Chapter Thirteen

[Page 1 of 3]

King Kang, Zhao Gou, had not come to the Palace of Precious Registers merely to pass the time.

He had come bearing congratulatory gifts, and they were exceptionally complete. Some were precious ritual objects intended for the Abbot of White Deer Responsive Palace: scriptures written by immortal masters, lamps they had once used, horsetail whisks they had held. Any one of them was several hundred years old, and taking it to Xingyuan Prefecture would be a matter of considerable prestige.

Others were books for his younger sister. Works such as *The Inner Instructions* and *Admonitions for Women* were naturally included, but there were also histories and classical texts, proof of how carefully Zhao Gou had thought things through. With such a balanced selection, no one could find fault. As for what his sister actually liked to read—heaven was high and the emperor far away. Surely no one could force her.

Some of the gifts could not really be counted as congratulatory presents at all. Those had been sent by Lady Wei.

There were clothes for every season, made from all sorts of materials. Since no one knew how many years it might be before she returned after leaving the palace, several sets of each style had been made, all slightly large, so that she would still be able to wear them after growing taller.

The clothes filled several trunks. Stacked together, they towered several heads above her. When Abbot Chaozhen saw them, he felt rather embarrassed.

“The young lady must have gone to a great deal of trouble.”

“She certainly did.” Ninth Brother stepped forward with a smile. “The young lady’s eyes have been dry and sore these past two years, and she rarely does needlework anymore, so her hands have grown unaccustomed to it. She hurried to make you winter clothes and pricked her fingers several times.”

Her eyes reddened at once, and her voice grew hoarse.

“Please be sure to tell the young lady to take good care of herself. She must eat well. Once I reach Xingyuan Prefecture, I won’t be able to write back all the time…”

Ninth Brother’s eyes reddened as well.

“At your age, Father is willing to send you away, but the young lady cannot bear to part with you. The clothes are a small matter. You must take several trusted people with you. Having someone to care for your meals and daily life is what truly matters.”

Tears ran down the girl’s pale cheeks.

Choking back a sob, she bowed.

“The road is long and the mountains are high. Do they not have parents and elders at home? I am going to pray for Father’s well-being, so I am willing to go. But what fault is theirs?”

“On this one matter, Yoyo, you must not refuse. Otherwise, not only will the young lady worry about you—Ninth Brother will think of you day and night as well!”

Ninth Brother suggested finding several palace servants whose prospects had been poor and sending them with the Princess to Xingyuan Prefecture to cultivate the Way.

The eunuchs did not understand it. Even Lady Wei did not understand it.

The Princess had lived beside her for several years. Even if she had been a foolish and unruly child, Lady Wei ought to have developed some affection for her. How much more so when the girl was exceptionally clever and sensible? As her foster mother, Lady Wei genuinely liked her.

But affection did not mean she could devote herself to the girl wholeheartedly. Palace consorts were not required to raise children with their own hands, and this was a foster daughter besides. Lady Wei was hardly without a child of her own; she had Zhao Gou. Thus, whatever the matter, Princess Chaozhen naturally came after Ninth Brother.

When the imperial edict arrived, Lady Wei was completely unsettled.

There had been vague rumors in the palace suggesting that Wang Fu’s dismissal had been entirely the Princess’s doing. The idea was terrifying in itself.

How could a child so young possess such deep calculations? Was the Emperor sending her to Xingyuan Prefecture because he had grown to hate her? Was sending her out of the palace not enough to satisfy him? Was that why he had dispatched her to such a distant, remote place?

Lady Wei had remained anxious for a long time, afraid that the Princess might suddenly return to the palace and come stay with her again, uttering a few more alarming remarks. Heaven help her—surely her precious Ninth Brother would not be dragged into it!

Then she heard that the Princess had been invested at the Palace of Precious Registers and was preparing to set out. Only then did she finally breathe a sigh of relief. Yet she also felt inexplicably melancholy, her emotions so tangled that she could not name them.

Just as she was hesitating over whether to prepare luggage for the Princess, trapped between one choice and the other, Zhao Gou entered the palace.

