Chapter 11
# Chapter 11
The day our families came to collect us was livelier than the day we had enrolled.
Some mothers cried. Some fathers shouted. Some brothers waited impatiently at the gate.
Qi Tang’s father came in person. The General Who Pacifies the Frontier was tall and broad enough to block a doorway.
His first word upon seeing her was, “Disgraceful.”
Qi Tang stood straight. “Mm.”
“Do you know your brother’s transfer has been revoked?”
“I know.”
“Aren’t you ashamed?”
She raised her head. “My brother is twenty-six. He can earn his own future. Your daughter is seventeen, and I would like to live my own life.”
The general raised his hand.
My heart clenched.
Qi Tang did not flinch.
The slap never fell. His hand stopped in midair. After a long while, he lowered it.
“We’re going home.”
Qi Tang looked at me. “When I get back to the frontier, I’ll send you dried horsemeat.”
“Send the kind I can sell.”
“Money grubber.”
She left laughing.
No one came for Ye Chan.
Her father sent only a servant with a message: “Circumstances at home are inconvenient. Miss Ye will stay with her maternal grandparents for now.”
Ye Chan went white.
“Where do they live?” I asked the servant.
“South of the city.”
The south was a maze of poor alleys.
The Ye family was casting her off without daring to say so.
Ye Chan lowered her head. “I’ll go.”
Matron Qi spoke abruptly. “I live in the south too.”
Ye Chan looked up.
Matron Qi’s face was as stern as ever. “I’m getting old. I need a girl who can sew. The wages aren’t high, but there will be enough food.”
Tears spilled down Ye Chan’s face.
Matron Qi frowned. “Why are you crying? I’m not dead.”
I laughed despite myself.
Only later did I learn that Matron Qi had once entered the palace too-not as a court lady, but as a candidate.
Her family sold two mu of paddy field to buy her new clothes. She studied palace rules for half a year and left with four characters on her evaluation: plain of face, disobedient.
Plain described her face.
Disobedient described her fate.
Her promised marriage was canceled. Her father cursed her for wasting money, and her mother cried for three days. The next year, they married her to a widower twenty years her senior.
When he died, she had neither children nor land. She entered the palace as an instructor because she had nowhere else to go.
She taught girls to lower their heads. She taught them to endure.
Not because she believed in those lessons, but because they were all she knew.
“Why are you helping me, Matron?” Ye Chan asked.
Matron Qi was silent for a long time.
“No one helped me.”
She said it flatly.
It sounded worse than weeping.
Qin Zhaomian’s brother came for her. He was dressed elegantly, but his face was sour.
“Father orders you to kneel in the ancestral hall when you return.”
Qin Zhaomian nodded. “Very well.”
He lowered his voice. “Why did you have to ruin my future?”
She looked at him.
“Brother, I did not ruin your future. I merely stopped trading myself for it.”
He froze.
Qin Zhaomian bowed to me. “Until we meet again, Xu Man.”
“If they punish you too harshly, come find me. My accounting fees are high, but friends may buy on credit.”
She smiled.
This smile was more genuine than any she had worn at the academy.
My uncle came last.
He entered and seized my arm. “Man-niang, we’re going home.”
I pulled free. “Where’s the silver?”
His face changed. “What silver?”
“The five hundred taels Lanyi Academy is returning.”
“That money belongs to the Xu family.”
“The loan note bears my name.”
“I am your elder.”
“When there was debt, you called me head of household. Now there is money, you call yourself my elder. You change quickly, Uncle.”
He raised a hand to strike me.
Someone caught his wrist.
Jiang Yanbai.
He wore no official robe today, only a plain blue-green gown.
My uncle started. “Lord Jiang.”
“Refunds from Lanyi Academy must be collected by the student herself. Xu Man has registered with the Ministry of Revenue as the head of a female household. No collateral branch of the Xu clan may collect on her behalf.”
I stared at him. “A female household?”
He met my eyes. “Didn’t you say you wanted an accounting office?”
My mouth opened, but no words came.
My uncle grew agitated. “A woman establishing her own household? Absurd!”
Jiang Yanbai released him. “It is lawful. Xu Man’s father is still alive and has given his thumbprint.”
I went still.
Father was too sick to leave his bed.
Yet Jiang Yanbai knew.
I learned later that during the days I was locked in the side courtyard, he had visited my home. Father’s hand shook so badly that it took three attempts to leave a clear print.
“Your father asked me to give you a message,” Jiang Yanbai said quietly.
My heart leaped into my throat.
“He said, ‘Man as in a full granary does not mean filling someone else’s granary.'”
My eyes burned.
I did not cry.
I turned to my uncle. “Tell the clan that of the eight hundred taels, I recognize only the debt properly incurred in my name. Your gambling losses, bribes, and whatever you swallowed-I will not repay a single copper.”
His face went from green to white.
“How will a young woman survive without the Xu family?”
I considered it.
“First, I’ll eat.”
Jiang Yanbai turned his face away, as if he wanted to laugh again.