Chương 44: Lìchūn: Connection 8

Xie Lianqiu is quiet for a while. Outside, somewhere beyond the thin wall, someone laughs in the courtyard and is answered by another voice further away. The world continues with very poor manners. At last, Xie Lianqiu reaches for the teapot and fills Liu Yinhua's cup again, though Liu Yinhua has hardly drunk from it.

"All right," Xie Lianqiu says.

"Then we can talk about what people say." Liu Yinhua looks at her. Xie Lianqiu sets the pot down with unnecessary care.

"Or we can talk about ribbons for another ten minutes first." The offer is so plain, so clumsy in its kindness, that Liu Yinhua has to look away. Her eyes sting, which is absurd. The tea room is not smoky. The robe is too soft. Xie Lianqiu's sleeve is damp at the end where her hair has dripped onto it, and there is sugar on the table, and Liu Yinhua is going to have to agree to stand with a border clan in a trial she is not strong enough for. Then Liu Yinhua says, very quietly, "I was born in one."

Xie Lianqiu's smile goes still. Liu Yinhua keeps her eyes on the cup. The tea is a pale amber, with two tiny leaves turning slowly near the bottom. One has caught against the side. The other drifts free.

"A qinglou," she adds, because if she does not say it properly, she will hate herself for making Xie Lianqiu guess. Xie Lianqiu does not speak. That is good. Liu Yinhua thinks it is good. She is not sure. Silence can be mercy. Silence can also be judgment. Her hands are very calm around the cup.

"I have let people think a few things," Liu Yinhua says.

"Lady's maid. Servant in a wealthy house. Someone trained near expensive women. People like answers that make them stop thinking." Xie Lianqiu's fingers curl loosely around her own cup, but she does not drink.

"Do they?"

"Yes."

"That sounds like people." It almost makes Liu Yinhua laugh. It would have been easier if she could.

"There are parts the group does not need," Liu Yinhua says.

"There are parts no one needs. But if I stand with you in the trial, and if people start looking harder, there may be things said, if they dig hard enough."

"Guo Meilin," Xie Lianqiu says, very flatly.

"Perhaps. Or someone else. There is always someone else." Xie Lianqiu's mouth tightens. She looks as if she wants to say something sharp, and then, for once, does not. Liu Yinhua is grateful enough for that restraint that it hurts.

"My mother was high-ranking," she says. The words feel strange. She almost never says mother. There are safer titles. Safer distances. The woman in the painted portrait. The woman whose old hairpin Madam Xue had kept locked away until Liu Yinhua's face began to resemble hers too much. The woman whose songs other women would sometimes hum without noticing, then stop when they saw Liu Yinhua listening.

"A courtesan?" Xie Lianqiu asks, and then winces.

"Sorry. Is that— I do not know the better word."

"That word is fine."

"I do not want to sound like…" Xie Lianqiu gestures, frustrated, not finishing.

"Like some idiot boy near a wine stall."

"You do not."

"Oh good. My grand ambition." This time Liu Yinhua's mouth does curve, small and brief. It vanishes quickly.

"She fell with child," Liu Yinhua says.

"No one likes that in a woman who is meant to be expensive in a particular way. No one likes anything that interrupts accounts. She died when I was young." Xie Lianqiu breathes in, a small sound through her nose. Liu Yinhua cannot look at her.

"I do not remember her properly," Liu Yinhua says.

"Only pieces. Her hand, maybe. I am not even certain that one is true." Xie Lianqiu's thumb moves against the side of her cup. Liu Yinhua hears it. The tiny scrape of skin on clay.

"She left debt," Liu Yinhua says. The word is easier than mother, and is not the weight of her mother's debt a far more familiar weight. Her mother is the debt.

"Her debt passed to me, or that is what I was told. Food, clothing, lessons, medicines, housing, protection, the lost value of her contracts. Everything can be counted if the person counting wants it badly enough."

"That is disgusting," Xie Lianqiu says. It comes out before she can soften it. She looks immediately as if she regrets the roughness, though not the meaning. Liu Yinhua turns the cup once between her palms.

"It was normal."

"That does not make it less disgusting."

"No, perhaps not." The agreement sits between them, plain and uncomfortable. Outside the room, someone runs past along the walkway, sandals slapping against wood. A voice calls after them to slow down. Life continues, very rudely, around the edges of things that should make the world stop.

