Riding the Long Wind – Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Everyone looked at each other, and then they looked at Liu Yuru. She gave a small cough, set down her lamb, wiped her hands, and stood up. She went to the door and said, pleasantly: “Are you hungry, my lord?”

“I have not eaten all day. What do you think?” Gu Jiusi said, irritated. Liu Yuru heard his unhappy voice, and something in her felt an odd, involuntary lift. The heaviness that had been sitting in her chest for days lightened a little with his discontent. She immediately recognized this as something she should not feel too much of, since building one’s happiness on another person’s suffering was not a principle she endorsed. She reined it in and said: “Then I will let my lord out now. But my lord will have to recite the Xue Er chapter before eating. No objections?”

Gu Jiusi was about to say something very rude when his good sense intervened. He knew that continuing to argue would only extend the time he was kept hungry. Liu Yuru was full and comfortable; he was lightheaded from not eating. He took a long breath, and with the flexibility of someone who knows when to stop fighting, said: “Fine. Quickly.”

Liu Yuru had him released. Gu Jiusi saw the roasted lamb and his eyes went straight to it, and he made a direct line for it. Liu Yuru was about to say something when she heard Gu Jiusi begin to recite the text at tremendous speed, fluid and faultless, while simultaneously pouring himself wine, piling food onto his plate, and eating, all at the same time, to the visible amazement of everyone watching.

When he finished, he belched, drank a cup of wine, and looked across at Liu Yuru with a rather self-satisfied expression. “Well? Impressive, right? You are in awe, admit it.”

Liu Yuru looked at him and felt something she was not prepared for: the urge to smile. He reminded her of a child who had just done something small and was immediately coming over to be praised for it. She covered it with a cough, stood, and went over to slide two more side dishes his way.

When Gu Jiusi had eaten his fill he stood up, fanned himself, and said: “Right. I am going to sleep.”

“My lord,” Liu Yuru’s voice came from behind him. He flinched. He had learned in these past days to be afraid of those two words. And indeed: “Allow me to outline your schedule going forward.”

“No. Not necessary. I decline. Thank you.”

He was already moving for the door at speed. Liu Yuru said, from her seat, in her mildest voice: “I would rather not have to lock you up again.”

Gu Jiusi’s foot stopped in midair. Liu Yuru swirled the tea in her cup and said, watching the moonlight reflected at the bottom: “Come back.”

Gu Jiusi drew a very long breath. And then he trudged back.

Liu Yuru first took him to wash up properly. Then she brought out the clothes she had prepared and had him changed into the plain pale robe. Then she tied the cloth band marked with the character for “diligence” around his forehead, and had him sit cross-legged on the floor in front of her.

She looked at him.

She had to admit, however she felt about the rest of it, that Gu Jiusi had been given a truly remarkable face.

People always said Ye Shi’an was refined, like a plum blossom in winter. But looking honestly at them both, Liu Yuru thought that in terms of pure appearance, it was Gu Jiusi who was the more striking of the two. His brows like distant mountains, his eyes warm as peach blossoms, and even dressed in the dullest clothing possible, that vivid quality about his features could not be concealed. He had a slight femininity to his looks, but the angles of his bone structure gave him a clean handsomeness beneath it, a kind of luxurious, flower-moon beauty that was difficult to look away from.

She studied him for a moment and found herself thinking, with some reluctant honesty, that if she looked at it from the right angle, Gu Jiusi was reckless, but his temper was not bad, his face was excellent, and he had money. She had not entirely gotten the worst of this after all. She was an unremarkable girl from an unremarkable household, and under any other circumstances she and Gu Jiusi would never have ended up together.

He looked up, impatient, at her prolonged silence. “Say what you are going to say. I am tired. I want to sleep.”

“Ah.” Liu Yuru collected herself. “I have spoken with your former tutors about where your studies were and drawn up a plan. Going forward, you will sleep at the hour of the rat and rise at the hour of the hare. I have engaged a respected scholar to teach you the Four Books and Five Classics every morning, a second teacher to lecture on current political affairs in the afternoons, a generalist for practical matters such as keeping accounts and reading the grain market, and finally, your parents will personally instruct you in commerce and trade.”

Gu Jiusi inhaled very slowly. “You are trying to kill me.”

Liu Yuru continued without acknowledgment. “Here is your daily schedule. I will wake you each morning and accompany you to your lessons. The classical studies occupy the full morning, roughly four hours. Political studies and practical matters each take one hour in the afternoon, on alternate days. In the evenings I will sit with you while you complete the day’s assigned work. Every five days we will accompany your father and mother to the shops to observe how they manage their business. Each month you will have three rest days to do as you please, with the exception of gambling houses and brothels.”

“Only three days?” he said.

“Does my lord feel that is too generous, and would rather I reduce it to one?”

