Riding the Long Wind – Chapter 20, Part 2

Part 2

When they were in the carriage, Liu Yuru said, puzzled: “How did my father agree so easily?”

She had expected this to be a long fight. Gu Jiusi leaned against the window, head on his hand, smiling. “You should thank me for that.”

Liu Yuru turned to look at him. In the moonlight, that red robe and gold crown, and the way the light caught the surface of his skin, which was as pale and smooth as fine porcelain, and the lazy, self-possessed smile on his face all made for an image that stopped her thoughts for a moment before she could quite explain why.

When she did not say anything, he reached out and gestured at her. “Well? What are you staring at? Say it.”

“Say what?”

Liu Yuru pulled herself together and felt slightly awkward. She fanned herself. Gu Jiusi settled his clothes with some dignity and said: “I brought it up with your father this afternoon.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, in good families the wife always has a son. If she does not have one, she has one adopted into her name. Your mother is alone, and that troubles me.”

He continued: “I was going to send gifts to the younger brothers you should have had, but you have none. Sending the gifts to a concubine’s child and letting that concubine run the household while suppressing your mother, that is not something I am comfortable with.”

“Just that?” Liu Yuru blinked. Gu Jiusi raised an eyebrow. “What more did you want?”

“Was that not a little…” She was trying to find the right word. “Direct?”

“This is why I say you think too much.” He tapped her forehead lightly with the fan, the corner of his mouth lifting. “You want to know why your father never cast your mother aside all these years?”

Liu Yuru frowned. “Because casting out a wife does not look good…?”

Gu Jiusi sighed, gave her a look, and said simply: “Your father is not someone who cares how things look. He kept your mother because she is a daughter of the Su family in Suzhou, and if he cast her out, where would he find another wife of that standing? Or that family’s connections? So yes, he indulges Concubine Zhang. But only within limits that do not offend the Su family. If your mother had made a stand years ago, do you think he would have let Concubine Zhang go as far as she did?”

Liu Yuru was quiet for a moment. “Do men really think this way too?”

“Men are people,” Gu Jiusi said, with some amusement. “And people want money and power. Your father’s thinking is straightforward: women are secondary. Right now he wants to stay in the Gu family’s good graces, so naturally he will treat your mother better. I stated my terms and made them plain. Once the child is adopted into your mother’s name, I will send gifts. And the Gu family’s gifts are not small things. Your father has worked it all out.”

Liu Yuru said nothing. Gu Jiusi turned his fan, waiting for his thanks. When Liu Yuru did not react, he said, put out: “Are you not going to say something?”

“Gu Jiusi.” She was not calling him “my lord” this time. She had been slowly working through the full picture, and now she looked at this carelessly sprawling person in front of her with genuine surprise. “You are actually quite good at this.”

At reading people, at least. In that respect, Gu Jiusi saw far more clearly than she did. He thought simply, stripped away all the surface performance and went straight to the heart of things, cutting through all the rules and the polite language to get directly at what mattered. With someone like Liu Xuan, he had managed it effortlessly. It was only with Liu Yuru, who thought in completely different ways, that he had no idea where to start.

He heard the compliment and lifted an eyebrow, one arm resting on the window. “Call me husband.”

Liu Yuru, in high spirits, crouched over to his side of the carriage and began patting his leg in a flagrantly flattering manner. “Husband, you are so capable. Tell me about Zhang Yue’er, what do you make of her?”

“Tea.”

The flattery went straight to his head. Liu Yuru hurried to pour, keeping her eyes wide and admiring. Gu Jiusi drank his tea, looked at that expression on her face, and could not help laughing.

“Liu Yuru. I just realized you are very good at turning it on and off.”

“Of course.” She said it immediately. “A person who wants to accomplish anything has to be.”

Gu Jiusi burst out laughing and pulled her up to sit beside him.

He was in the pleasant, expansive mood that sometimes came after wine, and started talking freely. Liu Yuru asked questions; he gave her his reading of everything and everyone, from Zhang Yue’er and Yunyun through to the various people they both knew. His tutors had been covering current affairs, so he had a rough picture of the political landscape now, and Liu Yuru, sensing that he was loose-tongued with drink, could not stop herself from saying: “What do you make of Prince Liang?”

At that name, something cold moved through his eyes. He laughed without warmth. “A rebel waiting for the right moment. His kind always end up the same way.”

Liu Yuru felt a jolt. She started to ask more, but Gu Jiusi closed his eyes, settled against the carriage, and said with displeasure: “I am going to sleep. Do not disturb me.”