“Choose several clever and capable maids,” he said. “They can look after Yoyo on the road.”

The hand with which Lady Wei had been sewing suddenly jerked, and the needle pierced her finger. She hastily withdrew it while a palace maid came to bandage the wound.

Her needlework was exquisitely fine. There were always several garments she had made in Zhao Gou’s Prince Kang’s residence. He did not ordinarily wear them, but when he entered the palace during festivals, putting one on made for a touching tale of maternal love and filial devotion. It was a pity to stain this one with blood.

But Zhao Gou was not concerned with that.

“Mother, are you reluctant to let her go?”

Lady Wei lowered her head.

“She angered your father.”

“With the kind of schemes she possesses, would she not know how to advance and retreat appropriately?”

[Page 2 of 3]

“She also angered Grand Marshal Liang, Chancellor Wang, the Crown Prince, and your Third Brother…”

Zhao Gou’s expression turned solemn.

“Mother,” he said, “you should listen to your son.”

There were so many princesses in the palace. Some were ignored by the Emperor, while others were especially favored. Could any one of them stir the entire court and offend so many powerful people by her own efforts?

Only Princess Chaozhen had managed it.

That meant she had not truly offended anyone at all. Instead, she had become someone everyone was obliged to treat with caution. Whether she was a player or a piece, whether there were other hands moving behind her or not, she herself had acquired power.

A powerful younger sister—though not born of the same father and mother, she had indeed been raised by his own birth mother. Why would he not win her over at once? What was he waiting for?

Princess Chaozhen seemed rather embarrassed. After refusing several times, she finally agreed to bring along a few clever maids with whom she was familiar. She also insisted that they be given generous rewards, and that when they grew older, they should be released from service so they could each marry and make lives of their own.

To declare such a favor all at once was somewhat naïve. Yet not only Ninth Brother, but also the young Taoist attendants and eunuchs serving behind him, were deeply moved.

“With the Princess’s kindness,” one eunuch said with a laugh, “when she sets out, I fear every maid and palace attendant in the inner court will be desperate to follow her.”

Zhao Gou shot him a sidelong glance.

“What? You want to go too?”

“This slave would never dare. But I do have several thickheaded lads. No matter how I instruct them, they cannot manage delicate work. Their heads are truly made of wood! They do have plenty of strength, though. If the Princess does not object, they could drive her carriage and carry her water. It would be a blessing for them!”

Princess Chaozhen pressed her lips together, seeming eager to laugh. In the end she could not hold it back.

“Ninth Brother, apart from them, is there anyone else you intend to give your little sister?”

“There is.” The handsome young prince answered with a perfectly straight face.

The girl opposite him looked aghast.

“There really is someone else?”

Ninth Brother burst out laughing.

“I was joking. He did want to come, but unfortunately he is lying at home.”

Cao the Twenty-Fifth had wanted to come and offer his congratulations, but his father had stopped him. Cao the Twenty-Fifth had then prepared to climb over the wall, only to be discovered by his father.

So they had tied him up, carried him into the courtyard, laid him across a bench, and beaten him soundly. He had been reduced to a bloody, battered mess, his skin split and flesh torn. It was a truly horrifying sight.

…It sounded rather like Jia Zheng beating Jia Baoyu in *Dream of the Red Chamber*.

She very much wanted to scratch her head, but did not dare. She knew why Cao’s father had forbidden him to come. The great noble families had always been willing to maintain friendly relations and arrange marriages with the imperial family, but they had no desire to be drawn into a drama of succession struggles and factional conflict.

Having watched their kinsman’s daughter transform from a meek and obedient princess into an Amazonian berserker, would anyone in his right mind not keep his distance? Unless he wanted to make sure the blood splashed onto his own face.

Yet from that perspective, she could not understand why Cao the Twenty-Fifth had been so determined to come and congratulate her.

She sat thinking while Ninth Brother watched her with a smile.

…Then she suddenly understood.

“Brother Cao need not have gone so far.” She lowered her head. “If Ninth Brother gets the chance, please thank him for me… Please thank him.”

