Chapter 6

# Chapter 6

In our second month, Lanyi Academy changed its rules.

Court Lady Song remained at the academy to supervise our training personally. Our meals were cut in half, sweets were abolished, and an extra evening lesson called “stilling the heart” was added.

Stilling the heart meant kneeling upright for an hour.

“Before a crown princess enters the palace,” Court Lady Song said, “she must first learn endurance.”

She also added a class called Family Letters. Every five days, we wrote home, but each letter had to be inspected by Court Lady Song first. Correspondence inside the palace followed rules, she said. Private feelings could not be written however one pleased.

My first letter was to Father.

Father, there isn’t enough food, there are too many rules, and I still haven’t got the money back. Please don’t die yet.

Court Lady Song read it with a face like she had swallowed medicine dregs.

“Rewrite it.”

“What is wrong with it?”

“It is unfilial, disrespectful, and inelegant.”

“Then what should I write?”

She ordered a scribe to recite the model letter.

“Your daughter is well in all things at the academy. Blessed by Her Majesty’s grace, I study the rites day and night and dare not grow lax. May Father and Mother be at ease and give no thought to your daughter.”

“Anyone could have written that letter,” I said when she finished.

Court Lady Song looked at me.

I lowered my head and started again.

Father, I am well in all things at the academy.

I stopped there for a long time.

Father would know at once that I was not well. I never said that everything was fine.

Qi Tang wrote, Your daughter is doing very well at the academy. The words “very well” looked as sharp as knife cuts.

Qin Zhaomian filled three pages with proper phrases. At the end, she added a single sentence: Mother’s cough worsens in autumn. Remember to change her medicine to a warming prescription.

Ye Chan wrote slowest. Halfway through her letter to her mother, a tear fell onto the paper. She wiped it hurriedly with her sleeve, smearing it worse.

Court Lady Song walked over. “Once you enter the palace, even crying must be done at the proper time.”

Ye Chan’s hand trembled.

“Must tears be entered in a register too?” I asked.

Court Lady Song ignored me. She picked up Ye Chan’s damp letter.

“Rewrite it.”

Ye Chan did not sleep that night. She sat beneath the lamp, practicing the four characters for “Your daughter is well” over and over.

Watching her back, I suddenly understood. The academy did not teach etiquette.

It ground away each girl’s own words until we all spoke the same sentence.

By the third day of kneeling, Qi Tang’s knees were black and blue. At night she cursed.

“May her ancestors suffer.”

“Leave her ancestors out of it. They might not agree with her.”

Ye Chan grew paler. She had never eaten much to begin with. After the portions were reduced, she often grew dizzy when she stood.

Qin Zhaomian remained steady.

So steady that no one could see her pain.

I began keeping secret accounts.

Not accounts of money. Accounts of people.

How often each girl was made to kneel.

Who had fainted.

Whose family sent medicine.

Who received a hint from the court lady and paid more silver for a Grade A.

Qi Tang gathered rumors from the dormitories. She looked reckless, but she noticed everything: which maid had cried, which girl wrote letters in the night.

Ye Chan handled the needlework. She embroidered each girl’s name in the corner of a handkerchief. Any girl willing to be entered in our accounts added a tiny stitch beside her name.

Qin Zhaomian said nothing.

But every few days, a new slip of paper appeared beneath my book.

One family treated Court Lady Song to tea: one hundred taels.

Another family requested Grade B and promised a marriage to a member of the imperial clan.

One girl’s mother sent medicine, but the gatekeeper withheld it.

The handwriting was exact. There was no signature.

I knew it was hers.

More and more girls entered our ledger.

Some were afraid to write their names and only added a stitch to the handkerchief. Some passed me half a sheet bearing a single line: My mother paid silver and forbade me to ask why.

Someone slipped a strip of waist-binding cloth into my bedding. It was painfully narrow, and the edges were stained with blood. Holding it, I suddenly felt that my ledger weighed far too little.

“If we take all this outside,” Qi Tang asked, “won’t their families beat them to death?”

“That’s why we can’t merely take it outside.”

“What do we do, then?”

“Make their families afraid too.”

She considered that. “Afraid of whom?”

I tapped the ledger.

“Afraid that they spent their money for nothing. Afraid that they failed to gain prestige and everyone will still learn they tried to trade their daughters for it.”

Qi Tang studied me. “Xu Man, you have a devious mind.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“On the frontier, it is.”

Then she bent her head and copied another list for me.

Her handwriting was ugly.

It had backbone.

At the end of the month, Jiang Yanbai found my ledger.

I had hidden it inside the cover of *Admonitions for Women*. He opened the book and discovered it immediately.

“The Tutor studies that book very closely,” I said.

He did not laugh. He read the ledger from beginning to end.

“Do you know what this is, Xu Man?”

“An account.”

“A disaster.”

“Unsettled accounts are disasters.”

He lowered his voice. “Court Lady Song answers to the empress. If you submit this, the empress will only say that you corrupted your classmates and disrupted the crown princess selection.”

“Then teach me how not to disrupt it.”

Deep exhaustion showed in his eyes.

“Wait.”

“For what?”

“For the crown prince to have a voice.”

I laughed in disbelief. “Can’t he speak now?”

“Xu Man.”

“I know. He has the empress, the ministers, the Eastern Palace, and all their rules. But we have fathers and mothers, debts, marriage contracts, and homes we can’t return to.”

Jiang Yanbai pressed his fingers to the ledger.

“It isn’t that I don’t want to save you.”

“And it isn’t that I only want to cause trouble.”

The room fell quiet. Rain tapped against the tiles outside, a fine, irritating patter.

At last he returned the ledger.

“The final examination has changed.”

I stared at him. “How?”

“It was to cover poetry, rites, needlework, and deportment. I have now petitioned the crown prince to make palace accounting the subject.”

Jiang Yanbai met my eyes.

“If you intend to make trouble, do it in the examination hall. Do not let them dismiss it as a private grievance.”

I said nothing.

“And don’t hide the ledger in *Admonitions for Women* again.”

“Why not?”

“Too obvious.”

“Where should I hide it?”

His face remained perfectly blank. “*Biographies of Exemplary Women*. Court Lady Song enjoys reading that one.”

I could not help laughing.

Jiang Yanbai smiled too.

Only for a moment.