No matter how much she nudged him after that, he would not say another word.

But the words stayed with her.

She lay awake most of that night. The next morning she was crouched by Gu Jiusi’s floor mat before he had stirred, shaking him. “Gu Jiusi. Gu Jiusi.”

He reached up and covered his ears. “You said I had a rest day. I am exhausted. I am asleep. I am dying…”

“Answer me one question and I will let you sleep.”

He kept his hands over his ears and pretended not to hear. Liu Yuru pulled them away. “Why did you say Prince Liang would rebel?”

“Mm?” He opened one bleary eye. “Did I say that?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “You did.”

He made a genuine effort to remember, then finally said: “I was probably talking nonsense…”

Liu Yuru stared at him.

He saw her expression and accepted that sleep was no longer available. He sat up, looking pained. “Just a feeling. The man is too polished. He has troops, he has territory, he has done everything right by the Emperor, even sent his own family in as hostages. If he were truly that devoted, he would hand the military back. Instead, look at the last three battles. I have seen the reports. There were at least two clear openings where his forces could have wiped out the enemy completely. He did not take them. Why?”

He thought it through, talking it out slowly. “What if he has been letting the fighting drag on just enough to keep asking the court for reinforcements? Building his numbers without it looking deliberate. He knows the Emperor is suspicious. So he keeps acting obedient, and keeps the border skirmishes going just enough to have a reason to ask for more troops.”

“How do you know he could have finished it?” Liu Yuru asked.

Gu Jiusi sighed. “I spent a lot of time at the gambling house. I ended up talking to people from Prince Liang’s territory, a fair few times over the years. They described what was happening out there. I am guessing. Take it or leave it.”

Liu Yuru was quiet. Gu Jiusi tilted his head back and covered it with both hands, then after a while looked up. “Any more questions? If not, I would like to sleep.”

“Sleep.”

Liu Yuru reached out and pressed his head back down onto the pillow.

He was out before she moved her hand.

She sat thinking about what he had said. After everything she had come to understand about him, she had concluded that when Gu Jiusi said something it generally had more truth in it than he let on. He called it guessing. But a guess made from real, unguarded conversations with people who had nothing to gain from deceiving him probably landed closer to the truth than most careful analysis of intelligence reports that might themselves be fabricated.

Liu Yuru was still turning this over when Yin Hong called from outside: “Young Mistress, Madam Gu is asking for you.”

She came back to herself and went to the main hall. Jiang Rou was already waiting. “Come,” she said, when she saw Liu Yuru. “Eat first, then I will take you to the shops.”

Liu Yuru sat down with her. Jiang Rou asked about the homecoming visit, then asked about arrangements going forward, then said: “Once Jiusi has settled into his studies and does not need you watching him every hour, take some of that time and put it into the business.”

“As you direct, Mother-in-law.”

After breakfast Jiang Rou took her to the shops, introduced her to everyone, and went through every aspect of the operation with her. The locations of each shop, the way they turned a profit, where they sourced their goods. She held nothing back. When they had been through all of them, Jiang Rou took out the account books and went through them by hand with Liu Yuru, and then said: “The annual audit is just about due. You can go through all the accounts for me.”

Liu Yuru was slightly startled. She recognized this as a test. She did not refuse, though her nerves were steady in her chest. She said yes.

When she got home that day, Gu Jiusi was out. She was told he had gone to see friends, and since he had not had a chance to see Yang Wenchang and Chen Xun in a long time, she decided not to interfere. She washed, sat down at the table with the account books, worked for as long as she could, and eventually fell asleep with her face on the desk.

Gu Jiusi came home cheerful, found Liu Yuru collapsed at her table with an abacus beside her and the account books open in front of her, and paused. He went over and shook her. “Liu Yuru. Come on, go to bed.”

Liu Yuru opened her eyes, looking thoroughly finished.

Gu Jiusi recognized this state of exhaustion intimately. He sighed, bent down, and carefully lifted her sideways.

She was lighter than he had expected. He carried her to the bed. She opened her eyes partway and saw his face. “You are back?” she said, small and vague.

She had not yelled at him.

Gu Jiusi’s first thought was relief. He told her to stop talking and sleep, and covered her up before going next door to wash. While he was in the bath he found himself saying to Mu Nan: “What was she doing today? She looks worn through.”

Mu Nan had anticipated the question. “Madam Gu took the Young Mistress to learn the shops today. Madam Gu has given her this year’s accounts to audit.”

Gu Jiusi paused. He knew how much work the annual audit was for his mother. “A task that big, and she just handed it straight over?”

