-seven thousand taels of income! This, this is past all bounds..."

Meng Dingchen bent his head and looked at the account book, and said, his face solemn and cool, "It's not the first time you've seen this thing. Why should the Second Master fly into so great a rage?"

Yang Zhen's tone was cold to the last degree, and it was a while before he said, "Hmph. What 'Elm-Tree Lady' that peels her own skin and cuts her own flesh to save the ten thousand people? I see she's all one lot with the rest. Nothing more than this after all!"

Meng Dingchen laughed softly. "Nothing more than this, and yet we must bear with her, yield to her, hold her up, and curry her favor. Else, let her but take one thing amiss and loose her hold, and Guan Zhuping enters the capital. When the old sabers are beaten, it's your father the Emperor's face that's damaged. By that time, never mind this bit of silver, not gold mountains and silver seas would win the court's face back again. And besides, even should Guan Zhuping lose, his house has nineteen more old recluses. Now, with the court stretched tight on every side, and the Emperor with more to do than his one body can manage, however angry you are, you must bear it and wait. One day the sun will be bright, and then, whatever you'd do, you may do as you please..."

Yang Zhen was long silent.

Meng Dingchen looked to left and to right. When the people about had stood and gone, and were well off, he said at last, "Zhen'er, it's not yet your time to decide."