"It was not all…" A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. She hates this part. She hates that some small, stupid part of her wants to defend it. Not the debt. Not Madam Xue. Not the contracts, or the lessons that began too early, or the way every kindness had been folded into a ledger somewhere. But the mornings had still been mornings. Someone had brushed her hair. Someone had taught her the difference between expensive green and cheap green.

Someone had pressed sweet bean cakes into her hand when she was seven and pretending not to cry because her throat hurt from singing scales. It would be easier if everything had only been cruel.

"It was not all one thing," she says at last, and the words come out thin.

"There were women who were kind to me." Xie Lianqiu's face does something complicated. Liu Yinhua sees the first flash of anger, then the way Xie Lianqiu catches it and pushes it down hard enough that her jaw moves.

"All right," Xie Lianqiu says. That is all. It is almost unbearable. Liu Yinhua looks back into her tea.

"I was trained well. Music. Dance. Poetry. Tea. Conversation. How to dress. How to sit. How to listen. How to make men think they had said something clever. How to make women think I was not looking at their jewellery too closely." Xie Lianqiu makes a small sound despite herself. Liu Yinhua's mouth curves, barely.

"That one is useful here."

"I can imagine."

"Many sect girls wear their entire family account on their hairpins."

"They do." Xie Lianqiu looks briefly relieved to have something safe to be annoyed by.

"There was a girl from Blueglass last week with three pearl drops on one pin. In training. Training."

"That is foolish."

"It was not even balanced properly. I wanted to fix it and then throw it away."

"That would have caused trouble."

"Yes, but the pin would have deserved it." The almost-normalness lasts for a breath. Then Liu Yinhua's smile thins and leaves her.

"I let people think I was near such women, not one of them," she says.

"It is easy. If I know about robes, then I must have dressed someone. If I know music, then perhaps I served in the room. If I know how to pour tea, then I was a maid. People prefer that. A servant can be pitied. A servant can be improved. A girl from a qinglou is…" She stops, then changes the sentence because the first version is too ugly.

"People have decided things before they ask." Xie Lianqiu looks down at her cup.

"In the Wastes, there are travelling houses sometimes. Not like the city ones, I think. Some are just singers and dancers. Soldiers talk."

"Yes."

"I always hated the way they talked."

"So did I," Liu Yinhua says, and then realises how stupid it sounds and almost laughs.

"Often." Xie Lianqiu does not laugh at her. The kindness of that is worse than the humour would have been.

"The sect does not know everything," Liu Yinhua says.

"Or perhaps the elders do. I do not know. They know enough. The city knows enough. Madam Xue knows everything."

"Madam Xue?"

"The woman who owned the house." Xie Lianqiu's fingers tighten around the cup.

"Owned."

"Yes."

"And owned your debt."

"Yes."

"And you." Liu Yinhua's chest grows tight, and her fingers tighten around her cup. Xie Lianqiu's face changes at once.

"I'm sorry. I should not have—""No." Liu Yinhua swallows.

"That is what it was." The admission lands with less force than she expects. Perhaps because it is not new. Perhaps because Xie Lianqiu saying it does not make it truer than it already was. The robe sleeve has slipped down again. Liu Yinhua pulls it back into place, not because it has to be moved, but because her hands need the distraction before she starts picking at the scratch on her hand.

"When I came here," she says, "it was not arranged. I was not sent politely. There was an incident. My qi—" She stops abruptly, and Xie Lianqiu waits. Liu Yinhua can feel the words behind her teeth. The locked room. The heat. The smoke. Silk blackening. Hands. Voices. The terrible, impossible moment where her body had stopped being something owned and had answered for itself with fire. Not today.

"I was brought here after," she says instead. Xie Lianqiu nods slowly, taking the refusal without touching it.

"After an incident."

"Yes."

"Bad?" Liu Yinhua looks at the tea leaves again. The last one has sunk.

"Yes."

"Are there people here who know?"

"Not that I know of. But secrets are only secret until someone gains more by selling them." Xie Lianqiu leans back a little, as if distance might help her think without crowding Liu Yinhua. Her damp hair has begun to dry badly, curling at the edges where it escapes the tie. Liu Yinhua notices that because noticing is easier than breathing sometimes.

"Is Madam Xue likely to come here?"

"I do not know."

"Can she?"

"I do not know."

"The sect claimed me," Liu Yinhua says.

