Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I was feeling rather down when the Beidi Army outside suddenly issued another new order.

Everyone was to hand over every valuable item in their homes before the day was out.

If they refused, that was fine too. Starting tomorrow, the soldiers would be searching door to door anyway.

And if they found that any household had dared to hide their valuables, those people would be thrown into the stables to feed the horses.

Not to feed the horses by hand.

To be fed to them.

Zhu Qingyun and I didn’t hesitate. We gathered up everything in sight that had even the slightest glimmer to it.

Zhu Qingyun was the one who took it out to turn in.

I was busy rummaging through boxes and cabinets, trying to see if Father and Mother had left behind any keepsakes.

But there was one rosewood cabinet I couldn’t open. It seemed to be jammed by something.

Just then, Zhu Qingyun returned.

But he didn’t come over to help me. Instead, he stood at the threshold and stared at me for a while before saying, “Change into my clothes, and tie your hair up like mine.”

“What happened?”

“Change.”

His eyes were dark and heavy.

I nodded and said, “All right.”

Zhu Qingyun went on to say that when he went out just now, he heard the Beidi were furious about members of the imperial family escaping in secret. They had captured palace servants and tortured them, and from them learned that there were still some imperial descendants who had failed to evacuate in time and were now hiding in ordinary people’s homes.

When they searched the city tomorrow, there would be no peace to speak of.

As I heard this, I fell silent in front of the wooden cabinet I had finally managed to yank open after great effort.

At last, I knew why it hadn’t opened.

Someone had been hiding inside and desperately trying to hold the cabinet doors shut.

I dragged the person out and saw that it was a young lord of about ten, still dressed in brocade and silk threaded with gold.

“Who are you?”

“Mu… Mu Yuchang.” The young lord’s jade-white face flushed scarlet in an instant.

The imperial family was also surnamed Mu.

Seeing both Zhu Qingyun’s and my expressions change, Mu Yuchang suddenly clutched at the corner of my sleeve and begged bitterly, “I have nowhere else to hide. Please don’t drive me out. I’ll die.”

I said awkwardly, “But if we don’t hand you over, we’ll die too.”

But Zhu Qingyun shook his head. “My teacher once told me that a gentleman must conduct himself with integrity and never betray another person.”

He stepped past me and proceeded to ask Mu Yuchang about his background.

Mu Yuchang was the Twelfth Prince from the palace.

Because he had been too playful, he had secretly slipped into a hidden passage in the palace and gone straight out of the city. He had spent several days outside enjoying himself.

But as fate would have it, that was exactly when the imperial family had evacuated.

By the time he returned, it was already too late.

Frightened, he had no choice but to follow the commandery princesses and young heirs as they scattered into hiding throughout Ying’an Prefecture.

And our family’s wall was not very high, so he had happened to be able to climb over it.

My breath caught. “The palace’s hidden passage can lead out of the city?”

Mu Yuchang nodded like a chicken pecking at grain. “It can!”

But before his bobbing head could even stop, Zhu Qingyun had locked an arm around his neck.

He looked at Zhu Qingyun in terror, both hands clawing and scratching.

Zhu Qingyun remained unmoved. “Only if you promise to take me to find the hidden passage will I cover for you tomorrow.”

Mu Yuchang agreed without the slightest hesitation. “All right, all right!”

Afterward, I asked Zhu Qingyun, “What happened to your gentlemanly principles?”

“Second Sister, if I hadn’t acted like a gentleman, how would I have coaxed the truth about the hidden passage out of him? Besides, the situation forced my hand. It doesn’t count as trickery.”

His eyes curved in a smile, looking every bit harmless and innocent.

I remembered that he used to wear that same expression whenever he needed a favor from me.

Later, he wore it when he went to curry favor with Grandfather and Grandmother too.

The old couple were softhearted, so they fell right into his trap and were always secretly stuffing things into his hands.

When my mother found out, she couldn’t very well criticize her elders, so she could only scold him fondly, saying he had more schemes in that head of his than there were stones in a flagstone path.