Poetry Chants, Saber Howls – Chapter 31
by Little PandaUnfathomable Hearts, Each Suspicious of the Other; Hoping to Restore What Was, New Waves Rise Instead (Part 3)
“Since Doctor Xie healed your injuries, she’s the one you ought to thank,” Yan Rushun said, smiling as she walked over. “But she’ll most likely be off first thing tomorrow morning. If you clean out a room, I’d be the only one enjoying the benefit — and I’d hardly dare bask in that light.”
“But I’m lodging in your courtyard tonight, and for that I must thank you, Lady. And precisely because Doctor Xie leaves tomorrow, and because I have nothing of value to my name, I’ve turned it over and over — the only way I can repay her is to clean out the back kitchen and cook her a morning meal.” Here Yin Teng paused, as if suddenly realizing something, and went on sheepishly, uneasily, “Though I did truly forget to ask you first, Lady — would you be willing to let me borrow your kitchen?”
Earlier, Yan Rushun hadn’t wanted them staying here at all, for fear they’d discover Peng Lie hidden on the premises. But now that they’d all moved in, so long as they kept away from the room where he was stashed, she had no reason to be unreasonable about whatever else they did.
So she smiled. “Then make yourself at home.”
Yin Teng nodded, hoisted the water bucket, and turned away.
Before, Yin Teng had genuinely been injured, supported along the road by Yan Rushun and Ling Suihan, and no one had noticed anything amiss. But now, without anyone’s help, she walked alone toward the back kitchen — her steps steady yet heavy.
That was unlike a martial practitioner.
Anyone who had trained in the disciplines, anyone who knew even a little lightness skill, would naturally develop a gait both light and coordinated. So an ordinary martial artist, watching Yin Teng walk, would conclude that she truly was a commoner who had never trained.
But Yan Rushun was no ordinary martial artist.
She was a supreme master of lightness skill in the jianghu.
In that art, no one in the martial world today could claim to be her equal. Which meant that not only was her own footwork peerless, she could effortlessly discern any other practitioner’s school, origins, and depth of mastery. Where others saw nothing, Yan Rushun watched Yin Teng’s retreating figure for a few moments and quickly understood:
— The woman was deliberately sinking and weighting her footsteps.
Yan Rushun pondered a while, then couldn’t resist following. She trailed Yin Teng to the kitchen and watched her take out a handkerchief, dip it in the bucket’s clean water, and start scrubbing the grime from the stove — rough, calloused hands moving through a crisp, efficient sequence. That, at least, was no pretense.
A pampered daughter of a great house, whose ten fingers had never touched spring water1, could never have done such work.
Even disciples of famed sects or martial clans, raised from childhood on saber and spear, had rarely touched this kind of housework, and could hardly have been so deft at it.
Seeing this much, Yan Rushun finally stepped forward, produced her own handkerchief, and began helping Yin Teng clean. Yin Teng blinked, glanced at her sidelong with suspicion, and hesitated — but swallowed whatever she’d meant to say. In the end the two of them worked on in silence, until, though the sky beyond the window was still pitch dark, the opening drums came drifting faintly on the wind from afar.
The drums had traveled so far that their once-resonant booming reached their ears as little more than a thread of sound — but the message was clear: the night curfew had ended.
“The Yin Hour2 must have arrived.” Yin Teng set down her handkerchief and spoke again. “Other things are fine once they’re scrubbed clean, but pots and bowls hold food — I’d only trust them brand new. I’ll go have a look in the streets.”
This time she didn’t wait for Yan Rushun to say anything; Yin Teng was out the door at once. And however curious Yan Rushun might be about her errand, so long as Ling Suihan and Xie Yuanjue had not yet left this place, she had to stay and hold the ruined estate, lest they discover Peng Lie. She watched Yin Teng’s figure dwindle out of sight, smiled a helpless smile, walked to the central courtyard, leapt up, and settled onto a tree to wait. After roughly a shichen, around the Mao Hour, Yin Teng finally came back.
She was not alone.
Beneath the deep-gray sky came two young men in cotton short-jackets — shop lads, by their dress — each hugging a great bathing tub as they trudged into the ruined estate. From her perch above, Yan Rushun could even see the sundry goods packed inside the tubs.
The brand-new pots and bowls were in Yin Teng’s own hands.
Yan Rushun had roamed north and south for years, seen plenty of the world, and was invariably unflappable in the face of surprises — yet even she stood a little dumbfounded at the sight. “If this weren’t my estate, I’d have thought you were furnishing your new home.”