“That is what everyone is saying,” Mu Nan said, scrubbing his back. “That Madam Gu is training her. Before long, the household affairs might all be hers to run.”

“They already are,” Gu Jiusi said, with a slight eye roll.

But he thought about it, and said: “She is watching over my studies and managing the accounts at the same time. That is a lot.”

It was a great deal, as it turned out.

For the weeks that followed, Liu Yuru was up before the chickens and asleep long after everyone else.

She left Gu Jiusi largely to himself, and he did not give her trouble in return. He read, more or less steadily. Yin Hong kept an eye on him and reported that he had been making a genuine effort, and had largely managed to keep himself in line. Liu Yuru nodded and let it go. She could not watch him every day for the rest of their lives. She had started something, and whether he kept it up was going to depend on him.

The accounts were slow at first, then faster as she found her rhythm. Each day she went to check inventory at the shops, which took all day, and came back late at night. Sometimes there was still work to be done when she got back, and she would sit up to finish it. Gu Jiusi would lie on his floor mat watching the lamplight glow through the screen partition, still on long after he had gone to bed.

He had never seen anyone work this hard. This much self-discipline and focus in a person, this unhurried, determined application of herself to whatever she set her hand to.

Her silhouette moved against the warm candlelight, and he found he was looking at it more than he realized. It worked its way into him slowly, the way warmth does, though at the time he did not quite notice.

Things did get easier as she grew familiar with them.

Once she had the operation clearly in her mind, Jiang Rou began teaching her to negotiate, accompanying her the first few times and then stepping back to let her do it herself.

A merchant had come from Youzhou wanting a large order of cloth. This was Liu Yuru’s home territory, since the Liu family’s business had always been in fabric, so she was sent to handle it. The weather was pleasant. She went with Mu Nan and Yin Hong and stepped into the reserved private room.

The buyer’s name was Zhou Ye. His adoptive father, she had been told, held a position in the Youzhou military, and Zhou Ye occasionally came on his behalf to make purchases for the troops. The cloth this time was for winter wear. She had assumed he would be older, to be trusted with something of this scale, and felt a small surprise when she found a young man of about twenty looking back at her.

He was handsome in the way of men from the north, solid and direct, with the kind of clean, unornamental good looks that came from living outdoors.

He was also slightly surprised to see her, but covered it smoothly and bowed with courtesy. Liu Yuru steadied her nerves, introduced herself, and said: “Young Master Zhou, I am Liu Yuru, daughter-in-law of Madam Jiang. The Jiang trading house is currently under my management, so I will be handling the cloth order.”

“Young Mistress Gu must have exceptional ability to have been entrusted with such responsibilities at her age.” He followed up with a compliment, then sat down in an easy and open manner.

Zhou Ye was a good conversationalist, warm-tempered, and direct in how he worked through figures and specifications. They were both straightforward in their dealing, and they reached agreement quickly. After they had settled quantities, prices, and delivery methods, they signed the contract, talked for a while, and it was time to leave. Zhou Ye looked at the sky and said politely: “Allow me to see you back.”

“Please do not trouble yourself,” Liu Yuru said with a smile. “I have people with me. Young Master Zhou, please feel free.”

He nodded but walked with her as far as the stairs anyway. They had barely taken a few steps down the corridor when a loud voice called out from somewhere ahead: “Well, well. Whose young lady is this, out in the middle of the day, walking out of a private room with a man she seems very friendly with?”

The hall went still. Everyone turned toward the voice.

Standing in the corridor was a man who looked perhaps twenty-five, with something soft and dissolute about him. He seemed to have been drinking, could barely stand straight, and his face was flushed.

Liu Yuru turned with everyone else, and the moment she saw his face she went rigid. She had never seen him before. But she knew this face perfectly well.

It was Wang Rong.

The Wang Rong from the dream, the one whose leg Gu Jiusi had broken, who had then spent years nursing his hatred until the night he turned it into the destruction of the Gu family.

She caught her breath, then immediately turned to leave, pulling her companion’s arm.

But Zhou Ye had stopped. He did not know who this man was, but he was not someone who let things go. “Sir, mind your words. This lady and I have been conducting a business transaction, with full knowledge and approval from both our households. There has been nothing improper.”

“Oh,” Wang Rong said, with a drawn-out insinuation. “So the family sent her out to do these kinds of things.”

He let the words “these kinds” carry as much filth as they could hold. Zhou Ye’s expression closed over. Liu Yuru said, low and quick: “Young Master Zhou. He is a government official’s son. Do not get into a confrontation. The right thing speaks for itself. Do not attract trouble.”

