“Of course not.” Shen Qing laughed through her exasperation. Had Xu Yanchi really gained a reputation for being some kind of pervert out in the alleyways?
“Good,” Ji Qingshu breathed, then flared up again. “I’m not trying to be malicious, but a crooked head makes crooked rafters. With an uncle like that, it’s no wonder the Marquis of Guangping could indulge a mistress and ruin his wife.”
“Shen jiejie, why don’t you divorce him?” Ji Qingshu blurted suddenly. “What’s the point of keeping a man like that? I’ll speak to my brother the emperor — he’s been so kind to me lately. If I ask, he’ll grant it.”
“A divorce isn’t so simple.” Shen Qing sighed inwardly. “If he refuses, even the emperor can’t truly tear a marriage apart without causing a fuss.”
“But doesn’t he only have eyes for that concubine?” Ji Qingshu couldn’t understand it. “If he truly loved her, why never make her the wife? Why keep her forever on the fringes?”
Shen Qing had wondered the same. Lately, Xu Yanchi’s behavior had become hard to read. Was he spiteful, unwilling to let her go because he couldn’t bear to see her happy without him? Or was he simply greedy, wanting everything and never willing to surrender any of it?
“Men are funny,” Ji Qingshu said, shaking her head and sticking out her tongue. “They know something’s useless but cling to it anyway. I’d rather never marry a prince than end up with one like that.”
“Princess, don’t paint all men with the same brush,” Shen Qing chided, amused.
They reached the riding grounds and Ji Qingshu wanted to change into riding clothes with her. Zhu Xing hurried over. “Your Highness, my lady is still convalescing and can’t run about on horseback.”
Ji Qingshu’s face fell. “What? I heard Shen jiejie grew up on the frontier — I was hoping to see her go berserk on a horse.”
“I can’t ride, but we can shoot,” Shen Qing offered. “I’m not bad with a bow.”
That perked Ji Qingshu up. “Then I’ll be watching closely.”
“After I returned last time, my brother truly did hire some trainers for me. I’ve already trimmed off a few pounds.” She pulled up her sleeve to show the small muscles she’d worked for.
Shen Qing, willowy and slender, had seen men with bulging muscles before, but the sight of well-defined muscle on a woman so close was novel.
Shen Qing loosed several arrows; each struck the center of the target. Ji Qingshu clapped and cheered.
They rode back as the sun slanted west. News had reached the mansion: Xu Yanchi fell gravely ill soon after and slipped into a fevered stupor, babbling deliriously, which left Jiang Chan frantic. Xu Wei was returned as well, barely alive. They told the family he would escape the death penalty but could not avoid a heavy sentence — once he was able to walk, he would be exiled two thousand li to the northwest.
Madam Ge collapsed into a wail and fainted; only the old dowager insisted they carry the family back to the second branch. Xu Chenghui, once hale, wasted away; the household was in chaos, and no one had time to tend to him. Outside Shen Qing’s Zuo Ying courtyard, the rest of the Guangping residence was plunged in grief.
Shen Qing, by contrast, moved through the days with strange calm. After that day she’d hardly left the house; she lay about and did nothing. When Yingxiu learned of Xu Wei’s fate she bristled. “Miss, why didn’t you petition His Majesty? Are you really going to let the old master off like that?”
Shen Qing tapped Yingxiu’s forehead, smiling. “You think I’m the sort to go and whisper slanders at court?”
Yingxiu looked around, giggled, and dropped her voice. “I wasn’t slandering, Miss. I was just — spreading pillow talk.”
Shen Qing made as if to swat her and Yingxiu ducked away, and they both forgot the pillow-talk confession for the moment.
What she didn’t know was that Yingxiu’s whispered machinations were precisely why Xu Wei had been spared execution. If he had died in the imperial prison, Yingxiu’s careful network of favors in the manor — everything she’d built to secure her place — would have crumbled. Exile, however, opened other possibilities. The northwest road was long; travelers died on it as a matter of course. Some weakened men collapsed and died days into the journey; others succumbed after they reached exile for some unrelated cause. Once someone was sent that far, it was almost impossible to follow or to seek justice.
Yingxiu had set things in motion: keep him alive for the road, wait until he was near death, then finish him so that his end would look like another misfortune. Death by the road would be a mercy; she wanted him to suffer, to grasp at life only for her to snuff out that last thread with her own hand.
The night after Xu Wei was brought home, he woke — a bundle of terror. He recoiled from anyone who tried to touch him and curled into the corner of his bed, whispering, “Your Majesty… I was wrong… I won’t ever do it again,” over and over. Madam Ge wailed anew.
Xu Wei would never forget that night: the instruments of torment around him, the emperor in black standing like something impossible and beautiful, watching a tear of blood fall from Xu Wei’s ripped sleeve and smile as if tasting it. The blood spattered his face; the emperor wiped none of it, letting it dry like red spider lilies blooming along the road to the underworld.
And Xu Wei would never forget what the emperor whispered into his ear.
“You wretch — how dare you covet her?”
“You like your wine? I have fine old vintages. Perhaps I should gouge your eyes, lop off your limbs, poison your throat, and steep you in a jar for forty-nine days — to live in stupor, neither awake nor dead. How would you like that?”
“I thought it entertaining… but if you die, she will be displeased that I acted without warning…”
Xu Wei soiled himself in fear. Before he could draw breath in relief, the instruments were pushed into him, tearing flesh and drawing blood.
“But I”, the emperor said, “do not intend to let you off so easily…”
Until that day, Xu Wei had never fully understood why Ji Junye’s cruelty was spoken of with such hush and dread. Afterwards, that name’s reputation made ghastly sense — and Xu Wei would have preferred never to know.
A bloody storm swept the capital. Beyond the Jin family, more than a dozen aristocratic households were implicated; none listed on the ledger escaped. In the early years of the Jing state a culture of preying on young boys ran rampant among the elite. Later administrations tried to clamp down, but those efforts barely made a dent. This purge, however, was a thorough reshuffle: the capital’s atmosphere tightened as if by a noose.
In the ledger of guilty names, the Guangping household had been lucky to escape anything beyond reputational damage.
When Xu Yanchi lay delirious, Shen Qing had gone to see him only once, as society and rank required — a brief look and then she left, instructing servants to bring word of both Xu Yanchi’s and Xu Chenghui’s sicknesses to Lu Mian.
That morning Lu Mian returned to Tonghua Lane pale and hollow-eyed. Xiaodie rushed out to meet her with a cup of water. “Miss, did you see the Marquis and the young master?”
Lu Mian shook her head, anger flickering beneath exhaustion. “No. They knew who I was, but they wouldn’t let me in. They claim they never met me.”
It wasn’t Shen Qing; it had to be that second madam behind it.
“Don’t be angry yet,” Xiaodie said, nudging a small bright smile. “It isn’t all bad. The pendant you asked me to look into — there’s finally news.”
Lu Mian’s eyes snapped bright. “Really?”