I didn't ask my father anything more.
There's a rule in my trade: when a customer lies, don't call him on it. Call him on it and he takes his goods and leaves. Let him talk, and count where the story runs crooked.
Only this time the liar was my father.
And I sat in the chair the whole way back to the estate holding that ledger, and I couldn't count a thing.
Three days later, Uncle Wei came.
Wei Changsheng, master of the Tongyuan Trading House, walked through the peeling gate of the Yongchang estate without waiting to be announced, the way a man walks across his own yard.
He is sixty, short and thick-set, grey hair combed to a shine, wearing a brown silk robe of the kind that looks cheap to those who don't know and costs a house to those who do.
The moment he saw me he was smiling, smiling until his eyes disappeared into two folds.
"A-Zhen!"
He raised a hand as though he meant to pinch my cheek and thought better of it — a gesture he'd been making since I was ten.
"Wretched girl. Married and never sent word to your uncle. I heard it in the market. In the market."
"I meant to—"
"Meant to." He snorted. "Your father says the same thing. The pair of you. Always meaning to."
Then he waved a hand. Four men carried gifts into the yard and set them down. He didn't glance at them once, only jerked his chin at Uncle Fu to have it all put away.
"Two bolts of silk, a box of ginseng, and two thousand taels," he said, as easily as if he were listing greens off a stall. "Not for the estate. For you. A girl who goes to her husband's house empty-handed gets treated like nothing."
My throat closed.
I wanted to say I don't need it. I wanted to say I'm grown.
But the year I was ten, the One Word House lost a consignment and went so far under that my father took the signboard down to wipe it one last time. That night someone knocked. He didn't ask after us, didn't pity us; he simply put a bag of silver on the counter and said one thing:
"Your grandfather hung that board with his own hands. Have you got the hands to take it down?"
And left.
The next morning he came back, walked me to the end of the street, and bought me three coppers' worth of malt candy.
Money owed can be paid back.
I owed him a signboard.
Behind him, one of Tongyuan's managers was bent over a gift list, writing.
Wei Changsheng didn't turn round. "How much?"
"Two thousand and two taels, sir."
"Two thousand."
The man's hand stopped on the page. "Sir — the ginseng, I priced it at two taels, going by the market—"
"I said two thousand. The ginseng is a present. Presents don't go on the gift list."
He was still looking at me, still smiling, and he never once turned his head.
"Go and tell Manager Chen to strike your name off this month's wages. Come back to work next month."
The man went white and dropped to his knees on the flagstones. "Sir—"
"Get up. You're dirtying their yard."
"Uncle." I tugged gently at his sleeve. "It's two taels."
Wei Changsheng turned to me.
His face was still kind. Still the two creases at the corners of the eyes, still that same smile.
"A-Zhen. It's good of you to feel for people." He patted the back of my hand. "But you keep a pawnshop; you should understand. A man who writes two taels wrong today writes two thousand wrong tomorrow. Not because he's greedy. Because his hand gets used to it."
I did not like what I had just watched.
But I told myself: that's how he is. Men who trade on that scale have to be.
I have never misread a hairpin in my life.
"Where's his lordship?" Wei Changsheng asked.
"Inside," I said. "Asleep, I expect."
"Asleep." He laughed and pulled a chair out for himself in the middle of the yard. "Silly girl. I'll tell you the truth — I don't object to your marrying in here. I only regret it."
"Regret what?"
"That your arithmetic was right and you left out a line." He tapped the arm of the chair. "You thought the title would keep the shop. And it will. But how many years has this title got left? The Pei family have sold an inkstone the Emperor granted them. What exactly are you hanging your board under?"
I had no answer.
Because he was right.
"Here's what we'll do." His voice dropped, gentler. "I'll stop asking to buy your shop. I've asked three times, you won't sell, I concede. But let me put my name on the capital ledger — the board stays Su, the people in it stay yours, I don't take a copper of the profit. All I want is the word Tongyuan underneath. And then nobody on that street walks into your shop without taking his shoes off first."
He looked at me, eyes still smiling.
"You keep your grandfather's board. I keep you. Honest trade — isn't it?"
Honest trade.
I sat there and something in me went warm, warm enough to sting the bridge of my nose.
The whole capital said I'd been taken. Only one man had sat down and done the arithmetic for me, and got it right.
"Let me think, Uncle," I said.
"Of course. Think. There's no hurry." He stood and brushed off his robe. "Oh — anything interesting come through the shop lately? It's been an age since I saw anything beautiful."
