The whole city said I'd been taken.
I am Su Zhen, only daughter of the One Word House, eighteen years old, and I married Pei Yan, Earl of Yongchang.
It sounds well enough. An earl. A title. Betrothal papers stamped in vermilion.
But everyone in the capital knew the Yongchang estate had nothing left except the gate.
Three years ago his father — Pei Zhongyan, General of the Northern Marches — died at Wangsha Pass. Three thousand men went under the sand and not one came back. The court set down four characters: rash, and overrun. A posthumous honor for form's sake, and then nothing.
His son inherited the title at seventeen.
And began selling the house.
Vases, paintings, horses, and at last the inkstone the late Emperor had granted his grandfather. He sold steadily, unhurriedly, for three years without a month's pause, the way other men eat their supper. When he'd sold, he drank. When he'd drunk, he sold again.
People called him a wastrel.
I called him merchandise.
Everything on this earth has a price. The only question is who pays it, and in what.
The night before the wedding, my father sat by the lamp.
The lamp was no use to him. He had been blind three years. But he still had it lit — he said light made his hands warm, and warm hands read an object true.
He held a piece of jade someone had pawned that afternoon. His thumb went over the face of it, back and forth, slow, the way you read a page.
"Zhen'er. Have you thought this through?"
"I have." I went on wiping down the counter. "Listen to the arithmetic."
I counted it off on my fingers.
"The One Word House is three generations old. Great-grandfather hung that board himself. For three years the Tongyuan Trading House has been buying up Yonghe Street, one end to the other, and we're the last shop left. Uncle Wei has offered to buy us three times, and every time it was to help you. Tell me, Father — do you think he asks a fourth time?"
My father said nothing.
"I don't want to sell. But they don't need me to sell. They only need to squeeze. A pawnshop the constables drop into every third day — who's going to bring anything through that door?"
"So I marry." I dusted off my hands. "I marry into an earl's house, and this shop becomes the property of a countess. A title won't feed you and won't clothe you, but it frightens people beautifully. Think about it — who takes down an earl's signboard? Even an earl who hasn't a copper to his name."
"And the man himself?"
"He needs silver. I need a name. Honest trade." I shrugged. "Besides — a man drinking the way he drinks, how long does he last? Five years and I'm a widowed countess, the rank is mine for life, I sit in this shop until I'm old, and nobody ever touches it again. It's a bargain, Father."
My father set the jade down on the table.
Very gently. But I heard that small click land heavier than usual.
"I named you Zhen," he said. "Zhen is treasure. Not goods."
I stopped for a breath.
Then I laughed, went around behind him, and squeezed his shoulders twice.
"I know. That's why I price myself. I don't let anyone else do it."
The bridal chair went up Yonghe Street.
The whole street came out. Not to see the bride — to see the joke.
"The Su family's marrying their girl off to the wastrel!"
"What's left in that house to marry into? I hear the betrothal gifts came over in three chests and two of them were packing straw."
"Clever little thing, that Su girl, always so quick with a price. Got herself skinned this time."
I sat in the chair and heard every word.
It didn't matter. If they laughed at me for being taken, they believed I'd been taken. And if they believed that, nobody would trouble to watch me at all.
In my trade, not being watched is worth a great deal of money.
The gate of the Yongchang estate had lost most of its red lacquer; you could see the rot underneath. Two stone lions sat at either side. One was missing an ear.
I glanced over and priced them without meaning to.
Qingxi stone, carved in the last reign. Forty taels the pair. Twenty-five with the ear gone. Take twenty if somebody offers.
The habit is in my hands. I've never managed to break it.
There was a groom for the ceremony, at least.
Only he had to be carried in under both arms.
He wore red, his hair tied crooked, and he came through the hall in a long list of unsteady steps, giving off wine strongly enough to make my head swim from three paces away. He bowed to heaven and earth on momentum alone. Then he straightened, flicked his sleeves, and walked straight out the door without looking at me once.
Behind me, some aunt or other sighed loudly enough for the province to hear.
I was busy counting.
The hall was large and completely bare. On the white plaster there were darker rectangles with dust still creased along their edges. Where a painting had hung, the wall hadn't faded like the rest.
I counted fourteen nails.
Fourteen nails, and not one painting.
Most people look at a room and see the furniture. I look at a room and see what's left it.
The bridal chamber had one dragon-and-phoenix candle.
I sat on the edge of the bed under the red veil and waited.
I waited a quarter hour. Then another.
Outside, the noise thinned. Servants cleared up, doors shut, footsteps went away.
Nobody came.
I let out a breath, lifted the veil off myself, folded it properly and set it on the pillow. Suzhou silk, double-woven, still new — three taels.
Then I picked up the candle and stood.
The habit is in my hands.
It was my house now. What was in it, and what it was worth, I ought to know like the lines of my own palm.
I started with the shelf.
