In that narrow cabin, cold fragrances contended.
Was what filled the air now Shen Wen’s sachet-perfume, or the lingering incense of the abbey?
Jiang Man had no mind to tell.
Those two sentences had nearly cost her her life. All she could do was regret her own rashness—yet if she truly had the chance to do it over, she doubted her recklessness could be improved upon.
Shen Wen’s words had struck at the very artery of Jiang Man’s existence. If she could not prove her own usefulness, she could at least name what use she had.
And what use she had, Shen Wen herself had named. Jiang Man did not fear she’d take it back; she only rued that her own skin was too thin—she could never seize the host’s seat from the guest.
The layered mist in Shen Wen’s eyes slid back into place in an instant; that single moment had vanished without a trace. Jiang Man knew it had been no illusion—but the feeling was like a book already closed: with nothing but her own thin words and her failing courage, she could not open it again, and so could not cross the trenches Shen Wen had dug between them.
—Was it Shen Wen?
Perhaps it was only West Lake, Jiang Man thought.
Shen Wen’s lips moved before her eyes. There was more laughter in her voice as she said, “I hardly keep you at my side to give me heartburn. Useless you may be, but you’re pleasing to look at—and so you have your use after all.”
Jiang Man blinked, and lowered her head. “My thanks for the Female Scribe’s regard.”
She said she was pleasing to look at.
Words so restrained—and Jiang Man heard what lay beneath them.
The one she pleased was, of course, the woman before her.
“And here I thought you’d offer a few words of modesty.” Shen Wen drew back, the smile undimmed, her gaze light as a foot of goose-down—brushing past Jiang Man to look toward the bow.
Jiang Man’s eyes did not move. “What the Female Scribe has praised with her own lips—if I belittled it myself, how would I differ from the blind?”
“Clever people are few in this world, and those who don’t know a good hand when it’s dealt them are many. Be modest past a certain point, and people take you for something cheap—how many worthy souls have been buried that way?” Shen Wen’s brows lifted slightly. “To get anything done, you must first know your own measure. The person who knows how to play strengths against weaknesses can even turn modesty into a tool for advancing herself. You do have this one virtue: your family’s wine tastes good, and you’ll say so; you have a certain beauty, and you’ll say that too.”
Seen in profile against the light, the line of her brow stood out sharper, like the green of summer mountains one looks up at from a streamside. If one stroked along its grain, it would surely be soft as down—the touch of a small tuft of fur.
But go against the grain, and it would be like raking one’s hand through weeds still sheathed in their edges.
Weeds, deep-rooted in the world of men, that could strangle a person to death and then cut in, inch by inch, into flesh.
Jiang Man never knew where the courage came from. Her gaze lingered on Shen Wen’s fingers, then lifted at last to meet her eyes. Feeling her way carefully through Shen Wen’s mood, she said, “The Female Scribe’s intentions toward me are, of course, kind. Snow Creek Wine cannot be offered for the moment—but I wonder how much tenderness the Female Scribe holds in reserve for Xiaojiu?”
Shen Wen’s expression sharpened all at once, eyes narrowed—and smiling. “You have some nerve.”
She was smiling, yet it chilled more than her usual indifference ever had.
Jiang Man dared not look away. The cabin was too narrow; there was no room to rise on some pretext and bow. Her hands hidden in the shadows, fingers twisted together, she only feigned composure: “To know one’s measure, one must first have a fixed sense of proportion. And living now under another’s roof, that proportion, naturally, is not mine to set.”
Feigning composure, she still could not guess how many layers deep Shen Wen had seen through her.
Shen Wen studied her a while. “One thing you said wrong.”
“Yes.” Jiang Man lowered her eyes, and found she had stopped breathing without noticing.
Shen Wen said, “You said you were a thing I had praised with my own lips. That is wrong.”
Jiang Man paused, and kept her eyes meekly lowered.
