Chapter 5

Pingzhou was far from the capital. Because I was pregnant, Jiang Qingsong deliberately slowed our pace, and the journey took a full ten days.

The moment we arrived, I rushed to Jiang Nanxi’s grave without stopping to rest.

I brought no chrysanthemums. She had never liked them.

Nanxi loved snacks. I bought a little of every kind and arranged them neatly before her grave.

I kowtowed three times, my forehead striking the ground. Jiang Qingsong moved to help me up, but I shook my head.

“We have private things to discuss. Go a little farther away. Don’t interrupt us.”

Once he had gone, I kept talking while quietly shifting my position. Shielding Nanxi’s weed-choked headstone with my body, I dug into the yellow earth with my bare hands.

Thank goodness. The thing I had risked my life to protect was still there.

I took it out and hid it against my chest. Only after restoring everything did I dust myself off, rise slowly, and go to Jiang Qingsong.

He suddenly asked, “Liu Wenyan, those people you killed—it had something to do with Jiang Nanxi, didn’t it?”

“No. I’m just wicked. I disliked those men, so I burned them all.” My tone was careless.

“Watch what you say about yourself.” He glanced at me. “The file calls you vicious and cruel. But I had someone investigate.”

“Oh?” My interest stirred. “And what did you find, my lord?”

“Jiang Nanxi was a celebrated courtesan in one of Pingzhou’s brothels. Four months ago, a large group of clients came to her room. They were all soldiers of Wei.”

“Our country has always favored the military. Soldiers enjoy extraordinary status. However unwilling the madam might have been, she couldn’t refuse them—especially since they came on their general’s orders.”

“They abused Jiang Nanxi in that room for three days and nights. Her screams never stopped, until at last she couldn’t make a sound.”

“Then someone pierced the window paper, used drugged smoke to knock everyone unconscious, and set a fire. Everyone burned to death. Apart from Jiang Nanxi, there were precisely eighteen people.”

Standing against the light, he asked quietly, “Liu Wenyan, is that the real reason you were sentenced to beheading?”

I nodded. “Yes. But you’ve got part of it wrong. Nanxi was kind to me. I would never have killed her.”

“She was already dead when I set the fire. They were abusing a corpse. After the smoke knocked them out, I carried her body away. Only then did I burn them all to ash.”

“I killed eighteen men, Jiang Qingsong. Are you afraid?”

I smiled at him. “Do you regret letting a pretty face tempt you into getting involved with me? There’s still time. Send me outside the capital, or leave me here in Pingzhou. I won’t cling to you.”

I had been arrested the day after I buried Nanxi.

I said those men were inhuman. The magistrate said I was a narrow-minded woman who understood nothing.

He said the men were exhausted from fighting. They had only been relaxing and amusing themselves. How could I have burned them alive?

Many soldiers came to watch when I was sentenced.

They jabbed their fingers in my face, called me venomous and beyond redemption, and said Nanxi had been a mere plaything. What was there to pity?

From soldier to judge, county magistrate to prefect, Pingzhou to the capital, every man said the same things. I had heard them so often I was numb.

But now Jiang Qingsong held my shoulders firmly and shook his head. “Afraid of what?”

“Liu Wenyan, all I see is someone who repays kindness and knows right from wrong. I ache for you. Why would I fear you?”

“Men who abuse women are the lowest kind of men. They deserved to die.”

“You didn’t bloody your hands. You put an end to their evil.”

He spoke so earnestly that I felt dazed.

For the first time in four months, someone stood beside me and told me I had done nothing wrong.

Looking up at him against the light, I felt my eyes sting.

I had always thought he was no different from those other men, and had refused to give him my heart. Now I suddenly saw that, beyond his face, his body, and his family, there was something else worth loving.

As he drew me into his arms, I stared at Nanxi’s headstone nearby and whispered, “You don’t know me, Jiang Qingsong. I’m a very, very bad person.”

He ruffled my hair, amusement in his voice, taking none of it seriously. “Then I’ll wait and see just how bad you can be.”

War raged across Pingzhou. The neighboring Yue army had attacked first, and the fighting with Wei was now at its fiercest.

I heard a little girl’s cries, one after another, piercingly shrill.

Jiang Qingsong sighed. “There’s fighting here every few days. It’s the common people who suffer.”

“I hope it ends soon.”

He decided we would stay only one night before returning to the capital.

After we settled into our room, he soon fell into a deep sleep.

I crept out of bed, extinguished the drugged incense, and left with the thing hidden against my chest.

Paying my respects to Nanxi was only part of why I had come. More important, I had something to deliver.

I hurried through familiar streets to the line between the two armies.

One more step, and I would be in Yue.

The sentries saw me and instantly raised their spears.

Then, recognizing my face, they hesitated and lowered their weapons.

“Miss Liu?”

“It’s me.” There was no time to explain. I simply handed over what I had brought.

“No questions. Take this to the general immediately.”

Afraid of attracting attention, I turned and hurried away.

What I had given the soldiers of Yue was a map of the defenses.

A map of Wei’s defenses along the Pingzhou frontier.

I had said I was a very, very bad person.

I had lied to Jiang Qingsong. Nanxi had never visited my dreams. I hadn’t come to Pingzhou to tend her grave.

I had come to give a defense map to the enemy.