Zhang Changzai sat frozen, with nothing to say. At last he could only salute and ask, “Dare I ask one thing: if the one whose death today would preserve the greater design were not Devotee Jiang, but you, Female Scribe—what would you do?”
Shen Wen started.
“You and I are friends across the years, so let me presume: of the Female Scribe’s nature, this Poor Daoist can predict seven parts in ten.” Zhang Changzai’s gaze fell on Jiang Man’s handwriting. “That Devotee Jiang and the Female Scribe had a bond in your past life—meeting this person now and remembering old things is only human. But that bond is already dusted over. And besides, if this Poor Daoist remembers correctly…”
Shen Wen felt it too, and met his eyes.
Zhang Changzai said, “In your past life, this ‘Devotee Jiang’—she meant to kill you.”
Just as expected.
Shen Wen gave him a sidelong look. “So what?”
“So what?” Zhang Changzai shook his head. “The Female Scribe grows more carefree by the day. She wants your life, and here you are, feeling tender toward her.”
A faint smile on Shen Wen’s face, she looked only at the foam shriveling against the rim of the teacup—uglier by the moment, nearing the state of a tea’s corpse—and her brow would not smooth.
She was silent a long while, an almost invisible sorrow hidden between her brows, and her voice was very soft. “Old Zhang. Tell me—is she her?”
Zhang Changzai looked at her, pulled back one sleeve, took up the brush Jiang Man had used, and dipped it in the inkstone for a good long while, saying as he did, “‘The heart’s field swept clean, without a speck of dust’—from the devotees’ talk just now: that is Bai Juyi’s verse?”
“It is. In her past life—” Shen Wen paused, and corrected herself, “—her past life, she loved Juyi’s poems dearly. The line comes from Bai Juyi’s poem of self-account, fourteen rhymes in seven-character lines, telling his own life; the mood of the whole poem does justice to the Hermit of Xiangshan’s name, ‘Letian’—’happy in fate.'”
Zhang Changzai nodded slightly and wrote on the paper a dot and a vertical stroke—the heart radical, “heart,” missing its right dot. He said, “Has the Female Scribe learned Devotee Jiang’s true name?”
“Mm.” Shen Wen’s lashes lowered. “But she may not be willing to tell you, and I’ve no wish to give away what isn’t mine to give.”
At that Zhang Changzai gave half a laugh and strangled it at once. He wrote the character “field” to the right of the dotless heart, spacing it a little wide—Zhang Changzai’s handwriting had never been easy on the eyes; Shen Wen, deeming what she couldn’t see no bother, looked instead at Jiang Man’s writing.
Different people, different lives—and yet this familiar hand, those verses still ringing in the ear, and those unforgettable, feeling-filled eyes: all of it the same, without the least difference.
Shen Wen had thought her the person in her dream; she had searched for years and found the dream made real. And now, with her before her very eyes—when Shen Wen reached out one hand, at the very moment the real and unreal would be revealed, she drew it back.
So she, Shen Wen, too, knew how to be afraid.
“You needn’t tell me if you won’t,” Zhang Changzai said. “This Poor Daoist asks only one thing: that character ‘Fu’—whether the ‘fu’ of ‘Fuxi’ or the ‘fu’ of ‘good fortune’—so long as it is written with these radicals joined and carries this sound, has Devotee Jiang any part of it?”
Shen Wen didn’t speak; she met his eyes and gave only a slight nod.
Zhang Changzai looked thoughtful, pinched a hand-sign and calculated silently a moment, then said, “That’s wrong, though… Has she changed her name at some point?”
Shen Wen let out a soft breath. “Her milk name was ‘Little Fu.'”
“Just so.” Zhang Changzai’s eyes brightened; he turned the paper sideways, changing horizontal to vertical. “See here, Female Scribe: ‘The heart’s field swept clean, without a speck of dust’—this is heart and field—”
His brush-tip hung between “heart” and “field,” drawing a circle as he spoke. “Swept and sprinkled a little—is that not precisely ‘clean, without a speck of dust’?”
Shen Wen looked hard, and her mind went blank.
