Chapter 2
Chapter 2
“Miss?” Seeing her mistress staring blankly at the pendant, Linghe called to her softly.
Si Yan came to herself. She closed her hand around the jade and stared at her reflection in the bronze mirror.
Her face was still pale from illness, her lips almost colorless. Only her almond-shaped eyes were bright.
She suddenly turned. Her voice was hoarse, but brisk and decisive. “Linghe, I need you to do three things.”
Linghe immediately stood straight and lowered her head. “Tell me, Miss.”
“First, tell my father I’m not breaking off the engagement. Second…”
She looked at the jewelry in the wooden box. Pain at parting with it flickered in her eyes.
Those were treasures she had saved for years!
“Take every valuable piece of jewelry out of my dressing case and exchange it for banknotes.”
Linghe’s heart lurched. Her eyes widened, and her lips parted.
Every piece? Without keeping a single one? What was her mistress planning?
“Miss, what are you going to…”
“Third,” Si Yan continued, giving her no chance to finish.
“Find out exactly who is in charge of the new eunuchs entering the palace.”
“What does that supervising eunuch like? How much does it take to satisfy him? The more you can find out, the better.”
By the time she had heard all three requests, Linghe swayed, nearly fainting.
“Miss, why are you asking about a supervising eunuch? All that filthy business in the palace…”
“Just do as I say!”
Si Yan pushed the wooden box into her arms and turned toward the bed.
After two steps she stopped. Without looking back, she added in a lighter tone,
“Oh, and bring me a bowl of bird’s nest soup with rock sugar on your way back. I’m hungry.”
Linghe stood there clutching the box, her head still spinning.
Three days ago, her mistress had been crying over this betrothal. Today she said she would not break it off.
Not only that, she was selling her possessions to buy influence.
How had a fever turned her into someone else?
But she dared not ask. She hurried out with the box, muttering as she went.
“Heavens above, has Miss been possessed, or…”
Before long, Si Yan’s father arrived with her mother. Their hurried footsteps could be heard outside the door.
The moment her mother saw her, she rushed over, threw her arms around her, and burst into loud sobs.
“My Yan’er! You’re finally awake! If anything had happened to you, I wouldn’t have wanted to live either!”
Si Yan was held so tightly she could barely breathe. Her mother’s familiar white sandalwood scent filled her nostrils.
She reached up to pat her mother’s back, feeling the lingering tremors of fear beneath her palm.
A sudden sting rose in Si Yan’s nose, and her eyes reddened. Her voice softened of its own accord.
“Mother, I’m all right. I’m sorry I frightened you.”
The maid Jihe brought in two cups of tea and set them on the table, then withdrew to one side with her head bowed.
Her father lifted a cup and took a sip. His brow was still furrowed tightly enough to crush a fly.
He set down the tea and looked at mother and daughter on the bed. “Yan’er,” he said gravely, “Linghe tells me you won’t break off the engagement?”
Si Yan peered out from her mother’s embrace and nodded without hesitation, her almond-shaped eyes unblinking.
“I won’t.”
Her father’s face darkened at once. “Nonsense! How will you ever marry if you don’t?”
“The Jiangs… The Jiangs are guilty of high treason. How can we have any further connection with them? Everyone at the minister’s residence could suffer for it!”
Her mother’s eyes grew redder. Wiping her tears with a handkerchief, she took her daughter’s hand and pleaded with her.
“Yan’er, listen to your father. The way things stand… We can’t afford the risk.”
The Jiang family was gone. They could not let the Si family be dragged down too!
Si Yan did not know how to explain. Surely she could not say she had dreamed of the future.
That the fiancé whose betrothal she had broken would one day become Lord Jiuqiansui, wielding power over court and country.
That he would then seize her, lock her in a gilded cage, torment her every day and humiliate her every night?
She could not say it.
Even if she did, no one would believe her.
Who would gamble the fate of an entire family on a dream?
Si Yan took a deep breath. Bracing herself against the edge of the bed, she sat upright and looked at her father in earnest.
“Father, think about it. They executed his whole family, spared only him, and then castrated him.”
“If he can truly swallow all that and settle down to a quiet life as a palace eunuch, then very well.”
Her voice was low and hoarse from her recent illness, yet every word was clear.
“But what if he can’t?”
Silence filled the room.
Even her mother’s sobs stopped. The handkerchief froze in midair.
“What if he gains power in the palace, and then remembers the fiancée who broke off their engagement…”
Her mother’s face went white, her lips trembling. “Yan’er, you mustn’t say such things…”
Her father’s expression shifted. He was silent for a long while, pacing the room with his hands behind his back.
After twenty years as an official at court, he knew perfectly well what happened when you cut down the weeds but left their roots.
As Jiang Youze’s future father-in-law, he understood the young man better than anyone.
First in the imperial examinations at sixteen. Accomplished in both letters and arms.
His policy essays had even the old scholars of the Hanlin Academy pounding their desks in admiration, and his riding and archery were outstanding.
In peaceful times, such a man would be a pillar of the state. In troubled times, he would be a ruthless, formidable force.
And that was without considering his temperament, or the depths of his mind.
So young, yet he never let his joy or anger show. He possessed more composure than many of the seasoned officials her father had known.
Even deprived of his manhood, a man like that was never destined for obscurity.
He stopped pacing, turned, and let out a heavy sigh.
“But even if you don’t wish to break the engagement, he is registered as a slave now. The marriage cannot go ahead.”
“Then it won’t.”
Si Yan held her mother’s hand. Her voice softened into the coaxing tone of a daughter wheedling with her parents.
“If I keep the engagement, he’ll remember my kindness. If I break it, he’ll bear a grudge. Father, if you were him, which would you remember?”
Crude as the words were, the reasoning was sound.
When someone was at the end of his rope, a kick would stay with him for a lifetime.
So would a bowl of water offered to him.
Even if that water did little good, even if it could not save him or change his fate.
People eager to add to someone’s good fortune were countless. Those willing to bring warmth in a bitter hour of need were as rare as stars at dawn.
In the end, her father said nothing. He exchanged a look with her mother, then shook his head and left.