Chapter 6: Something Is Wrong with the Young Miss Tonight

Dinner was served in the main hall. A bamboo-green cloth covered the round table, which held several delicate side dishes and a steamed sea bass—the Yu family’s customary, modest fare.

The family was neither immensely wealthy nor especially powerful, but it was well regarded in Qingyang City. Its several shops selling spiritual materials provided a comfortable living.

Yu Chenxue had changed into clean clothes and had her hair combed again. Seated across from her parents, she picked at her rice in small mouthfuls. Usually she talked the most at dinner, but tonight she was remarkably quiet. She had barely touched even her favorite sweet-and-sour ribs.

Her father, Yu Mingyuan, was a man in his forties with a short beard and the features of a scholar, though he spoke with a merchant’s briskness. He set down his wine cup, prodded the fish with his chopsticks, and sighed.

“That old bastard from the Zhou family sent people to snatch our goods again today. We’d already made a deal with Steward Liu of Spirit Beast Mountain, but he came in halfway through, offered thirty percent more, and stole the order.”

His wife, Madam Lin, put some food in his bowl. “That man has always been unscrupulous. We haven’t even settled accounts with him for dumping filth outside our shop, and now he’s at it again. I’m worried…” Her voice dropped. “Who knows what other underhanded tricks he might try?”

“What is there to fear? Qingyang City doesn’t belong to the Zhous.” Mingyuan spoke boldly, but his brow was deeply furrowed. He sighed again. “Business really is getting harder, though. There are thirty percent fewer caravans bringing spiritual materials lately. I hear there’s trouble in the northern mountains. Supplies are tight, prices won’t come down, and the profit’s thin as paper.”

He turned to Chenxue, his voice softening. “Don’t you worry, daughter. However hard things get, your mother and I will see that you eat and dress well. Your father can manage that much.”

Chenxue’s chopsticks stopped halfway to her mouth. She looked up at him. In the candlelight, the strands of gray at his temples stood out. Fine lines had appeared at the corners of her mother’s eyes, too, though her expression was as gentle as ever as she spooned steamed egg into Chenxue’s bowl.

In her dream, after she died and became a wandering spirit between the pages, she had seen her parents standing before her memorial tablet. Her mother had wept until she could barely stand, and her father had held her up. They kept vigil in the mourning hall for three days and nights, refusing to leave no matter who tried to persuade them.

And afterward?

The book had never mentioned them again. It said nothing of whether they had another child, what became of them in old age, or even whether they lived to see the end of the story.

“I could spend less,” Chenxue said earnestly.

Her mother blinked, then laughed and felt her forehead. “Silly child. Has that illness made you talk nonsense? You’re not feverish…”

“I mean it.” Chenxue set down her chopsticks and looked at them both. “We aren’t some fabulously wealthy family. You work hard for what the shops earn. I was thoughtless before. I always wanted the best of everything, but I can be more careful. I can have fewer clothes made, make do with the jewelry I have, and I don’t need bird’s nest soup every day…”

“All right, all right.” Her mother interrupted with a smile, the lines at her eyes crinkling. “It’s sweet of you to think of us. But your father and I know you. Since you were little, when have you ever wanted anything but the best? When you were three, we put a plain cotton jacket on you, and you cried so loudly the whole street could hear. When you were seven, we had silver bracelets made, and you said gold would be prettier. You shoved them under your bed and never wore them again.”

Chenxue had no answer. Her ears warmed. She wanted to protest, but every word was true.

“Exactly!” Mingyuan took a sip of wine and cheerfully added his own blow. “Last winter you wanted a white fox-fur coat. I searched every shop in Qingyang City without finding one good enough, so I had someone bring a pelt from Cangzhou and a tailor worked on it for over half a month. You wore it twice and threw it aside because the fur wasn’t fluffy enough.”

Chenxue poked at her rice. “It really wasn’t fluffy enough,” she murmured.

Then she froze. That coat had appeared in her dream, too.

After selling Chen Yanfan’s sword for three hundred spirit stones and buying a jeweled hairpin, she had passed a clothing shop on her way home. A newly arrived silver-squirrel fur coat caught her eye, so she bought that as well. The white fox coat ended up at the very bottom of her wardrobe, never to be touched again.

Had she really been that sort of person? Wasteful and willful, demanding everything she wanted without a thought for how hard her parents worked, dealing with customers and rivals in their shops. Food and clothing had always been handed to her, yet she had felt perfectly entitled to be the young miss and complain about the wood-chopping servant’s stinginess.

Mingyuan put down his cup. Seeing her sitting there silently with her head lowered, he grew more serious. “Xue’er, you’re not yourself today. Normally, if we said two words about you, you’d put down your chopsticks. Now you’re not even arguing?”

She kept her head down.

“Have you been picking on a servant again?” he asked, half teasing and half probing. “Steward Song told me you made things difficult for that young fellow, Chen Yanfan, a few days ago. Life isn’t easy for a servant. Leave him in peace. You’re a good girl in every other way, but we’ve spoiled you. You need to change that habit.”

At the sound of Yanfan’s name, Chenxue nearly dropped her chopsticks. Her ears burned. Guilty, she lowered her head farther and murmured, barely audibly, “I know. I won’t bully him.”

Her parents exchanged a look. She really was behaving oddly. Ordinarily, by this point she would have slammed the table and shouted, “I don’t like the look of him. So what?”

Now she was admitting it? Had the sun risen in the west?

“Have you done something else you feel guilty about?” her mother asked, studying her suspiciously. “You looked just like this when you stole that whole plate of osmanthus cakes from the kitchen.”

“No!” Chenxue raised her head, her face bright red. “I really didn’t bully him!”

She hadn’t. She had only slept with him. She had even given him spirit stones, and he’d complained it wasn’t enough! He had argued that chopping wood and doing this job should be paid at different rates. She was still annoyed at the thought.

Her mother took the blush for embarrassment and let the matter drop. Smiling, she put a rib in Chenxue’s bowl. “All right, all right, you didn’t. Eat more. You’ve lost weight from being ill; your chin’s gone all pointy.”

Chenxue bent over the rib, her mind elsewhere. “Father, how much do our servants earn each month?”

Mingyuan looked baffled. “Ask Steward Song. How would I remember? Why?”

“No reason. I was just curious.”

Her mother gave her a thoughtful look. Tonight it was as though her daughter had become a different person. The spoiled, headstrong girl was still there, but something new had entered her eyes. Madam Lin couldn’t quite say what it was; she only felt that Chenxue had suddenly grown up a little.

After dinner was cleared away, Chenxue stood beneath the corridor eaves and looked toward the west courtyard. A few dim lanterns glowed there, and she could faintly hear the steady rhythm of an axe. Chen Yanfan was still chopping wood.

She stood listening for a while, then turned toward her room. Passing Qiutang, she said, “Get a new mattress from the storeroom. Nothing fancy, an ordinary cotton one will do. And two new sets of servants’ clothes—sturdy ones that will last.”

Qiutang stared at her. “Miss, what are they for?”

“Just fetch them. Why so many questions?” Chenxue slipped back into her imperious tone. After a couple of steps she looked back, her ears faintly pink. “Actually, never mind. I’ll find Steward Song myself.”

Qiutang stayed where she was, watching her mistress disappear around the corridor, more bewildered than ever.

Something was definitely wrong with the young miss today.