“The heart’s field swept clean, without a speck of dust”—in the end, it became the character “blessing.”
When brush touched paper, what was it that Jiang Man had truly been asking for?
Zhang Changzai set down the brush. “How is this character read?”
“Fu.” Shen Wen heard her own voice come out strange, and cleared her throat lightly to cover it.
“Is this how ‘fu’ was written in the old days?”
“It is.”
“Does it carry any other meaning?”
Shen Wen was silent a moment, then answered truthfully: “‘Fu’ means ‘full’—man.”
Hearing this, Zhang Changzai counted the strokes one by one, calculated silently a while—and his brows knitted. “Any other meaning?”
“Go look in the Jiyun yourself—didn’t I send you a printed set the year before last?” Shen Wen rolled her eyes at him, slapped two silver ingots on the table, and rose. “That’s your fee for the face-reading. The incense offering money for the Supreme Clarity Palace will come in a few days. Spend less on subsidies—this temple of yours is solemn enough already. Must every single statue of every god be plastered in gold?”
“My thanks, Female Scribe. This Poor Daoist has never had expenses; with worldly goods in hand I hardly know where to spend them—and if not added to the abbey, they’d only be traded for rice and given away.” Zhang Changzai rose after her, but his gaze stayed on the table. “Does the Female Scribe know now what Devotee Jiang was asking for, when she wrote?”
Shen Wen shook out her sleeves and smoothed them with great care, and in the end did not answer him at all. “If you don’t know where to spend it, save it and have it changed into Gold Leaves. Or have the craftsmen of Tieqian Lane beat it into some ritual implement of pure gold—it’ll be useful when you flee the fighting, so you won’t hide it somewhere and forget where.”
Zhang Changzai bowed low once more. “I beg the Female Scribe to think thrice.”
Shen Wen walked to the door. “Jiang Xiaojiu’s parents are both dead, her clan elders cold as clay—a pitiable creature. She is under my protection now. If so much as a hair of her head is harmed, I will flay you.”
Zhang Changzai said yes.
Shen Wen pulled open the great door and looked back, her eyes ice-cold. “I do not joke.”
She sat a long while in the back room. That worthless disciple of his, Xu Zhizhen, never once brought tea in—Shen Wen knew he’d never had the slightest intention to. This master and disciple had genuine skill, and loved nothing more than mystification: every matter half hidden, half shown.
Riddles were elegant enough in their place, but if one had to attain enlightenment just to get through daily life with them, even Shen Wen’s patience would be ground to nothing. One courtesy for another: with this pair, when the matter was trivial, she simply said one sentence less.
The heart’s field swept clean, without a speck of dust.
If this were a gatha, it was dignified enough—but it lacked that Buddha-heart that lets go of delusion and attachment. Jiang Man did not believe in Buddha; there was no need to force on her the severing of the self.
Was it really the character “畗”? Shen Wen half believed, half doubted.
Divining by character was not casting hexagrams or reading faces: one question, a hundred possible answers, no way to settle it—everything rested on the diviner’s art. And at bottom, such divination rested on believing, or not believing.
What she had told Zhang Changzai was not false; she had merely withheld one line, buying a little time. Zhang Changzai was content with poverty and the Dao, but he had a heart set on aiding all under heaven—no sooner would their party leave the Supreme Clarity Palace than he would know everything Shen Wen now knew.
“畗” was interchangeable with “答”—answer.
If Shen Wen believed in that past life, in the hexagram, in this divination—then Jiang Man was the one she had been searching for: her calamity, her answer.
Cold wind swept past her ears like a wisp of a broken soul’s lingering fragrance.
Shen Wen stopped in the middle of the hundred-foot clearing, unable to make her feet move.
Jiang Man was not her, after all.
Not yet, at least.
The lattice door opened in the distance. First out was Huailou, carrying the cloak Shen Wen hadn’t used on the way here, folded square and neat; behind her came Xu Zhizhen, full of energy, nothing like the usual slacker of a young Daoist. And between them walked Jiang Man, arms full of books, lifting her head—pitiable enough to wring anyone’s heart.
