Riding the Long Wind – Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Gu Jiusi had been drinking through the night and had not sobered up yet. The madam of the house crashed into his room, saying urgently: “Young Master Gu, wake up, someone from your household has come!”

Gu Jiusi waved a vague hand without opening his eyes. “Do not bother me.”

“Please, you have to wake up,” the madam said, slapping the side of the bed in desperation. “They came with a knife. This is not a friendly visit. Please wake up!”

“Noisy,” Gu Jiusi said, irritated. “Whatever it is, I will deal with it. Get out.”

One shout from him and she was gone. As she slipped out the door she ran straight into Liu Yuru coming up the stairs with the knife, covered her face with her handkerchief, and hurried past her. Liu Yuru reached the room and knocked, with perfect courtesy: “My lord.”

No response.

She had had someone confirm he was in this room. No response meant either he was still half-asleep, or he had already found a way out. She started knocking properly: “Gu Jiusi.”

Inside, the noise pressed against Gu Jiusi’s aching head. He pulled the blanket over his ears, rolled onto his side, and tried to pretend he was elsewhere.

Liu Yuru’s patience ran out. She had come this far, and she was not going to leave with her name ruined and nothing to show for it. She stepped back, then walked into the door at speed.

It shuddered.

Another try, and it shifted in its frame.

A third, with a running start, and the door flew open.

She found Gu Jiusi lying on the bed, deeply and contentedly asleep.

The anger that had been sitting in her chest for three days rose all the way to the surface, and she could not hold it anymore. She shouted: “Gu Jiusi. Get up!”

The shout carried through every floor of the building. It certainly carried through to Gu Jiusi. He startled awake in confusion, and then registered the sound of someone moving fast toward him. Instinct kicked in and he rolled sideways, and the knife hit the bed exactly where his face had been, buried in the pillow, vibrating.

He was fully awake now.

Liu Yuru looked at him coldly. His heart was going very fast. He could feel the absolute seriousness coming off her like heat. He swallowed, and with shaking hands reached out and wrapped his fingers around the ones she still had on the hilt. His voice came out with a slight tremor: “Let us be calm. We can talk. We can talk this through.”

“Get up.”

Liu Yuru’s face did not change.

“Getting up, getting up right now,” Gu Jiusi said, and scrambled off the bed.

Liu Yuru pulled the knife free and turned away, closing the door behind her. Gu Jiusi sat down on the other side of the room, still reeking of last night’s wine, and yawned. “What did you come here for?”

“I did not know when my lord intended to return home, so I came to escort him.”

Gu Jiusi’s eyes went to the knife. He made a small, derisive sound. “Escorting me with a knife. You certainly have an imagination.”

“You have been away for some days now. It is time to come home and focus on your studies and work toward a proper future.”

Gu Jiusi stared at her. “What did you just say? You want me to come home and do what?”

“Study.”

Gu Jiusi inhaled. “Are you in your right mind?”

“My lord,” Liu Yuru said, with perfect seriousness, “you are approaching eighteen. In two more years you will have come of age. You need to think about your future. Your father is Yangzhou’s foremost merchant, and he hopes you will earn a title through examination…”

“Stop, stop, stop.” Gu Jiusi held up his fan with an expression of genuine suffering. “I have heard this speech a thousand times. Liu Yuru,” he said, sitting with his legs crossed, looking across at her, using a straightforwardness he almost never showed, “this marriage, I am a victim in it too. I married you, I gave you the name, I gave you the money, you can have whatever you want. What I am asking is, after this, you live your life, I live mine. Can we do that?”

Liu Yuru looked at him without surprise.

Gu Jiusi put one hand on his knee and poured himself a cup of tea. He said, with genuine earnestness: “You know exactly what kind of person I am. I have always hated people who lecture me. That kind of reasoning goes over very well at the village schoolhouse with the scholars there, and they will listen to it. What use is it saying it to me? Let us be practical. My father is Yangzhou’s richest man. My uncle is Minister of Personnel in the capital. My cousin is Prince Liang’s side consort. I could spend this entire life collecting rent from our fields and earning interest from our money house and live extremely well without lifting a finger. Tell me honestly, why would I put myself through studying?”

Liu Yuru sipped her tea and let him continue laying it out.

“Here is the arithmetic. Our money house lends out at least two hundred thousand taels a year, and the interest doubles the principal. That is two hundred thousand a year in profit. If I am generous when I take over and reduce the rate, call it fifty percent, that is still a hundred thousand a year. That is before the land and the shopfronts. Even if every business we had collapsed, the rents and interest alone would last us forever. So I am asking you honestly, Liu Yuru, you were badly treated in this marriage, I agree, but on the question of money, you are not losing anything. We each do as we like. We live well and separately. What do you say?”

“And what if there is no forever?” Liu Yuru said, quietly.

Gu Jiusi looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“The reason the Gu family can lend money without fear of people refusing to pay, the reason you hold this much land without anyone making a move against you, is because your uncle holds high office in the capital. If the political situation changes, if that support falls away, all of this wealth becomes a reason for someone to come after you. What do you think happens to a rich family with no one to protect it?”

She said it without heat. “With all that silver, and nothing but the name of a wealthy merchant to stand behind it, do you think you could hold on to any of it?”

Gu Jiusi went still.

In all his years, no one had ever said this to him plainly. People did not tend to say things to his face that amounted to cursing his uncle’s downfall.

