Chapter 7

On the ninth day, Meng Fushan celebrated his birthday.

As the current left chancellor, Meng Fushan was elegant and gentlemanly. He enjoyed befriending men of letters and was widely praised. The leader of the civil officials and an inspirational model for imperial examination candidates, he received calling cards from many candidates seeking his patronage with every examination, and readily took them under his wing.

Yan Xiang had only just become right chancellor and had limited prestige. For the moment, Meng Fushan was unrivaled in prominence. The Meng family sent invitations far and wide, and even the second prince and Prince Huai honored them with their presence.

The Meng family's eldest son, Meng Huaidao, had also hurried back from his post outside the capital. He was four years older than Meng Zhou and served as an official elsewhere. Meng Fushan intended to have him transferred back to the capital, so Lady Zhou arranged a lavish banquet, taking the opportunity to seek good marriages for both her children.

In the faint morning light, sparse shadows swayed as everyone in the Meng residence methodically prepared for the birthday banquet. Lady Zhou wore magnificent clothes, the four-butterfly gold dangling hairpin at her temple flashing with every step. She looked radiant, even her usually harsh features appearing richly prosperous. After inspecting the kitchens and front courtyard, she nodded in satisfaction and told the steward, "The second young master is ill. Don't let him come to the front courtyard. We couldn't bear the responsibility if he passed his illness to our distinguished guests."

The steward froze. "Yes, madam."

"Today is Father's birthday. By all rights, he mustn't go out either. He should stay home and pray for Father's good fortune. Remember that, steward?" Meng Huaihan had come over at some point and hooked her arm through Lady Zhou's. "Mother, we'll have quite a show to watch today."

Dressed in a soft gosling-yellow blouse with a light touch of makeup, she looked charming and lovely. She nestled beside her mother like an oriole, every inch a young daughter, yet glints of malice kept flashing through her eyes, like a bird possessed by a venomous snake.

"Don't go too far. Today is an important occasion for introducing your elder brother." Lady Zhou offered a rare word of caution.

"Don't worry."

The intermittent sounds of strings, flutes, and opera drifted into the secluded little courtyard at the rear right of the Meng residence. Meng Zhou stretched in bed, his cheeks rosy, half his face buried in the quilt, leaving only a pair of bright, round eyes darting about.

The Court of Judicial Review had recently been overseeing a review of case files. Stacks of files arrived from across the country, and everyone was run ragged checking their formatting and whether the verdicts complied with regulations. Meng Zhou also had to make time to investigate the gambling den, leaving him rushing about all day.

Each day, he either followed Boss Huang or kept watch around the gambling den in different disguises, and discovered that they were on very good terms with a pawnshop. After gamblers lost all their silver at the tables, the den offered them loans to win it back, and most of that money could never be repaid. They then forced the gamblers to dig out their treasured family heirlooms and the like and pawn them at the designated shop, never to be recovered.

Boss Huang had a lover in a brothel. She wore a jade hairpin beyond her station, half a lotus blossom opening at an angle, smooth and dainty.

Meng Zhou rolled over, lifted a bed board, and took out a hairpin. Sunlight shone through it, delicate and translucent. It was unmistakably the other half of that hairpin. He had guessed correctly: the people who had harmed Jiang Yao and Jiang Xin were indeed the same group... Just who hated the Jiang family so deeply?

"I'm sorry, my child. I have nothing to leave you. This hairpin, when you take a wife someday..."

Meng Zhou rolled over again. He would get the hairpin back, but as for taking a wife... that would not happen as Jiang Yao had imagined.

The gender was wrong; he couldn't hold a girl back.

The noise outside grew louder and louder. Meng Zhou rolled around twice, then scrambled out of bed. Today was his day off, so he might as well visit a brothel. He felt his face, wondering whether Boss Huang's lover would fancy his looks.

Meng Fushan celebrated his birthday while he visited a brothel. Excellent. A real slap in the face.

The moment Meng Zhou stepped out of his room, someone blocked him. "Second young master, madam told you to stay in bed and recuperate. The front courtyard is full of distinguished guests. You can't..."

"Do I look ill?" Meng Zhou scoffed. He wouldn't go even if they begged him. "Move. I'm going out."

"Madam said that today is the master's birthday. You must stay home, young master."