Yin Teng gave a small start — she plainly hadn’t noticed Yan Rushun up in the tree. She lifted her gaze; the thin morning light fell across her face, making her strange, twisted features all the more stark, yet her smile seemed perfectly sincere. “I was just thinking on the street: Doctor Xie and Heroine Ling have slept a night in a place like this. When they wake, they’ll likely want a hot bath more than breakfast — wouldn’t you say?”
“If you have that kind of money, you’d do better to simply pay her consultation fee.”
“I’ve traveled far to visit kin — how could I not carry plenty of money? But Doctor Xie’s medical skill is so brilliant that repaying her with mere gold and silver3 could never express what’s in my heart.”
The Doctor Xie in question did not drift up from deep sleep until more than half a shichen later.
By then the day was fully light: the red sun newly risen, rosy dawn filling the heavens.
Because of her illness, Xie Yuanjue could neither eat too late in the day nor skimp on a full night’s sleep. So she had ignored the room’s filth altogether, taken a sable-fur blanket from her travel pack, and gone to bed early on the couch.
As for Ling Suihan, she had stood in the room a while, reluctant to lie down — but then reflected that this journey was no sightseeing tour, and that far harsher conditions surely lay ahead. She stopped caring about anything at all and simply dropped off to sleep.
Thus the two of them knew nothing whatsoever of what Yan Rushun and Yin Teng had done in the night. Waking to find that one room of the house actually showed signs of hearth smoke, they made for the back kitchen in unison — and there, busy at the stove, were Chongming and Yin Teng. Both newcomers froze in the doorway, half suspecting that this single sleep had lasted several days.
— How could this vast, ruined estate have one room, and one room only, unlike all the rest, without a cobweb or a speck of dust?
“This is…” Ling Suihan said, incredulous. “You two cleaned all this?”
“Doctor Xie, Heroine Ling — you’ve come at just the right moment.” Yin Teng smiled. “For some reason I couldn’t sleep last night, and thinking of the great kindness you’ve all shown me, I did a few small things. I’ve just boiled two pots of hot water as well — would you like to wash the dust of the road off yourselves?”
At that, Ling Suihan looked at Xie Yuanjue.
Xie Yuanjue looked back at Ling Suihan.
Both knew there was something odd in Yin Teng’s fervor. They hesitated a moment — but in the end could not bring themselves to refuse.
After all, there was no woman in this world who did not love cleanliness.
“I’ve set the tubs in those two rooms — let me show you the way.” Yin Teng paused, then turned her head to Yan Rushun. “The congee in the pot — I’ll trouble you to keep an eye on it, Lady.”
The estate had rooms to spare, but most of its windows were shattered, so Yin Teng had also bought two curtains and hung them from the listing beams. Xie Yuanjue entered, glanced around, and found a single wooden table standing by the window; there was nothing for it but to set her travel pack and medicine box on the table. Then she turned, walked a few steps, lifted the curtain, and went to the tub.
A moment later, Yin Teng came to the window on soft, quiet feet.
Everything as anticipated: Xie Yuanjue’s pack and medicine box lay before her eyes. She studied the way the pack was knotted for a moment, then swiftly opened it and rifled through the contents — two scented sachets, several ingots of silver, a Guosuo Travel Permit4, and a great many garments and ornaments.
And a stack of drawings.
Half were landscapes; the other half, portraits. In the latter, the subject wore different clothes in every sheet — standing, seated, running; riding a horse or shooting arrows; perched on a garden wall or darting through market lanes — but the face was plainly the same girl, ten years old or so, bright-eyed and vivid with spirit.
Yin Teng neither knew who the girl was nor cared to know. She returned everything to its place — to its exact place, down to the hair — retied the pack with the same knot, then opened the medicine box beside it: silver needles, small blades, white cloth, and assorted bottles and jars, plainly all medical supplies, complete in every particular.
Still nothing of what Yin Teng wanted.
— So Xie Yuanjue hadn’t lied last night. She most likely never found that booklet on Peng Lie at all.
Yin Teng was not the least disappointed.
When she had planned that “chance meeting” with Xie Yuanjue, she had done so on nothing more than a “what if.”
What if Xie Yuanjue, treating Peng Lie’s wounds, had discovered the booklet hidden on him? What if Peng Lie had shown the slightest care for it? What if that reaction had piqued Xie Yuanjue’s curiosity — and she had snatched the booklet away, uncovered its secret, and kept it for herself?
Though the odds on all those what-ifs combined were one in ten thousand.
She had to try anyway.
