Hearing Shen Wen’s blunt words, Jiang Man kept to her place, head bowed, receiving the rebuke.
Only, inside, it was like an unremovable thorn—emotions churning, wanting to pluck it out and finding no way to grip it.
Young though she was, she had managed the inner household for over three years. Within these walls, high and low, not one soul was not in awe of her; even among the families they visited, the heads of household always said that among the daughters of Jiangnan, this girl of the Jiankang Jiang Clan was a rare find.
Such floating fame rested mostly on Jiang Rao’s name—yet even if she was a case of reputation outstripping substance, surely she did not deserve to be called what Shen Wen had called her, that…
A mere appeasement—Jiang Man did not think she deserved to be accused of armchair generalship.
Shen Wen was slow to speak again. Jiang Man could not help looking up; the moment their eyes touched, she knew she had lost the round.
Shen Wen touched her lips, her voice languid. “Not convinced? Then don’t say things you dare not say.”
At the first half, Jiang Man had been about to speak; the second half sent her unspoken words straight back down. She could find no pretext—and the Shen Wen before her wore an expression strangely familiar.
Jiang Man knew that look well. Her father had looked at her so; her brother looked at her so; in earlier years, at festival visits, her mother’s family elders always looked at her so.
As if looking at some amusing little trinket.
Jiang Man lowered her head, brows knotted tight.
Shen Wen gave a soft laugh. “From where I stand, there’s nothing you don’t dare.”
Jiang Man curtsied. “I dare not.”
Shen Wen laughed outright.
“Come here.” Shen Wen checked her laughter, took up the brush, wrote four characters on the paper, and beckoned her over. “Fu cheng zhi kou—’the unworthy rider invites robbers.’ Go on, take the characters at face value today. What do they mean?”
Jiang Man was sore at heart, but her face had to stay respectful—and she did want to hear Shen Wen’s lofty opinion—so she went and looked.
The four characters were written carelessly, yet between the strokes lingered the spirit of Yu Shinan—a testament to deep practice.
Jiang Man was not one to gloss over what she did not understand. From her first lessons she had refused to open her mouth rashly and speculate on the classics; after instruction she would silently recite the text, chewing it over and over until the day’s lesson was digested.
But today she had to commit the sin of reading the surface. She stared at the four characters, thinking hard, before saying, “I fear I’m about to make a fool of myself. Does ‘the unworthy rider invites robbers’ mean that when hauling goods, an overloaded cart is the more likely to draw bandits?”
A thread of a smile at Shen Wen’s lips; she did not answer, but asked in turn, “Times are hard. When your family hires boats and carts, have you never drawn thieves? What bandit cares whether you’re loaded eight-tenths or ten-tenths? He sets a roadblock, and if he means to rob you, he robs you. Have you ever heard a diviner say…”
She glanced at Jiang Man, drawing it out. “…that a highly inauspicious day is fine for robbery?”
Jiang Man quietly edged away.
It was plainly a joke, yet it did not land lightly. Jiang Man said, “To answer Female Scribe Shen: by law, the wine trade may only be conducted within one’s granted bounds. Our wine jars leave the workshop and reach the shops within ten li; I have only heard tell of bandits waylaying carts, never seen it. But the same ox-cart, loaded eight-tenths or ten-tenths—that is a difference all the same. If enemies attack from behind, dumping some cargo to quicken the pace—is that not right?”
Shen Wen said flatly, “You think your father never traded beyond his bounds? Where do you think he borrowed this money? Banditry is rampant now; merchants on the official roads get robbed at the defiles all the time. He simply never told you. And you believed the world at peace?”
Trading beyond one’s bounds was a grave crime. Her late father was gone; she would not have him bear, beyond the grave, such a name of greed and lawlessness.
Still, Jiang Man only endured. “What is the Scribe’s purpose in saying this?”
“No purpose. I think what you said is quite correct.” Shen Wen’s voice was light as a feather. “I simply find it grating on the ear.”
“I know my error.”
Shen Wen said, “Let us speak of the matter itself. Sacrifice a little profit, travel light with a small escort—in your view, does that shake off the bandit menace?”
Jiang Man considered. “Somewhat easier, at least.”
Shen Wen looked over, half-smiling. Her manner was utterly frivolous, and yet, somehow, Jiang Man felt she glimpsed in her eyes a hidden, unfathomable pain.
They held each other’s gaze a moment. Then Shen Wen said abruptly, “Emperor Gaozong would have agreed with you.”
Jiang Man was lost for a heartbeat—then understood, and dared not believe it.
Shen Wen’s eyes merely flicked past her. Jiang Man dared not probe further and lowered her head.
This Gaozong was usually a ruler who preserved what he inherited. Jiang Man had never read the histories, but by osmosis she knew of the restoration under Wu Ding—that was the Gaozong of Shang.
The restoration led by the Gaozong in Female Scribe Shen’s mouth must be the one beginning with Shaoxing.
She had actually presumed to judge the reigning dynasty’s emperor!
Jiang Man had grown up on tales of General Yue fighting the Jin—she could hardly revere Emperor Gaozong. But he was still the Son of Heaven by Heaven’s mandate. Jiang Man dared not raise her head for the longest time; she truly did not know how to face Shen Wen.
This woman had shattered her narrow little world again and again. “Unrestrained and perverse” no longer sufficed to describe her aberrance.
Shen Wen had either covered the sky, or swallowed it.
In the end, that unnatural thought was all that remained in Jiang Man’s heart.