Now Meng Zhou was curious. They wouldn't let him see anyone or leave the house. Something was definitely afoot. Lady Zhou thought quite highly of him, sending five or six expert hired fighters to keep him under close guard.

He guessed Meng Huaidao was meant to steal the limelight today, and Lady Zhou feared he would spoil it. He had little interest in Meng Huaidao. According to his wet nurse, Meng Huaidao acted as though he couldn't even see him. That meant there was no grudge between them.

Meng Zhou returned to his room to practice calligraphy. The longer he stayed in this damned place, the more he felt that having one more skill meant having one more way out at a critical moment.

Like that time in the bridal chamber with Chu Huaiyin... Ahem.

Meng Zhou lowered his eyes and brows, taking up brushes in both hands. After finishing a line, he switched to practicing with the other hand. Two entirely different styles of handwriting intermingled unevenly on the pale yellow Xuan paper.

The Meng family's front courtyard.

The old duke's granddaughter, the empress's niece, Yan Xiang's legitimate daughter, the vice minister of war's second daughter... As though choosing cabbages, Lady Zhou surveyed the noble young ladies surrounded by admirers, weighing up which cabbage best suited Meng Huaidao.

The men and women sat separately at the banquet. Meng Huaihan stayed beside Lady Zhou, but her thoughts had flown entirely to the men's tables.

At her first sight of Chu Huaiyin, she had been struck by his heavenly looks and secretly given him her heart. A girl raised in the capital could hardly help longing for the god of war in the storybooks. Now that she had met him, his handsome looks and intelligence surpassed even the rumors.

Lady Zhou had never taught her restraint, and Meng Huaihan had never learned it. At this moment, she stared straight at Chu Huaiyin. The noble young ladies beside her secretly laughed. A daughter raised by a merchant's daughter, indeed-her ignorance was exactly the same. Although almost every noble young lady present harbored girlish dreams of marrying into Prince Huai's household as his principal consort, that did not stop them from mocking Meng Huaihan for being lovestruck.

"Mother." Meng Huaihan tugged at Lady Zhou's sleeve, her cheeks flushed and her gaze lowered.

Lady Zhou had other calculations in mind. Prince Huai and the second prince were currently competing for the position of crown prince, and there was no telling who would ultimately win. Meng Fushan followed the sages' example of prudently preserving himself, taking neither side. When it came to the younger generation, their marriages naturally could not be treated carelessly.

Prince Huai's principal consort, the second prince's secondary consort... Lady Zhou weighed them in her mind before painfully relinquishing the idea, hesitating as though the two most exalted princes of Great Wei would immediately seek her daughter's hand if she merely spoke.

Seeing Lady Zhou shake her head, Meng Huaihan, who had always gotten whatever she wanted, stamped her foot in indignation. By the time the succession was settled, Chu Huaiyin would already have someone at his side.

In her view, Chu Huaiyin would certainly use the position of principal consort as a bargaining chip to win over powerful ministers. As long as her father agreed...

Meng Huaihan swept her gaze over the sweetly smiling noble young ladies. A bunch of useless fools! What good was liking Chu Huaiyin when they didn't even dare look at him? How could they compete with her?

Seeing that Meng Huaihan seemed to have forgotten the business at hand, her maid leaned close and whispered something in her ear.

Meng Huaihan's lips curved. "She's here? Let's go have a look."

Avoiding the others, she waited a while on the path leading to the back gate. Before long, someone brought over a pale-faced maid. Her manner was frivolous, her cowering expression faintly revealing a worldly wantonness. Illness clung to her, her beauty haggard. She did not look like a maid of the Meng household.

Meng Huaihan stepped back twice and covered her nose with a handkerchief. "Stay away from me."

The woman took two steps back. Meng Huaihan continued, "I'll take you over now. You understand everything you're supposed to do? As long as Meng Zhou touches you and someone sees it, given how my father conducts himself, you're certain to become the Meng family's second young madam. A thousand times better than staying in that brothel, a faded flower covered in diseased blotches, only to be thrown out!"

Meng Huaihan had struck the woman's sore spot, and her face paled. Losing her looks was a devastating blow to any woman who made her living from her face, to say nothing of having contracted that unclean disease. Everyone avoided her like the plague.