There was a blue-and-white vase on it. Ivory glaze, a trailing vine pattern, a slender neck — a hundred years old, to look at.
I lifted it, turned it over, held the base to the candle.
Then I put it down.
A vase that has stood on a wooden shelf for a century, however carefully it has been handled, carries a hairline ring of wear around its foot — so fine you have to tilt it under a lamp to catch it. That is the mark time leaves, not the mark people leave.
This foot was smooth as a bowl.
I went to the painting by the window. Paper gone yellow, ink well sunk, the seal faded beautifully.
Too evenly yellow.
Real paper doesn't yellow evenly. The part by the window takes more sun and goes darker; the sheltered part stays pale. To fake that color you smoke it — and smoke turns the whole sheet the same.
I moved on.
The zitan box on the writing table: I lifted it to my nose. The scent was still sharp. Real zitan, fifty years on, has almost lost it; only a trace remains.
The pair of jade cups: tilted to the candle, no thread of flaw in them.
The bronze censer: the green patina lovely. Lovely as a painting.
I went around that room with the candle, bending down, turning things over, smelling, tapping.
Fourteen pieces.
Fourteen forgeries.
And every one beautifully done. Well enough to have cost money — a great deal of money. That vase alone: to fake a glaze like that, the failed firings would run you more than an honest vase.
I sat down hard in a chair, still holding the candle, my head running like an abacus.
Selling the real thing makes you silver.
Making a forgery costs you silver.
A man who needs money so badly he sells his grandfather's inkstone — why would he spend money to put fourteen forgeries into the gaps?
Unless he didn't need money.
Unless what he needed was for nobody to know which pieces had left this house.
The cold crept up my spine.
I reached up and drew the phoenix pin out of my hair.
The pin was part of the betrothal gift. A Pei family heirloom; his mother had worn it. The whole capital knew. People even said that a wastrel who hadn't yet sold his mother's pin must have some scrap of conscience left.
I held it to the candle.
Good gold, eight parts pure. Fine carving. Two rubies set for the phoenix's eyes, red as blood.
I turned it slightly.
The candlelight passed through the stone and spread into a soft red haze, perfectly even, without a single flaw.
Real stone has threads in it. Clouds. Faults.
This was colored glass.
"How many has my wife counted?"
I didn't scream.
People in my trade get hauled out of bed at midnight to price a coffin. I have watched more people weep over their dead mother's jewelry than I have eaten hot dinners. Screaming has never earned anyone a copper.
I turned my head, slowly.
Pei Yan stood in the doorway.
Nobody held him up. His back was straight. There was a wine cup in his hand, fingers loose around it, perfectly steady.
By the candle I saw a face younger than I'd expected — a high nose, the outer corners of the eyes tilted slightly up.
The smell of wine was still there. Overpowering.
But his eyes were dark and clear, without a thread of red in them.
I looked at him. Then I looked at the smell.
It was rising from the front of his robe. Not from his breath.
Three years of drinking, and there'd be liquor on the breath, red in the eyes, a tremor in the hands by this hour of the night. As for the cup —
The rim was smooth. Not a trace of wear where a mouth would touch it.
A cup used for three years with no wear on the rim is either new, or it has never touched anyone's mouth.
"You're not drunk," I said.
"You're not frightened," he answered, as though noting something unusual.
"Of what?" I tipped my chin around the room. "The most valuable object in here is the candle. Rob me if you like."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he laughed — quiet, rough, like a thing he hadn't used in a while.
"I didn't overpay after all."
Those words made my stomach turn over.
Didn't overpay.
Meaning I had been chosen.
I straightened my back and did my best to sit like a countess, though half my hair had come down.
"Fourteen," I said. "Fourteen pieces in this room. Not one of them real."
He came in, set the cup on the table, drew out the chair opposite me and sat, unhurried, a host receiving a guest.
"There are forty-one forgeries in this house," he said. "You've been here one hour."
I stopped breathing.
Forty-one.
"You sold it all." My voice came out dry. "Sold it all, and then spent money having copies made and put back in the same places. Who are you hiding from?"
Pei Yan didn't answer.
He only dropped his eyes to the pin lying in my hand.
"That pin," he said. "What does my wife price it at?"
That question I could answer in one breath. It is the only thing I have ever done.
"Real gold, eight parts. The carving's a good hand — better than whoever did the vase. The two stones are colored glass, three hundred coppers the pair." I set the pin down. "Thirty-two taels. Thirty-five for the sake of the family name. A good forgery. Still a forgery."
He looked down at it.
It was a long time before he spoke.
"Wrong."
I frowned. "I have never misread a hairpin in my life."
Pei Yan raised his head.
And in those irritatingly clear eyes I saw something I had never met in anyone who had ever walked into the One Word House. Not even in the ones who came to pawn their children's things.
"It isn't worth thirty-two taels," he said.
"It's worth three thousand lives."