Twenty zhang apart at the least, yet their eyes found each other at once.
Jiang Man immediately dropped her head and bent in a curtsy. Huailou looked over too, hurried forward, curtsied, and was about to shake out the cloak.
Shen Wen raised a hand. “We won’t linger outside today.”
Huailou assented, then pressed once more: “The lakeside is windy, after all.”
Shen Wen lowered her eyes slightly and accepted the kindness, saying as she did, “She mustn’t be out in the wind. From now on, leave the corner seat of the carriage box for her.”
Huailou said, “To report, Female Scribe: if Lady Jiang is to attend you alone, I fear it will take some time yet.”
“Train her well.” Shen Wen glanced into the distance. “No need to teach her to pour tea and run errands—that’s not why she was brought here. Only the matter of conducting herself with others must be taught in detail: not perfection, but poise. She is a beauty already; if she learns the ordinary young lady’s squirming manner with strange men, it will only breed trouble. All she knows is to fear people—she has no idea what, exactly, is fearsome about them.
“Huailou, take extra pains,” Shen Wen looked at her, then added flatly, “she’s not dull, after all—only obstinate. Nudge and stop there. The rest, I will teach her myself.”
“This servant understands.” Huailou bowed, then asked, “Beyond this servant’s and Sijiu’s duties, is there anything else in which Lady Jiang should be instructed?”
At that, Shen Wen gave her an extra look.
Huailou kept her head bowed, the picture of deference, as if she had never said a word too many.
Shen Wen walked ahead and said only, “No need.”
“Yes.”
Coming down the steps, Jiang Man was already dying to bury her face in the dirt, as if terrified Shen Wen might spare her even one more glance. As for Xu Zhizhen, he reined in his ample voice somewhat, as if perpetually short an hour or two of sleep, and gave Shen Wen only a cupped-hand salute. “Devotee Shen.”
“Where’s my tea?” Shen Wen looked at him.
“Ah—” Xu Zhizhen slapped his forehead. “Your humble Daoist forgot.”
Shen Wen rolled her eyes. “And how is it she got tea?”
The words had barely fallen when—who knew what had gotten into Jiang Man—she hastily covered her face with her sleeve; one arm couldn’t hold the books, so she hitched them higher, right hand still pressed to her cheek, half her face hidden behind the sleeve.
Shen Wen swallowed a laugh and said, “We’re off, then. Around noon tomorrow someone will deliver rice and flour; make out a list beforehand of anything else you’re short of. Oh—and I want thirty to fifty catties of Numinous Void Stick Incense. Have it ready; tomorrow I’ll have it carted back to the Hidden Osmanthus Garden.”
Xu Zhizhen saluted. “Female Scribe, Daoist incense-making is nothing like the shops’. Pounding the wood, blending, forming the incense—every step must wait on an auspicious day. Never mind thirty or fifty catties—scrape out three or five taels and it still takes a good while to blend. Aren’t you making difficulties for your humble Daoist?”
Shen Wen appeared not to hear. “Incense cakes alone would do, if it comes to that—but you’ll send me at least ten catties of stick incense. I have use for it at night.”
Xu Zhizhen seemed to reach the end of his rope. “Does the Female Scribe live on incense offerings?”
“Incense offerings are for ghosts and gods.” Shen Wen’s eyelids lifted. “Do I look like one?”
While they spoke, Jiang Man seemed at last to have confirmed there was no tea foam left on her face; she lowered her hands carefully and breathed a small, secret sigh of relief.
Shen Wen returned Xu Zhizhen’s rudeness with languid disdain, but her mind had settled on Jiang Man—and then, as if passing clean over the Jiang Man before her, drifted without her noticing to some place very far away.
This woman’s brows and eyes were hers, and not hers; her words were hers, and not hers.
The same breathtaking beauty; the same proud bone that could not be snapped.
Only that Lin’an courtesan whose name had shaken the city, Jiang Manlou, had long since died in Shen Wen’s arms.
And this Jiankang Jiang daughter, raised behind closed gates, was, in the end, fated to have nothing to do with her.