“I hate oath-swearing, hate unguarded tongues—and at bottom, what I can’t stomach in all of it is nothing but exaggeration.” Shen Wen’s tone was always a matter of fact; at such moments, beneath the words lay some command that brooked no dispute, as if whatever she said simply was—as if anything that passed her lips carried its own day of fulfillment.
“Lift your head.” she commanded.
Jiang Man had no way to refuse.
Shen Wen’s gaze followed her up. “You ought at least to know your own measure. I say you’re beautiful—that is only stating a fact. I know you, Jiang Xiaojiu, set store by virtue and talent. But how much extra good a fine shell can buy—have you truly never reckoned it?”
Jiang Man flinched despite herself—but Shen Wen’s command stood first, and even not daring to look, she had to look. Jiang Man said, “Ordinary fruit and pastries fetch different prices boxed than wrapped in paper—how much more a person. It seems to me that selling high can be no bad thing.”
“And that is the second thing you’ve gotten wrong.” Shen Wen’s lashes fluttered lightly; her gaze dropped briefly to the tabletop, as if she had already guessed at Jiang Man’s tangled fingers—then rose again. “Between you and me there is one sheet of hire contract and a few IOUs, nothing more. If I truly appraised you like an object, you could drag me before the magistrate—and even the magistrate on that bench would not dare tilt the scales my way. To stick in the grass marker and sell one’s head is what necessity forces; to willingly rank oneself with common goods—that fault is yours.”
Jiang Man said nothing.
It had been only yesterday that she had appraised herself in exactly that tone—the tone of a dealer discussing an object’s condition.
Not yet twelve hours past. However forgetful Jiang Man might be—though the exact words might blur—she would not forget the attitude, the expression, the look down from on high.
To fold away her own thoughts and feelings was already the limit of what Jiang Man could do; but to add, on top of such humiliation, some slavish, heart-defying flattery—she did not seem to have that in her.
“Before the new year, Wu You delivered a batch of books, among them one called the Record of Shared Indignation, come by a very winding road; the contents are interesting.” Shen Wen’s gaze touched her eyes lightly, like a waterbird skimming a still lake, the ripples spreading slowly toward the shore. “But you had better not read it.”
Jiang Man asked, hesitating, “What is the book about?”
“The shame of Jingkang.” Shen Wen’s face was nearly still.
Jiang Man’s heart pounded like a drum.
“By our dynasty’s Song Penal Law Compendium, selling one’s wife or daughter is a crime. A man who pledges his wife—she may divorce him and remarry; and outright trafficking in wife or daughter draws no less than three years penal servitude. Have you ever wondered why, in those destitute households, the practice never stops?”
The Jiang family hired only freeborn servants with a middleman standing surety; those bought and sold into servitude were utterly foreign to Jiang Man—distant as things in a book. She paused. “By my guess—because they have no other choice.”
Shen Wen shook her head. “It’s because the Emperor himself led the way in pledging wives and selling daughters.”
The sentence was pitched neither loud nor soft. Everyone aboard, boatman included, numbered four, and all were her own people—but the skiff was out on the open water all the same; one careless moment, and someone might hear.
Jiang Man was startled and about to caution her when the woman spoke again: “By this book’s account, when the indemnity to the Jin Army was reckoned, the imperial clan’s wives and daughters were paid out against the debt—each Imperial Princess valued at ten thousand taels of gold, a common freeborn girl at a thousand taels of silver. By that reckoning, hiring you came very cheap—a mere two hundred strings and it was done. Tell me: why?”
Jiang Man blinked and lowered her eyes. “To be sold to the Jurchens—what humiliation could be greater. A princess, a thousand-gold body; a commoner’s daughter, freeborn—stuck with the grass marker, it was only an insult to our Great Song. Of course the prices then cannot compare with now.”
“In the Jurchens’ eyes they were livestock, counted by the ‘head.’ But you—you are different.” Shen Wen looked at her, her warmth and cold impossible to read. “With me, you are half a hostage, half a hand to share my burdens. They…”
For once, Shen Wen left unsaid the half that both of them understood without speaking.