Zhou Ye gave a cold sound and did not appear to think much of “official’s son” as a category. Liu Yuru looked at him and remembered that Zhou Ye was also, in a manner of speaking, from an official family. She pressed her lips together and said: “Young Master Zhou. Let us go. We are in Yangzhou.”

At that, Zhou Ye hesitated, then finally turned away.

Wang Rong came walking down toward them and called loudly: “Do not leave, little lady. You have already kept this gentleman company. Come and keep me company for a bit.”

Mu Nan stepped forward to stand in front of Liu Yuru. “Young Master Wang,” he said respectfully, “our mistress is the Young Mistress of the Gu household. We ask that you show proper respect.”

“You say Gu family, I should believe you?” Wang Rong laughed coldly. “More like you are just claiming the name.”

He moved closer, studying Liu Yuru with satisfaction. “Look at that. Fresh and clean-looking. And there is something to her, up close.”

His fan moved toward her chin. Liu Yuru clenched her fist, straightened her back, and said, cold and clear: “Young Master Wang. My identity has been stated. If you continue to make a scene under the influence of drink, you are insulting the Gu family. Even if you do not think of yourself, think of Lord Wang. One letter from the capital and I do not know whether Young Master Wang’s household is prepared for the consequences.”

“You dare!” He raised the fan to strike. Zhou Ye caught it in one hand. “Young Master Wang,” he said, sharply, “as a member of an official family, one should hold oneself to a higher standard. If you persist in this, are you genuinely intending to make an enemy of the Gu family?”

Wang Rong said nothing. He fixed his eyes on Zhou Ye, weighing. Then after a moment he pressed his hand to his head with an exaggerated look of confusion. “Oh, I am too drunk. I cannot see straight. Someone come and take me down.”

When he was gone, Liu Yuru unclenched her fist.

She let out a breath and turned to apologize to Zhou Ye. “Young Master Zhou, I am sorry you were caught up in this.”

“Think nothing of it.” He shook his head. “That sort of person, whether it was you or anyone else today, I would not have stood aside.”

“Wang family has a great deal of weight in Yangzhou. He cannot touch me today, but he may take it out on you. I would advise you to leave Yangzhou as soon as convenient. The cloth order I will personally see to completion. Please do not worry.”

Liu Yuru said it with genuine regret. Zhou Ye smiled. “I am not afraid of what he might do.”

Liu Yuru looked worried. Zhou Ye glanced at the sky. “Young Mistress, I should still see you back.”

His manner did not leave room for refusal. Liu Yuru sighed, nodded, and got into the carriage.

Zhou Ye rode alongside and escorted her back to the Gu household. Liu Yuru was thinking ahead to how she would report all of this to Jiang Rou.

She was afraid, and more than afraid she felt a heaviness she could not quite name, partly grievance and partly a dull sense of dread. She did not know whether Jiang Rou had dealt with things like this before. Doing business meant going out, and business was not conducted between women and women only, or men and men only. Large transactions were private, handled in a room, and a woman in a room with a man, even with attendants present, was always going to generate talk. She was not sure how Jiang Rou managed it. And then there was Wang Rong, and why he had appeared today, and whether threatening him would cause problems later on…

She was still thinking through all of it when the carriage began to near the Gu compound and she heard the sudden, familiar sound of horse hooves drumming at speed.

Liu Yuru listened, then quickly lifted the curtain. And there was Gu Jiusi, dressed in plain white, driving his horse past her carriage without stopping. “Go home!” he called back at her, and kept riding.

Liu Yuru watched him go in momentary confusion. Then she spotted Gu household guards driving horses in pursuit, and quickly stopped one of them. “Where is the young master going?”

The guard caught his breath. “The young master heard that Wang Rong spoke badly to the Young Mistress. He took the horse from the stables. He said he was going to break his leg.”

Liu Yuru went white.

Zhou Ye, still nearby, smiled. “So that is Young Master Gu. Quite the fiery spirit. Do not worry too much, Young Mistress. He is probably just going to go shout at him. It will come to nothing.”

“No.” Liu Yuru came back to herself. “Stop him. Quickly, go after him.”

She turned to Zhou Ye. “Young Master Zhou, my husband has a violent temper and I have to go and see. Thank you for accompanying me. My apologies for the trouble. Another day.”

Zhou Ye hesitated, then nodded. “Take care, Young Mistress.”

Liu Yuru got back into the carriage. “Hurry. Follow him.”

“If they couldn’t catch up, Wang Rong’s legs would really be broken.”