"No, Uncle. Rubbish, mostly."
"A pity."
He reached the gate, then stopped and looked back into the estate — at the empty yard, at the wall with fourteen nails in it.
"That lord of yours," he said. "If he has anything left he wants to sell, tell him to come to me. I'll beat the market."
Then he pressed a paper packet into my hand.
Malt candy.
"This one's had a taste for it since she was small." He laughed and patted my hand twice. "Eat it. Don't save it. Save it and it runs."
That evening, Pei Yan asked me a question.
"How far do you trust him?"
I was wiping down the counter — no. I was wiping the table in the bridal chamber, out of habit. I stopped.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Nothing. I'm asking."
"He saved that shop when I was ten." I put the cloth down. "The whole of Yonghe Street had turned its back. The creditors were sitting in our front room eating our rice. He came, he put silver on the counter, and he never once asked when he'd have it back."
"He took no interest?"
"None."
"A merchant who takes no interest," he said, very quietly. "Then what does he take?"
I stood up.
"Pei Yan." My voice went flat. "I know you suspect the whole world. I understand. Your father is dead. I understand. But don't take three years of thinking about who's out to destroy you and shine it on an old man who saved my family."
"I only asked—"
"You needed an eye." I cut him off. "My eye is sold to you; use it. But my heart wasn't in the betrothal chests."
He was silent.
Then he nodded.
"I was wrong," he said. "I apologize."
He went out and closed the door very softly.
I stood in the middle of the room with my heart hammering, and found there was a hollow space somewhere inside me.
There's no satisfaction in winning an argument with a man who won't argue back.
The next morning there was a paper packet on the table.
Malt candy.
I picked it up and stared at it.
Uncle Wei's packet was still in the drawer, unopened.
This was another one. Coarser paper, tied with a straw cord, badly wrapped, one corner already sticky where the candy had run.
Uncle Fu came past, saw me holding it, and his eyes went red.
"Please eat it, my lady." He sniffed. "His lordship went out before it was light."
"Where?"
"East Market."
I frowned. "East Market is three miles. There's a candy stall at the end of our own street."
"Yes, my lady." Uncle Fu wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "The end of the street is five coppers. East Market is three."
I stood there with the packet in my hand and heard the abacus in my head make one sound and then stop dead.
Three coppers.
An earl. Three miles on foot. Out before dawn. To save two coppers.
I sat down and opened the paper.
It really was badly wrapped. Badly enough to be funny.
I have priced tens of thousands of objects in my life. I have priced jade and gold and dead men's paintings and the wedding bangles people bring in at midnight.
I have never once been short on a price.
I sat there holding three coppers' worth of candy for a long time, and I could not price it at all.
That night I didn't sleep.
I lit the candle, took out the phoenix pin, and set it on the table. Then I took out the armor plate and set it beside.
A gold pin from a lady's chamber. A shard of iron from a battlefield.
Nothing to do with each other.
But all night something snagged, the way a grain of grit snags between your teeth.
I looked at the pin first.
Where a stone is set, the craftsman has to cut a small barb to hold it from falling out. The barb is in a hidden place; nobody ever looks at it; so every man cuts it his own way — some straight, some slanted, some cut two for safety.
The man who made this pin cut his barb like a fish hook. Very shallow. And after cutting it he'd gone over it once more to smooth it, because he couldn't bear anything ragged.
I put the pin down and picked up the armor plate, and looked at the rivets.
Rivets on armor are crude work. Anyone can do it. You flatten the head and you're finished.
I brought it close to the candle.
At the foot of the rivet there was a small barb.
Shaped like a fish hook. Shallow. Smoothed over with one last stroke.
The candle shook in my hand.
A man can learn another man's craft. A man can copy another man's style.
But nobody can copy a habit. A habit is the thing a craftsman carries into his grave.
The man who set the stones in Pei Yan's mother's heirloom pin — and the man who riveted three thousand sets of armor that killed his father — were the same man.
I gathered up both and ran, and kicked open the study door.
Pei Yan was awake, bent over a sheet of paper. He looked up.
"This pin." I was out of breath. I slammed it down on the desk. "Who did you hire? Which workshop? Which man? Tell me now."
Pei Yan looked at the pin.
Then he looked at me.
And for the first time I saw something come into that permanently level face that turned my stomach to ice.
"Su Zhen," he said slowly. "Every one of the forty-one forgeries in this house, I paid for."
"But my mother's pin, I have never sold."