And yet, hearing it from her now, he knew immediately that she was right. It was not only possible. It was the kind of thing that happened.

Something shifted in his chest, but he kept his face easy. He coughed lightly. “Well. If it comes to that, it comes to that. Things change and you adapt.”

“And what about me?” Liu Yuru’s voice went very quiet. She looked at him steadily. “You have lived a comfortable life. When the time comes, you close your eyes and that is the end of it. What about me? What about your parents? Have you thought about us for even a moment?”

“That is fate,” Gu Jiusi said. He sighed and made a dismissive gesture. “Do not trouble yourself with it. My parents will work something out.”

Liu Yuru closed her eyes. She gripped the knife. She breathed.

Gu Jiusi cleared his throat and pushed a cup of tea toward her. “Do not be angry. Here. Cool down.”

“Gu Jiusi.” Her voice came out unsteady. “You do understand that I could have married Ye Shi’an.”

Gu Jiusi went quiet for just a moment.

And at that same moment, Ye Shi’an reached the door of the room.

He had heard Liu Yuru kick the door open, had thought it through, and decided to come and look. The Liu and Ye families were old acquaintances, and Liu Yuru was his sister’s closest friend, and possibly, once upon a time, his own intended. Gu Jiusi’s temperament was volatile and he had a history of getting physical when he was annoyed, and Ye Shi’an was concerned he might actually lay hands on her. He had come to make sure she was all right.

He had not expected to arrive at the door and hear those words.

He stopped, embarrassed, and was about to retreat when he heard Liu Yuru continue: “Do you know how much effort I put into marrying into the Ye family? Into marrying him?”

“I was not even ten years old when I began learning how to become the kind of person the Ye family would want.” She opened her eyes. The rims were red, and Gu Jiusi stared at her, watching the tears fall steadily from someone who was still, somehow, completely composed. “I read every book he had ever read. I copied out every letter he sent home to Ye Yun. I memorized every rule in the Ye family’s household code. I secretly taught myself the lute, chess, calligraphy, and painting. I shaped myself into everything a proper young woman was supposed to be. I spent all those years working toward one thing. I thought I was about to succeed. I thought I was going to marry a good man and that my life, this one life, was going to come out well.”

“I was going to live alongside my husband with mutual respect and quiet devotion…”

She broke, and the crying came out loud and raw. “And then you, and your family, destroyed all of it.”

“I…” Gu Jiusi started. Liu Yuru cut across him. “I know. You are not to blame.”

“I know I should be angry at my mother for being powerless, at the concubine for running the household, at my father for being greedy. Your family did not know any of it. None of you knew. But that sentence, the one about marrying me. You said that.”

She looked straight at him, and Gu Jiusi felt the color drain from his face.

“You said it, Gu Jiusi.”

She held his gaze. “You live outside every rule and you assume everyone else is like you, that no one cares what is said about them. But when you said those words, did you not think even once? That if the Ye family heard it, they might pull away from the match. That if your family heard it, they might come to propose. That if others heard it, they might think badly of me.”

“You thought it was a joke. Something to laugh off and forget. But what you destroyed was my entire life.”

She bit the words out one by one. And for the first time, Gu Jiusi’s easy expression was completely gone. He sat very still and looked at the girl across from him who was crying, and thought about how he had sometimes heard a story about an emperor who, told his people were starving, asked why they did not simply eat meat instead.

“I am sorry,” he said, dropping his eyes.

Liu Yuru’s hand came up and slapped him hard across the face.

“Does sorry mean anything?” She was almost shouting. “All those years of work, all those years of careful effort, undone by one careless joke. Is sorry enough?”

“Listen to me.” She grabbed his collar and pulled his face close to hers. Tears had ruined her makeup but her eyes were bright and sharp and completely steady, burning with a courage that could cut through anything the world put in front of her. “Gu Jiusi. I do not care whether you wanted this. You said those words. Your family brought me here as your wife. You made me your wife. You are responsible for that.”

“My life is tied to yours now. Everything I should have had, you owe me. I want a husband who can stand tall and carry the weight of a family. I want a husband who can protect me and our children for the rest of our lives. What I do not want is a man who knows nothing but eating and drinking and gambling and runs home to his parents the moment anything goes wrong.”

“Whatever Ye Shi’an was capable of, you have to match it. Everything I lost, you have to give back. Starting today, you are going home. And if you ever dare set foot in a gambling house or a brothel again,” Liu Yuru stepped up onto the table, shook the blade open one-handed, gripped his collar in the other fist, and pressed the edge against his throat, “I cannot kill you. So I will take this blade to my own throat and die on your family’s doorstep. Do you understand me?”

“Stay calm,” Gu Jiusi said, looking at Liu Yuru’s completely red eyes, swallowing. He had run out of words. He kept his voice as even as he could and said, very carefully: “You. Stay calm.”

Outside the door, Ye Shi’an came back to himself.

He let out a long, slow breath.

He needed to leave. Now.

This conversation had contained more information than he could process, and all of it was alarming. The gentle, mild-mannered Yuru he had grown up hearing about was clearly a fiction. The person he actually needed to worry about was Gu Jiusi.

He thought about it for a moment. Gu Jiusi, dying at the hands of his own wife in the Spring Wind House. Well. If it came to that.

Killed by your own bride. There were worse ways to go.