Chapter 1

# Chapter 1

On my seventh day at the Crown Princess Academy, I was declared the girl least suited to enter the palace.

There were three reasons: I ate too much, wrote too stiffly, and smiled like a debt collector.

Matron Qi told me to go home and reflect on my faults.

“Will you refund my tuition?” I asked.

Every noble girl in the hall turned to stare at me. The ruler in Matron Qi’s hand paused in midair.

She had probably taught a great many foolish girls in her time, but never one whose first question was about money.

I did not want to be so vulgar. My family simply could not afford refinement.

My name was Xu Man-Man as in a granary filled to the brim. My father had once been an accounts clerk at the Ministry of Revenue and spent three years keeping the grain-transport ledgers. Then a cold settled in his lungs. Now he lay at home, breathing out more often than he breathed in.

My mother had left us two apothecaries. My uncle used them to pay his gambling debts.

To send me to the Crown Princess Academy, he borrowed another eight hundred taels from the clan and put the debt in my name.

“Man-niang,” he had said, “once you enter the palace, the Xu family will rise with you.”

“And if I don’t get in?”

“Then at least you’ll have seen the world.”

The world was expensive.

Eight hundred taels: six hundred for tuition, one hundred for clothes, and another hundred to grease the palms of gatekeepers, matrons, and coachmen.

The night before I entered the academy, I did the sums until dawn. If they refunded half, I could redeem one apothecary. If they refunded all of it, I could still hire a good physician for Father.

So when Matron Qi said I was unfit for the palace, I was honestly delighted.

Unfit was fine. Give me back the money and I would leave.

Matron Qi looked at me with a face like a steamed bun left cold for three days.

“Miss Xu, the Crown Princess Academy is not a marketplace.”

“At least a marketplace posts its prices.”

Someone beside me snorted with laughter.

I turned. It was Qi Tang, daughter of the General Who Pacifies the Frontier. She never sat properly. One foot was tucked beneath her skirt as if she might bolt at any moment.

Matron Qi struck the desk with her ruler.

“One point deducted, Miss Xu.”

“How many points do I have to lose before I get a refund?”

No one dared laugh this time.

A soft cough sounded beyond the door.

Jiang Yanbai, Junior Tutor to the Crown Prince, stood in the corridor with a roll of evaluation sheets in hand. He was in his early twenties, dressed in a blue-green official robe, with clean-cut features and an unhurried gaze.

My classmates said the Jiang family had produced upright scholars for three generations. Jiang Yanbai placed third in the imperial examination at seventeen, entered the Eastern Palace as a lecturer at nineteen, and became Junior Tutor at twenty-two.

A man like that was perfect for teaching rules.

Or lecturing someone to death with them.

Jiang Yanbai entered and laid the evaluations on Matron Qi’s desk.

“That will be all for today’s deportment lesson.”

Matron Qi bowed and withdrew.

He looked at me. “Xu Man.”

“Present.”

“Tuition paid to the Crown Princess Academy enters the treasury. It is not refundable.”

My heart sank.

“However,” he continued, “if the academy is at fault, restitution can be pursued.”

I looked up.

Jiang Yanbai’s expression remained calm, as though he had merely made an idle observation.

“If you truly want your money back, practice making your characters rounder. Officials dislike petitions written with strokes that are too straight.”

I studied him for a moment.

His tongue was no softer than mine.

But perhaps he could still be reasoned with.