Watching the woman's wavering expression slowly firm, Meng Huaihan smiled contemptuously. People at the end of their rope were the least able to resist temptation. She would see which family's daughter still dared marry a beast who, instead of greeting guests on his father's grand birthday, brought a diseased prostitute from a brothel home to fool around!

"Han'er, what are you doing?"

Meng Huaihan jolted, her mind going blank for an instant before she recognized her own elder brother's voice. She adjusted her hair and adopted a soft, sweet voice. "Brother, what are you doing here?"

"Han'er, you're an unmarried young lady. Where did you learn such things? If outsiders found out, you, you... they might suspect you also..." Meng Huaidao had only come out for a breath of air. He was not quite used to the capital's ways. People of higher status than him were everywhere at the banquet, and Lady Zhou kept urging him to make connections, as though he had returned to some time in the past.

"Send her back." Meng Huaidao sighed. Whatever else, they were all members of the Meng family. A scandal would bring him no credit either.

"I won't."

"Han'er, be good."

"Who do you think I'm doing this for?! Think of Mother, how much she's suffered! You work so hard at your post away from home that you can't come back even twice a year. You have no idea how much bullying we've endured. Father won't promote you because he wants to avoid suspicion, but Meng Zhou? He schemed to force Mother to hand over that imperial decree, then accepted his appointment as a judicial officer at the Court of Judicial Review the very next day. He hasn't even grown a full head of hair, yet he surpasses you at every turn. Look at those guests outside. How many still think Meng Zhou is the Meng family's legitimate son!"

That imperial decree had originally been bestowed on Jiang Yao. After Jiang Yao died, Lady Zhou had appropriated it and hidden it away rather than give it to Meng Zhou. Meng Zhou had only used a little strategy to make Lady Zhou hand it over.

Yet in Meng Huaihan's telling, they seemed to have suffered an enormous injustice.

Meng Huaidao remained unmoved. Meng Huaihan's eyes shifted, and she changed tack. "Brother, did you know Sister Lin came to our house with Madam Lin today?"

Seeing that she had caught her brother's attention, Meng Huaihan rejoiced inwardly. "I know you like Sister Lin, and Sister Lin is interested too. But Madam Lin was close to Jiang Yao before she married. Mother sounded her out for you today, but everything Madam Lin said suggested that she wants Meng Zhou as her son-in-law. Who knows, tomorrow there might even be rumors of a betrothal arranged before birth. What will you do then, Brother? What will Sister Lin do? Can you bear to watch her marry Meng Zhou, seeing each other every day and calling each other elder brother and sister-in-law?"

Every word Meng Huaihan spoke stabbed straight into her brother's heart.

Meng Huaidao's expression changed drastically, and he abruptly retreated two steps. His lips parted. "Shuang'er-no, does Miss Lin really think that? Does she feel that way about me too..."

"Yes," Meng Huaihan said firmly. In truth, just like Lady Zhou, she hated anything and anyone connected to Jiang Yao. She had never exchanged a single word with Miss Lin, much less knew what she thought.

Meng Huaidao stood rigidly in place, torn by an inner struggle. As Meng Huaihan passed him, his right hand lifted in a halfhearted attempt to stop her.

"Hm? Brother?"

Meng Huaidao paused, then raised his hand instead to shield his eyes from the dazzling noon sunlight. Slowly, he closed his eyes, letting his sister lead the woman away to ruin his younger brother.

He remembered arriving in the capital with Lady Zhou when he was only three. The mistress of the Meng household had still been Jiang Yao. During the day, Lady Zhou made him politely address Jiang Yao as madam. At night, she pinched his arm, weeping and scolding him for being a disappointment and failing to win Meng Fushan's affection.

A child did not understand the conflicts between adults. He only knew that Jiang Yao gave him delicious sweets, and that when sunlight fell on Jiang Yao's clothes, it was warmer than Lady Zhou. Jiang Yao had even let him touch the younger brother still in her belly. She said that once the great general repelled the foreign enemies and returned victorious, she would leave, and his younger brother would not compete with him for anything in the Meng family. Smiling, she had asked whether he would still dislike this little brother.

How had he answered then?

Meng Huaidao blinked, his eyes utterly dry.

He had said, "I'll protect my little brother."

His childish voice had been clear and ringing, every word resounding with conviction.