“Let me ask you,” Shen Wen went on as if nothing had happened, “if you were to take up highway robbery, would you casually plant a few cheval-de-frise where few pass, carry blade and spear, and wait for travelers to hand you their road-toll? Or would you choose your mark early, lay the ambush in secret, and strike without warning?”
Jiang Man said, “The latter, presumably, is sounder.”
“Good. I was afraid that as a bandit you’d starve to death.” Shen Wen looked her over. “In that case—with pursuers at your back, you dump your cargo for a moment’s speed. And how do you know there are no wolves ahead?”
Jiang Man started. “But if the trap is already laid, how does one escape it?”
Shen Wen looked at the brush and ink on the desk. “A riding carriage was once the privilege of nobles alone. A man of base birth, even seated in a fragrant carriage with fine horses, is easily found out. And a lowborn man who chances into a carriage and then flaunts what he has—that is what draws the robbers. That is the true meaning of ‘the unworthy rider invites robbers.’ Do you understand the principle in it?”
Jiang Man listened intently, then ventured, “When nobles travel, the greenwood gives way. But a man with money and no means to protect it is fat meat—anyone may carve a piece.”
Shen Wen looked at her.
“A common man is guiltless; the jade he carries is his crime. You mean that I cannot protect myself, and am like that poor man flaunting wealth—my closeness to others will only be read as weakness, and draw plunderers instead?” Jiang Man finished slowly, and seeing approval in her eyes, knew she had answered right.
Even so, Jiang Man’s mind was not on her small triumph.
Her brow knitted slightly: she had never imagined the clansmen could be so merciless; caught unprepared, she had been driven nearly to the brink. It was Shen Wen’s descent from the sky that had resolved it. Had she responded with softness instead of clashing head-on with the clan elders, might she not have ended in mutual destruction?
If Jiang Ling did not return, and she alone held this debt-laden Jiang family, even a ruinous standoff for both sides would be a luxury.
An unmarried girl with no one to lean on, standing on no rightful ground—contending with the Jiang elders was throwing eggs at stone.
They had counted on devouring this heirless estate, and counted right.
Shen Wen cleared her throat.
Jiang Man looked up. The cup was empty; she hesitated over whether to call someone in to refill it.
This woman was now her nominal Household Master; Jiang Man could hardly presume—perhaps she should pour the tea herself?
While Jiang Man’s thoughts ran wild, Shen Wen spoke. “No solution comes to you?”
Jiang Man answered softly, “No. I beg the Scribe’s instruction.”
Shen Wen did not answer at once, only studied her a while. Jiang Man kept her eyes dutifully lowered—and heard a sigh, faint as breath, at her ear. Then Shen Wen said, “Why did that unworthy commoner who rode the carriage suffer the bandits?”
“Because he was a commoner who showed his wealth.”
“In your view, how should he have avoided such a fate?”
Jiang Man thought briefly. “Either hide his wealth, or bide and accumulate—wait until he stood high some day, and then…”
Shen Wen’s face grew darker and darker. Jiang Man did not dare finish.
“Right now, you are that commoner, and the bandits are just outside the gate. You know each other to the bone, and the wealth is already shown. Within a single day, how will you ‘bide and accumulate’?” Shen Wen sighed. “Today the wolf’s fangs are already at your neck. Let me ask you: as of this moment, on what strength have you survived?”
Jiang Man gathered her sleeves. “Only through the Scribe’s deliverance.”
Shen Wen said, “The enemy is at the door and the fight about to break out. What do you do?”
Jiang Man raised her head. Shen Wen was looking at her.
Their eyes met—for an instant short, and yet long as the burning of a stick of incense. In that winding fragrance, Jiang Man seemed to grasp some truth beyond all reckoning.
It was not that time had slowed. It was that one look from Shen Wen had said everything that words could not.
In that single instant, Jiang Man read the truth that belonged to her.
She was willing to help her?
“When the Jiang Family Wine Workshop passed to my late father’s generation, it had already lost its Licensed Grand Tavern standing for over thirty years. The household survived on the ancestral property and the thin profits of wine-selling in Jiankang and Chizhou. The workshops’ business was my late father’s labor alone, and the stewards in every region were all men of the household’s inner trust.” Jiang Man laid out the old matters in detail. “As for help from the clan elders, there was precious little. The Second Master has real standing in the clan—even in my father’s lifetime he could not stand against him. That is why our family kept few dealings with the father’s line, beyond festival courtesies. That is all I know. If my brother were here, he could say more.”
When she finished, Jiang Man glanced silently at Shen Wen, then bowed again. “Such is roughly the family shame. I beg the Scribe’s rescue.”
Shen Wen smiled faintly. “I save you, and it’s this cheap? A bow and it’s done?”
“I think not.” Jiang Man had anticipated the words. “Today’s peril is the Jiang family’s, true—but it is also the Scribe’s.”
Shen Wen’s lashes lifted. “Oh?”
“What the workshop owes is, after all, a drop in the ocean of the Scribe’s family fortune. If I am ruined today, no matter—the Jiang family endures, and someone will repay in my stead. Only, they do not understand the difficulty of running wine workshops.
“If the estate passes to others, what you recover will scarcely be half the principal. If it passes to my brother, with every arrangement gnawed away by the clan, what you get will still be only half.” Jiang Man weighed every word, her bearing humble. “And if the Second Master has his way in the end, then the fifty-seven thousand strings Female Scribe Shen lent out will have bought, in the end, a Personal Attendant worth two hundred strings.”
Jiang Man raised her eyes slowly and said gently, “Spending a thousand gold to buy six years of me—that is not a good bargain.”
Shen Wen looked at her, and answered, “That is not yours to decide.”