Failure cost her nothing; she would simply think up other means and keep hunting Peng Lie’s whereabouts. She had known far too much disappointment since childhood, and understood deeply that good fortune was never going to fall her way.
She left the room and returned to the kitchen, where the congee had finished simmering. She took four sets of new bowls and chopsticks to the well and washed them. By the time Ling Suihan and Xie Yuanjue had bathed, changed into clean clothes, and come to offer their thanks, Xie Yuanjue was halfway through her words of gratitude when she paused — a beat no longer than a breath — glanced down at Yin Teng’s hands, and, without a flicker of expression, finished what she was saying.
Afterward the four of them sat around the table and shared the first breakfast since their meeting — a meal that passed almost entirely in silence.
Not for any particular reason; they simply could not find a single thing to chat about.
Only when the bowls and chopsticks were set down did Yan Rushun turn to Yin Teng. “You’ve been at it so long — will you take a bath now that you’ve eaten?”
“No need. I’m off to find my kin today, and I’ll lodge at some other inn before long. I’m truly sorry to have imposed on you for a night.” Yin Teng refused flatly. Before Yan Rushun could get a word out, a sudden thud, thud of knocking rattled the courtyard gate.
Only one person knew the four of them were staying here: Chang Ping. Naturally assuming it was her, they rose together and headed for the front gate. Xie Yuanjue slowed her steps, fell to the rear, and called softly, “Ling Suihan.”
The one-armed woman looked back, considered a moment, and moved to her side.
Xie Yuanjue’s voice dropped lower still. “Later, check your travel pack — see whether anything is missing.”
“I looked just now.” Ling Suihan blinked once, then caught the implication. “You mean Yin Teng went through your pack?”
Xie Yuanjue said, “There’s a faint scent on her hands — identical to the sachets in my pack.”
Ling Suihan was more startled still. She stared hard at the pack on the other woman’s back and sniffed with all her might. “How did I never smell it?”
The scent on Yin Teng’s hands, the scent of whatever sachets lived in Xie Yuanjue’s pack — she could not detect the least trace of either. But she genuinely admired Xie Yuanjue’s mastery of medicine and poison, and reflected that a physician who spent years upon years among herbs of every kind might well have a sharper nose than ordinary folk. So she believed Xie Yuanjue’s judgment without reservation.
The fire in her chest flared up all at once.
Last night, her suspicion of Yin Teng had been mere conjecture — and even if Yin Teng’s identity was truly no simple matter, that didn’t mean she was after them. She could hardly have confronted the woman to her face on that basis.
But now that Yin Teng had actually done such a thing, she could not let it pass.
Ling Suihan had been blunt from the cradle — any quarrel had to be settled then and there, clearly and completely. As the proverb goes, rivers and mountains change sooner than a person’s nature; if anything, the catastrophe she had suffered and the hardships she had endured had only made her more unbending. She had already swallowed far too much for the sake of her vengeance; in everything else, she would swallow nothing more. She strode forward at once, calling Yin Teng’s name.
Yin Teng looked back. “What is it, Lady Ling?”
“Just now, you—” Ling Suihan began, coming up beside her. But the four of them were nearly at the gate now, and in that instant the two figures standing outside it filled her eyes. She stiffened, and the words died on her lips.
It wasn’t just Chang Ping.
There was also a young woman in dark eagle-patterned robes, whom she and Xie Yuanjue had seen the previous evening.
She was a member of the Iron Eagle Guard.
The author has something to say:
It’s true that Yin Teng did all this just to rifle through Shejia’s pack — but this ruined estate is, after all, the home the four of them will share from now on. Everything else can wait, but the two great matters of eating and bathing simply had to be settled first 23333
Footnotes
- 十指不沾阳春水 | Shi Zhi Bu Zhan Yangchun Shui | Literally 'ten fingers never dipped in the waters of spring' — a classical description of a noblewoman raised apart from every form of domestic toil.
- 寅时 | Yin Shi | Third of the twelve traditional double-hour divisions of the Chinese day, running roughly 3:00 to 5:00 AM; in Tang-era Chang'an the opening drums sounded around this hour to lift the nightly curfew.
- 黄白之物 | Huangbai Zhi Wu | Literally 'yellow and white things' — a classical euphemism for gold and silver, common in vernacular fiction; polite talk of money that avoids naming it outright.
- 过所文书 | Guosuo Wenshu | The Tang dynasty's official travel passport, issued by local authorities and required to clear prefectural checkpoints and enter the capital; every lawful traveler carried one.
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