"Or accepted me. Or recorded me. I do not know which word is correct. For now, that may be enough. Madam Xue cannot simply walk into the Vermilion Glass Sect and drag away a disciple."

"No," Xie Lianqiu says, and there is steel in the word now.

"But she might send letters. Someone might decide my past is useful. Someone might say I concealed debt. Someone might say I am ungrateful. Someone might say a qinglou girl is exactly what they always thought I was." Xie Lianqiu's expression goes flat.

"Then they can say it where I can hear."

"That is not a good plan." Liu Yinhua presses her lips together, and for a moment she is close to something that is not quite laughter. It fades, but it leaves the room a little less tight.

"I am telling you," she says, slower now, "because if I stand with you, I do not want the first time you hear it to be from someone trying to make it ugly." Xie Lianqiu nods once.

"Good." Liu Yinhua blinks.

"Good?"

"Yes. Better from you." Xie Lianqiu looks down at the table, then reaches for a sesame cake and breaks it into pieces without eating any.

"Not good that you had to tell me. Not good that people are like that. Just… good that you did." Liu Yinhua's throat works once.

"I do not know what to tell the others," she says.

"The boys?" Liu Yinhua gives her a look despite herself.

"What? They are boys."

"Chi Yanluo is your leader."

"He is still a boy. A serious one. It happens."

"And Duan Xueheng?"

"A boy who reads too much into things and then pretends he is not doing it."

"Shen Yuanzhou?"

"A disaster with dimples." This time Liu Yinhua does laugh, though it is small and unsteady. Xie Lianqiu looks terribly pleased, and then tries to hide it by eating the broken pieces of sesame cake all at once. It does not work.

"I do not think you have to tell them today," Xie Lianqiu says around the last bite, less graceful than any qinglou girl would have been permitted to be and somehow better for it.

"For the trial, maybe they need to know there may be rumours. Maybe they need to know you have city enemies. Maybe not the rest until you want to say it."

"I may never want to say it."

"Then say what you can."

"And if they ask?"

"Then I can kick Shen Yuanzhou before he says anything stupid."

"Xie Lianqiu." Xie Lianqiu sighs, but she is smiling a little now, not because it is funny but because Liu Yinhua has said her name like a scolding auntie.

"If they ask, you can tell them it is not theirs unless you choose. If they cannot understand that, I will be very disappointed in them, and then I will make that their problem."

"That sounds very simple when you say it." Liu Yinhua lowers her gaze again. The tea has gone lukewarm. She lifts the cup because her hands need somewhere to be and takes a small sip. It tastes oversteeped and bitter under the sweetness still on her tongue.

"I thought you might look at me differently," she admits. Xie Lianqiu goes still, and Liu Yinhua wishes she had not said it. It is too honest in the wrong direction. Then Xie Lianqiu reaches across the table, stops halfway, and instead picks up the dark red ribbon they had been arguing over earlier. She lays it beside Liu Yinhua's cup with exaggerated care.

"I am looking at you," Xie Lianqiu says.

"I still think dark red." Liu Yinhua stares at the ribbon. For several breaths, she cannot think of anything at all. Then, because she is weak, or tired, or perhaps because the room is warm and the robe is soft and Xie Lianqiu has very bad tea and very good instincts, she says, "Not Crimson Wastes red."

"No," Xie Lianqiu says at once.

"That would be far too obvious."

"It would make people talk."

"People already talk. We cannot stop that, just like we cannot stop their heads being filled with rocks." Liu Yinhua laughs again, helplessly this time, one hand coming up to cover her mouth before the sound can overwhelm the room. Xie Lianqiu's face softens. Then she ruins it, because she is Xie Lianqiu, by nudging the bowl of plums closer.

"Eat another one. You look like you are going to faint, and I refuse to explain to Chi Yanluo that I defeated our new archer with conversation."

"Our new archer?"

"For the trial," Xie Lianqiu says quickly.

"Do not make that face."

"I made no face."

"You did. A very beautiful threatening face." Liu Yinhua takes a plum because arguing feels beyond her. The fruit is sticky between her fingers. Too sweet again. She eats it anyway. Outside, someone laughs in the courtyard once more. Inside, Xie Lianqiu pours fresh water into the pot and says, with forced cheer and a hand that is only a little unsteady, "Now, more tea?" Liu Yinhua holds the dark red ribbon beside her cup and lets herself breathe. For now, that is enough.