“No, no,” he said hurriedly, waving both hands. “Three is perfectly good. Three is excellent.”

Liu Yuru nodded. “During your study period, you will abstain from drinking and from entertainment. I will review your social invitations and pass along those that are suitable. Your rooms will be rearranged to support focus. Your wardrobe has been replaced. Those colorful things you were wearing before are not conducive to a serious mind. Going forward you will wear what you have on now.”

“That seems…” He attempted a pained smile. “Wearing the same outfit every day is not really…”

“I have prepared thirty sets,” Liu Yuru said pleasantly. “One per day. All identical.”

Gu Jiusi stared at her.

Well played. Ruthlessly played.

“Is there anything my lord would like to add?” Liu Yuru looked at his expression of suppressed fury and waved her fan gently. He held it in, and held it in, and finally said: “Liu Yuru. What exactly are you trying to do?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Are you trying to punish me?”

He said it boldly: “Is that why you came up with all of this? To torment me by forcing me to study?”

Liu Yuru was quiet for a moment. Then she said: “My lord, do you understand that everything that happens to me for the rest of my life depends on you?”

“If you rise, I rise. If you fall, I fall. Every friend I had before knew about my connection to the Ye family. Now that I have married you, I imagine a fair number of them find it amusing.”

She turned to look at him, with a smile that was also not entirely without bitterness: “If you surpass Ye Shi’an, there is nothing anyone can say. If you fall short, they will say it, and keep saying it. I am an ordinary person. I want to live well and be seen to live well. So I need you to be better than Ye Shi’an. I want to have a day when I can hold my head up and not be laughed at.”

Gu Jiusi looked slightly wrong-footed. “I could buy you a lot of nice clothes. Hairpins…”

“Those do not help.”

Liu Yuru sipped her tea. “You have money. Has it stopped people from laughing at you all these years?”

Gu Jiusi went still.

Her words left a quiet, shallow ache somewhere in him. He was not sure what to call it. He thought perhaps it should hurt more, but he had grown so used to it that the feeling had gone numb.

When he was small he had wanted to be the best. He had been compared and mocked for long enough that he had simply stopped trying. It was easier to be a wastrel than to try and be laughed at anyway.

Liu Yuru leaned forward slightly, studying him. “You are actually very clever. You hear what I am saying and you understand it perfectly. You could carry real weight if you chose to. You simply choose not to.”

“I cannot…”

Gu Jiusi felt a rare, unsteady discomfort. Very few people had ever sincerely said something like that to him. “I really cannot do it with books. Find a different path. I will help you get what you want another way.”

“You know the political situation has changed,” Liu Yuru said then, shifting ground. “The Emperor has not held court in three months. Your uncle is anxious to ally himself with a princess. Your parents are anxious for you to study. Have you not noticed that things are different?”

Gu Jiusi was quiet. Something settled heavily in his chest. Liu Yuru continued: “Your parents will grow old. Even if you do not think of yourself, think of them. Think of me. If the day comes when they are being pushed around, when I am being pushed around, and you can only stand there and watch, will you still feel nothing?”

“I understand what you are saying,” he said slowly. “But it will not come to that…”

“Because your parents will have everything planned out for you?”

Liu Yuru laughed softly. Gu Jiusi said nothing. She looked at him as though she could see straight into his chest. “Is that you reassuring yourself, or someone else reassuring you? Are you afraid to face the truth? Or do you genuinely not know what the truth is?”

Gu Jiusi dropped his eyes. And for the first time in this entire conversation, he had no answer.

Not a joke, not a deflection, not a smile. He sat and looked at the cup of water in front of him and listened as she said: “The reason I am pushing you toward studying is not because I have no other option. It is because I know you can do it. I know how much effort it cost Ye Shi’an to get where he is. And I also know how quick you are.”

“Everything Ye Shi’an has achieved, you can achieve. You have simply never tried.”

“I cannot do it.”

“You can.” Liu Yuru said it without hesitation. He looked up at her, and she looked back at him, and neither of them moved.

His eyes shifted slightly. Then she said, almost without planning to: “If you can surpass Ye Shi’an and earn me an official title, I will forgive you.”

She seemed to know, somehow, exactly where he was most vulnerable. She knew why he had kept giving ground even while he pushed back. She knew that underneath all the resistance and the small rebellions was a boy who was genuinely ashamed of what his careless words had done.

Gu Jiusi felt the surprise of being understood.

He looked at her and thought that this girl, somehow, seemed to know him better than his own parents did.

The directness of his gaze made Liu Yuru’s heart beat a little faster, which startled her. She was not used to being looked at this openly by a man. She gave a small cough and looked to one side.

A night breeze moved through, carrying the scent of flowers. A strand of her hair drifted across her face.

She steadied herself, and finally said: “Gu Jiusi. Just try. For my sake, if nothing else. Will you?”