Then she went on: “There is a consort in that book for whom I have some respect. When the dishonor came, her attendants urged her to die for her virtue; she refused. The Jurchens forced her; she refused still. Her self-defense survives only in a single lone copy—yet read today, it still rings like struck metal. One sees that true principle in this world does not break, however it is trampled.
“This consort asked the leader of the Jin Army: who sold her—who had the right to dispose of her? And who took the money—by what warrant could she be used to entertain troops?” Shen Wen looked over. “A daughter of a fallen state, married into the imperial house, still believed that only she herself could decide her own life, death, and future. And you—a freeborn woman hired for a fixed term—how dare you demean yourself so?”
Jiang Man was shaken—but her thoughts ran differently from Shen Wen’s. She felt only that the consort had been rather naive, and said at once, “To answer the Female Scribe: the man who pledges his wife lends her out for three to five years, and the payment rises or falls by what children she bears, boy or girl. It seems to me no different from trading pigs and sheep. Is a wife so pledged not, in truth, a beast-like thing?”
Shen Wen looked at her. “It lies in how she sees herself. In wartime there is no law, only the rule of the strong. Now there is mostly peace: if she is unwilling, she can go to the local gentry, she can bring suit at the yamen. If she accepts it willingly—then even if she is not a ‘thing,’ she has made herself one.”
“Might I ask one thing?” Jiang Man raised her head. “That consort who demanded answers and lodged her accusation—what became of her?”
Surprise flickered in Shen Wen’s eyes. “I imagine she did not die well.”
Jiang Man said, “Then I have said all I need to say.”
Shen Wen looked at her, and suddenly smiled. “If you truly took yourself for a plaything, how would you dare speak to me in that tone? Not afraid I’ll throw you in the lake?”
“Entirely as the Female Scribe pleases.” Jiang Man lowered her eyes. “If I have given offense, I will sink myself in the lake and beg pardon.”
Having said it, she showed not the slightest sign of rising to do so.
Shen Wen’s habitual languor was gone; light spilled from her eyes as she sat up straight. “A minister who serves without loyalty deserves death; a minister who speaks unfittingly deserves death also—that is the way of ruler and minister. It is not the relation of master to object. That I am your Household Master is true enough—but I will not presume to rank myself with a sovereign, nor will I look on you as a dead thing. It isn’t that you’re so remarkable, Jiang Xiaojiu—it’s that I am unwilling.”
That last line sounded like arrogance, yet it was, in disguise, an affirmation of everything Jiang Man had said. Trembling, with some ungraspable elation welling in her chest, she answered, “The Female Scribe teaches rightly. So a person below may govern herself only because those above govern with leniency.”
“Wrong.” Shen Wen gave her a sidelong glance. “It is because those above hold all power in their hands.”
Jiang Man started.
“Do you know who said ‘disloyalty deserves death’?”
“I do not.”
“Zhang Yi said it.” Shen Wen’s eyes were bright, a smile at her lips. “Zhang Yi was born in Wei and spent half his life laboring for Qin, and in the end returned to his native soil. The ancients are gone; their true hearts cannot be recovered. But what he wanted is plain enough: for the sake of his own aims, though what he spoke might be truth itself, before that truth stood his choice. If he had truly seen himself as the minister of one ruler, of one state, then Zhang Yi’s whole life would have been the greatest joke under heaven.
“I don’t know why you rank yourself with dead things. You have no connection to that foolish wife who sells herself willingly.” Shen Wen watched her, enunciating every word. “I am not your husband.”
Jiang Man felt the heat climb to her ears, and said softly, “I only wish to serve you well as your personal attendant.”
She raised her eyes—and saw a flash of light cross Shen Wen’s face, like sudden understanding. “So it isn’t that you don’t know your own measure. You feel your duties are unclear—and so, to this day, you’ve had no way to put your strengths to use?”
Jiang Man, blushing furiously, nodded slightly.
Shen Wen smiled. “I underestimated you, it seems.”