Her voice was very soft, shy and anxious at once, carrying all the awkwardness of a young girl. Ninth Brother nodded with a broad smile, failing to notice that she was quietly extending one foot and scratching delicately at the brick floor with the tip of her shoe.

“For those words alone,” he said with a laugh, “he will no longer feel the pain.”

After hearing that, she secretly raised her head.

“Other than him, I have not offended anyone else, have I?”

Zhao Liangsi sat in the reception hall, glancing uneasily at his own son, then at the two smaller boys seated below him.

Calling them “small boys” was somewhat forced. Even his own son was difficult to recognize as a lad of fourteen or fifteen. Among the children of scholar-official families, those of the same age were expected to be fair, refined, and slender as bamboo before anyone would praise them. This was not merely the taste of the capital; it was the prevailing taste throughout the Great Song.

[Page 3 of 3]

They had to be elegant and immaculate, with flowers in their hair and jade at their waists. They had to be capable of turning beneath a moonlit pavilion and composing a lyric that even the youngest and most beautiful singing girl in a pleasure house could perform.

These three boys were entirely uniform: tall and heavy, dark-skinned and powerfully built. His Fourth Son in particular was already taller than most grown men in the capital, a sight that prompted the question of whether he truly belonged to the same species as everyone else.

As Zhao Liangsi continued examining them from head to toe, the boys—whose mental ages were, after all, only somewhere in their teens—began to fidget. One lowered his head, another began to sweat, and a third repeatedly tugged at his sleeve.

When the last of them was nearly about to tear his sleeve off, the newly dismissed Grand Master of Splendid Revenue finally came to his senses and hurriedly whispered:

“Shameful!”

At once they sat properly, backs straight and bodies rigid. After a moment, one of them secretly glanced at him again.

“Uncle Zhao, I really did wash my face and hands before leaving home…”

Zhao Liangsi was just opening his mouth to scold the little rascal when the corner of his eye caught sight of someone emerging from within. He immediately swallowed the profanity on his lips.

She was a girl of twelve or thirteen, dressed in a blue-gray Taoist robe with a crossing front and her hair arranged in a Taoist topknot. Slender and fair-skinned, she fit the aesthetic of the capital perfectly.

But her eyes did not.

There was some curiosity in her gaze as she looked at them, but far more scrutiny. She stood silently at the entrance to the reception hall like a divine statue.

Like someone much older than her years.

Zhao Liangsi had not originally been certain that she was Princess Chaozhen, nor that the move he was making was the right one. Yet the instant he saw her, he knew. He needed no confirmation from the attendants behind her.

“My worthless son, Zhao Yan, was born without great ambitions. He seeks neither fame nor profit and wishes only to devote himself to the immortals. He now desires to cultivate the true Way under the Princess and place himself entirely at her command!”

At his words, all three children sprang from their chairs.

“And these two as well!” Zhao Liangsi pointed at the other boys. “They are both sons of my kinsmen, and they too wish to follow the Princess!”

The Princess was stunned.

She had only recently been invested as an abbess, gaining the right to leave the confines of the rules and receive visitors on her own. It was exhilarating to come out and see unfamiliar people.

But the moment she saw these guests, she felt that they were frightening.

One huge man with three miniature versions of himself had taken his seat with the force and confidence of a warlord. They did not look as though they had come to request an audience at all. Their bearing suggested that they had come to the Palace of Precious Registers looking for a fight.

When she had hidden away and secretly observed them, she had even wondered: The Jurchens have not invaded yet, have they? Who would dare come looking for trouble with her?

She had never imagined that they were not here to start a fight, but to send their children to school.

But were these three not too old? She was a young girl herself. Taking in children of her own age was one thing, but these three were clearly over the limit.

Seeing her eyes darting around, and the little girls beside her whispering among themselves as they repeatedly sized up the three boys, Zhao Liangsi immediately understood.

“Your Highness! My son is only a few months older than them. All three of them are fourteen!”

The Princess whipped her gaze toward him, then looked at the three miniature versions of him. At last, she extended one trembling finger.

“You say they are fourteen?”